Do we need anything to be happy in life? What can we live without? What can we not? And what is true happiness, anyway? Ah, yes…some of life’s most interesting questions…
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Wednesday is Question and Answer Day on the blog…a time for exploring many of the questions that people have recently asked about the nine Conversations with God books and the New Spirituality. Here’s this week’s entry…
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Question:I love the quotes: “Enjoy everything. Need nothing.” and “There is nothing that you need in order to be perfectly happy. You only think that there is.” I find strength and peace of mind when I remind myself of them. But then I wonder, “Who am I kidding?” Sure, I don’t need anything to survive, to exist. Our lives are eternal, so I’ll always be somewhere. But I appear to need certain things not to suffer terribly……….don’t I? Like food, water, and shelter. Could you really be happy if you lost everything? It happened once to you. With the understanding that you’ve received since then, could you now be happy within at the campground, damp and hungry?
Neale’s Response:My dear friend…you ask a genuine and pertinent question. I want to tell you that I am not operating in my life at a level of mastery…and so there are many situations, conditions, and circumstances in my life that cause me to lose touch with my happiness. I imagine that if I were back in a campground, damp and hungry, having lost everything, I would be unhappy in many moments. Until I was not anymore. Until I get “reconnected” with the Truth of Who I Really Am, with the wonder of my own co-creation, with the excitement of the invitation that Life was sending to me in that moment, and with the glory of the answer that I was choosing to give to Life’s most important question: Who Am I, and Who Do I Choose to Be?
Ned, I now see life in an entirely different way. I see it as a spiritual journey, embarked upon by my soul. I see the journey as having nothing to do with my body, and that my body is something I HAVE, not something I AM. I would then use my body as a tool in the creation of the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about Who I Am. I would see life in every moment as a Holy Experience, having to do with the evolution of my immportal soul.
Maybe it is none of this. Maybe I’m making this all up. Yet even if I am (without knowing it), I have never found a better way to live; a way to move through the world with more peace and more harmony and more inner, quiet joy.
I realize that it is easy for me to say this when I am living in the lap of luxury as a worldwide best-selling author. But I would like to think I would not lose my perspective if things went bad and I was back in the campground again.
I really do think I could be happy if I lost everything again, as long as I did not lose my ability to love. To love myself, to love my God, to love my Sacred Others walking the street and filling the houses and populating our planet…
Every day in every way I want to love more and more. I want to have more and more compassion. I want to grant more and more forgiveness. I want to experience more and more understanding, patience, kindness, and generosity. I want to provide more and more comfort. I want to offer more and more gifts, more and more blessings, more and more help. Every day in every way I want to give more and more to Life. For it is, really and truly, in giving that I receive, and in extending outward that I am fulfilled within.
And here is what I know, my friend. As long as I make these choices every day, and every moment of every day, I will never have to worry about “losing everything” again. Even if I lost everything I would have lost nothing, because my ability to love and be kind and to express the wonder and the glory of who I am can never be taken from me, no matter what.
You see, every moment of every day we have an opportunity to decide, What is life really all about? What is its purpose? What is its function? What am I doing here?
Our answer to that question determines how happy we are going to be. Yes, we do need food, water, and shelter to exist in our physical bodies — but do we need to exist in our physical bodies? THAT is the question. And the answer is, no. And when we understand that answer, and embrace it, we are never again afraid to die. And when we are not afraid to die, we are not afraid to live. Nor are we afraid of anything in life. And that makes us live life all so differently.
Peace be with you, my friend. And may it proceed from you to all those whose lives you touch.
(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers’ Circle at Neale’s personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Each week Neale selects a question from those posted there and publishes it in this blog.)
P.S. Would you like to vacation with me this summer? Every year we have a wonderful time on a week-long cruise through the Inland Passageway, and every year some of the readers of Conversations with God show up to say hi, and to spend some quality personal time with me.
This shipboard spiritual renewal retreat is the very best way for you and I to connect on a personal level, should you wish to do that, because there is ample free time for us to socialize, chat in a personal way, and really connect. This year, there will be more time than ever before, because I am building in some Connection Time between retreat sessions, where we can have one-on-one conversations.
So do check out the Alaskan Cruise information at the link below if you’ve always wanted to just sit down and talk with me, ask questions, explore some personal matters, and just give us a chance to get to know each other. Just click the link and it’ll take you to the information page…
http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/cruise.cfm
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