Do spiritual “masters” spend their time “being” love and kindness and compassion in their inner world while “doing” nothing in their exterior world? Do those who hold such ideas have any obligation to put those ideas into place in the experience of others?
No, they do not. “Obligation” is not part of any genuine spiritual experience. But is “invitation”? Does our spirituality not invite us to put into Experience what we Know to be So?
Of course it does.
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(NOTE: This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)
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Today’s entry on this blog is a continuation of my discussion on this topic, in the form on another exchange of views (see Monday’s blog for the first of these) with a CwG reader…
I want to respond here, my wonderful friends, to a particular post that was made in the “Comments” section of the CwG Readers’ Forum (found at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com) in reaction to certain of my words in that space. And I want to apologize in advance for the sharp tone of this response. I mean nothing personal by it, truly. I seem to find my passions aroused in cases like this, and I ask your indulgence here.
Recently in the Forum I issued a Clarion Call to Leadership. I urgently invited people to step forward now and to fuel the movement of the New Spirituality in our world, helping to create a School of the New Spirituality as a worldwide endeavor. To this, I received a response from a Messenger Circle member whose name I have changed to “Clarissa”…she wrote…
The bit I’m unclear about is the sponsoring thought and intention of this New Spirituality movement of which you speak. I’ve been getting fuzzy messages about this. Is it serving an agenda of its own? Does it believe the world is out of control, in chaos and needs to realign itself or that the world is perfect despite the seeming chaos? Does the new spirituality movement have faith and trust in a (any?) Divine Plan? If it does, then why the need to push, push, push? What is it exactly that you are pushing for, or should I say against? Or is that just my view?
So here’s my thoughts: What if we do just let go and let God? What if we do begin to truly embrace this concept of a unified diversity, meaning that at this moment in time there are those that are unconscious and those that are conscious of who they truly are and that is just as its meant to be, at least for now. What if we choose to step out of our egos and just allow what’s happening to happen without judgment? Does that mean the sky will fall in, that Earth will plummet into disaster? I don’t think it will. I am willing to trust that at a higher level, we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet anyway and that even when we don’t know it, our souls are in constant communication (as one), inspiring choices and outcomes as we go about this business of being human. I believe we’re all in safe hands and as I hold that vision, I begin to feel greater peace, towards my own life and those of others and the world at large. I’m even beginning to feel joyful about it all. Really.
So I sincerely thank you Neale, for your part in all of this and for your Forum entry today. You are helping me to reconnect with myself. You see? You don’t need to create a New Spirituality movement, you’re already doing it, right here and right now. In fact, we all are.
MY RESPONSE…
Dear “Clarissa”…
Well, as you might expect, I have some very strong reactions to this line of thinking and reasoning. Without any disrespect intended, and while being willing to honor everyone’s point of view, I feel a deep desire to point some things out, as I see them from my perspective. So, Clarissa, I offer this “response to your response…”
I shall present it here as if we were having a conversation.
…The bit I’m unclear about is the sponsoring thought and intention of this New Spirituality movement of which you speak. I’ve been getting fuzzy messages about this. Is it serving an agenda of its own?
Yes, Clarissa, the New Spirituality Movement has “an agenda of its own.” Its agenda is to offer the world’s people a clear invitation and an opportunity to change their mind about God, about Life, and about Each Other. We are engaged here in a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry, vindicative and exclusivist God, and offering a new way to honor our impulse toward the Divine which does not make anyone else wrong for the way in which they are doing it.
The New Spirituality seeks to place before humanity a set of Ideas About Everything which, while they may not be new, would be new in terms of their implementation. In other words, we are talking about ideas that have been around for a very long time, but the application of which has never been seriously attempted. We are inviting humanity to consider an entirely new Cultural Story.
Yes, there is an “agenda.” The agenda is to wake up the world, before it is too late, before our sleepwalking sends us into walls we do not have to walk into. It is true, “everything is perfect.” Conversations with God teaches this. It also teaches that we may choose a new idea of Perfection in every moment, that every act is an act of Self definition, and that while it may be Perfect for us to stand in the middle of the railroad tracks while a train is coming, we do not HAVE to accept the outcome that such an action will obviously produce. Seeing everything as “perfect” does not mean that there is never any good reason to seek a change in anything. Perfection does not resist change. “Perfection” and “Change” are not mutually exclusive. Seeing Perfection and Seeking Change are not, either.
Conversations with God offers the rather new idea that “God” is a process. And the process that God is? CHANGE.
There is no question that Change Happens. It is happening every day, every hour, every moment. It is not a question of whether things will change, but rather, how they will change. It is not a question of whether we will have a role in things changing, but what role we choose to have. Do we wish to walk into a Tomorrow that we have created unconciously, standing by and watching it all happen? Or do we wish to step into the Tomorrow of our Highest Desires and our Grandest Thought about things? Which? That is the question, Clarissa. That is the question. And what about those of us who believe that “God has a plan,” and that it is rolling out right now, and that, therefore, there is nothing for us to do but step aside, sit down and be quiet, and peacefully watch the plan roll out? To those people I say this: Who do you think God is? Do you imagine God to be some amophous Being, a Glorious Presence somewhere, with “an agenda of His own”?
I tell you this: God is US.
WE are God.
And the decisions and choices WE make are “God’s Plan.” We are making UP “God’s Plan” right now. Who do you think God is? Someone Who is doing this FOR us? We are not spectators in the process of Life, we are creators.
And this we must all hear:
Not to decide is to decide.
We can step into a future–and send our children and grandchildren into a future–that is created by DEFAULT, or a future that is created by OUR ACTIONS AND INTENTIONS.
Clarissa, you also wrote…
Does it believe the world is out of control, in chaos and needs to realign itself or that the world is perfect despite the seeming chaos? Does the new spirituality movement have faith and trust in a (any?) Divine Plan? If it does, then why the need to push, push, push? What is it exactly that you are pushing for, or should I say against?
The need to push, push, push is the same need that Mother Theresa saw when she “pushed, pushed, PUSHED” for the world to WAKE UP and END THE SUFFERING of poor and oppressed peoples everywhere. The need to push, push, push is the same need that Martin Luther King Jr. saw when he “pushed, pushed, PUSHED” for blacks and other minorities to have the same rights as the rich and the white. The need to push, push, push is the same need that Mahatma Gandhi saw when he (gosh, did he EVER) “pushed, pushed, PUSHED” to create a free India, out from under the colonial control of Great Britain.
Don’t you GET IT, Clarissa? EVERY MAJOR ADVANCE IN HUMAN CIVILIZATION has been produced by people who chose to stand up and push, push, PUSH. Have I missed something here?
For goodness sake, even Jesus pushed, pushed, pushed. In fact, that’s exactly WHY he pushed. He pushed…for “goodness sake.”
Are we getting the point here? Is anyone hearing this????
Clarissa, you wrote…
Your recent blog inspired us to talk about finding ways of bridging the diversity of belief and allow for the possibility of a more unified approach with regards to our perception and experience of God to emerge. Is this the foundational basis of the New Spirituality of which you speak? Is it one that has no agenda?
No, Clarissa, that IS the agenda! The agenda is to “find ways of bridging the diversity of belief and allow for a more unified approach with regards to our perception and experience of God to emerge.” That is the agenda. But that agenda is not served by all of us standing around saying, “Well, good idea! And one day I am sure it will come to pass. I’ll just sit here quietly and wait for it. God has a plan. I’ll just sit here and watch.”
Clarissa, you say….
So here’s my thoughts: What if we do just let go and let God?
I have just responded to that question. But let me ask another. Who is this “God” you think we might “let”? When you say, “just let go and let God,” who IS this “God” that we are “letting” do things? I am saying, it is US. And unless WE do things, nothing is going to happen that we choose to have happen. Oh, things will happen, all right, but they will be the things that other people are choosing. People who have points of view starkly different from our own. And they will be effective in placing THEIR “agenda” on the earth, because they have organized themselves around their agenda, while we’re all sitting here playing our fiddles watching Rome burn.
What if we do begin to truly embrace this concept of a unified diversity, meaning that at this moment in time there are those that are unconscious and those that are conscious of who they truly are and that is just as its meant to be, at least for now.
What do you mean, “at least for now,” Clarissa? When does “now” end? It is ALWAYS “now.” In which “now,” precisely, do you think we should move to change things? NEVER? In NO NOW AT ALL????? I chose THIS “now,” right here.
The problem with the world today is that the civil are not organized, and the organized are not civil. All I am saying, Clarissa, is…let’s get organized.
What if we choose to step out of our egos and just allow what’s happening to happen without judgment?
Is wanting to stop Rome from burning “making a judgment”? Or is it simply an observation that something is happening that we don’t choose to have happen?
Does that mean the sky will fall in, that Earth will plummet into disaster? I don’t think it will.
That is easy to say when you are sitting high and dry and have all your needs met and life is pretty easy, by and large. But tell that to the people of New Orleans. Or the people of Kosovo. Or the family members of the 80 people found in graves in Bhagdad. Or those who lost loved ones on 9/11. Go to one of those people, Clarissa, and tell them…”the earth is not plummeting into diseaster, and I don’t think it will.”
I am willing to trust that at a higher level, we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet anyway and that even when we don’t know it, our souls are in constant communication (as one), inspiring choices and outcomes as we go about this business of being human. I believe we’re all in safe hands and as I hold that vision.
Whose hands ARE these in which we are safe, Clarissa? I ask again, do you imagine that God is outside of us? If God’s hands are so safe, why have 200,000 human beings died in Darfur, and nearly 2 million been driven from their homes, in the genocide of the century there? Those “safe hands,” Clarissa, are the hands that we are sitting on while we are musing about the wondrous safety of God.
Of course, it is all “perfect” if people die violent, untimely deaths, I know that. But has it occurred to anyone that their deaths are meant to send us a message? And it is possible that the message of the martyrs of 9/11 and the martyrs of the holocaust and the martyrs of the Darfur genocide and the martyrs of Katrina died to wake us up to the fact that human life does not have to be this way? That we can recreate it anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about who we are?
Finally, Clarissa, you said…
So I sincerely thank you Neale, for your part in all of this and for your blog today. You are helping me to reconnect with myself. You see? You don’t need to create a New Spirituality movement, you’re already doing it, right here and right now. In fact, we all are.
Clarissa, if I hadn’t created a New Spirituality movement, there would have been no blog here yesterday for you to READ.
You see, it is people taking action, it is people pushing, pushing, pushing, who create the space for others to show up saying there is nothing for us to do…
Hmmmm….
Now I will apologize to Clarissa again if I have been too sharp here, too stinging in my satire. I am just so……tired. Come on, people. Come on. Are you really willing to “just allow what’s happening to happen without judgment”? Is observation a judgment? Is saying, “Uh, the train is coming. Want to get off the tracks?” a judgment?
The way we answer that question will set the course and direction of humanity’s future.
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