(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 our natural impulse toward the Divine, which does not make others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)
Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Come As You Are.
This week’s prose…an excerpt from The Holy Experience…

I said it before and I’ll say it again. All my life I have been trying to figure out…Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Is there any reason for what I am doing? Does anybody care? Is there any outcome, other than the doing of it? What is the point of life?
The Holy Experience brings us the answers to those questions.
The Holy Experience is the answer,
The Holy Experience is when you know the difference between Divinity and humanity, and when that difference disappears.
Divinity and humanity can become One in your experience, and when that occurs you have entered the Holy Moment. You cannot enter this Moment, however, until you know the difference — and why it exists.
The difference between Divinity and humanity is that…

…Divinity seeks only to distribute, and humanity seeks only to gather.
Did you hear that?
That is not the only difference, of course, but it is a milestone difference. It is a major difference. So let’s not gloss over it. Let’s not read past it and move on, without really grasping its implication. Let’s state it again. I said…

“The difference between Divinity and humanity is that Divinity seeks only to distribute, and humanity seeks only to gather.”
Divinity understands that it is only through the distribution of Itself, the giving away of Itself, that it can be magnified and glorified. Humanity believes that it is only through the gathering to itself, the bringing to itself, that it can be magnified and glorified.
So there you have it. Giver and Gatherer. That’s the difference.
It is an astonishing difference. It is an exact opposite. That is no small distinction. Yet when it is deeply understood (not simply casually comprehended), everything becomes wonderfully clear at last, and the chasm between the two may finally be closed.
Divinity seeks nothing for Itself. Human beings will find it difficult to seek nothing for themselves so long as they imagine themselves to be human. That is because humans imagine themselves to have needs. Divinity does not. Divinity has no such thought about Itself. (Nor any such thought about you, incidentally.)
So in order for humanity to seek nothing for itself, humans must understand themselves to be Divine. They must understand that humanity is not separate from the Divine, but IS the Divine, or a division of it.

You might say that humanity is a “division of the Divine.” This helps people wrap their minds around the concept of Oneness with Divinity. Many folks have a very difficult time seeing themselves as Divine. Yet if you tell them that they are part of that which is Divine, many people can go there. They can hang out in that place. They can embrace the concept. Partial magnificence is acceptable, total magnificence is not.
So we might say for our purposes here that humanity is a division of the Divine. That Which Is Divine created many divisions of Itself, and one of those divisions is called humanity.
Even as a large company or corporation may have a division here and a division there, without any of those divisions being in any sense separate from, or other than, the whole, so, too, does the Divine have a division here and a division there without any of those divisions being in any sense separate from, or other than, The Whole.
It is possible to be a division of something without being divided from it.
That’s an important concept for you to grasp if you are to have the Holy Experience. Please let me say it again. I said…
“It is possible to be a division of something without being divided from it.”

Think about that for a minute. Hold that concept in your mind. Humanity, as a Division of Divinity, is neither separate from, nor other than, The Whole.
This is the one thing that most of humanity has not understood. This is the one thing that most of humanity’s religions have not taught. In fact, most of those religions have taught exactly the opposite. They have taught that humanity IS Separate from Divinity. Some have called this separation The Fall of Man, and in that description they are correct. The idea of Humanity’s Separation from Divinity HAS been humanity’s downfall.
From Downfall to Upliftment: Reversing the Effect
The transformation of humanity’s downfall into humanity’s upliftment may be achieved through a simple reversal of thinking. It is a shift from Separation Theology to Unity Spirituality. It is the reunion of God and Humanity.
It is easier to experience Reunion with God on an individual basis than it is collectively. That is because it takes a great deal more energy to alter Collective Consciousness than it does to alter Individual Consciousness. Yet Collective Consciousness can be altered when the alteration of Individual Consciousness reaches critical mass. When sufficient individual energies are lifted, the entire mass is elevated to a new level.

The work of Conscious Evolution, therefore, is the work of changing consciousness at the individual level. That is why every effort to do so is critical.
Every individual undertaking, every individual thought, word, or action which leads to the transformation of the Self and to the lifting of any other being, is of extraordinary importance. It is not necessary to move mountains to move mountains. It is necessary only to move pebbles.
We must become People of the Pebbles. We must do our work on a person-to-person basis. Then we shall move mountains. Then the mightiest obstacles shall crumble, and the way shall be made clear.
So let us undertake to deeply understand on an individual level (and then to demonstrate on an individual level) how and why it is possible for The Divine to want nothing for Itself, and to seek only to distribute.
We begin by coming to clarity on who and what The Divine is.
The Divine is Everything. All that is seen and all that is unseen is The Divine. All that is known and unknown is The Divine. All that is experienced and unexperienced is The Divine. All that is here and all that is not here, all that is now and all that is forever, all that is limited and all that is unlimited is The Divine. All that is comprehensible and all that is incomprehensible is The Divine.

There is nothing that Is that is not The Divine.
Divinity is everywhere at once, and thus, it is nowhere in particular. Divinity is NOWHERE. Divinity is NOW/HERE.
All of this has been given to us in Conversations with God. None of this is new. It has been given to us a thousand times before Conversations with God. It has been given to us a thousand times since. Indeed, in every moment in every way, through a thousand individual manifestations of Itself, is Divinity revealing Itself. Yet we do not see. Or we see, but do not believe.
We do not believe the evidence of our own eyes. We do not hear the truth in the sounds of silence.
Yet, for those who have ears to hear, listen.
And Watch.
Observe.
Observe the Self.
Watch over your Self.
Look at what you are doing on this day. Are you spending most of your energy gathering, or giving? And if you are giving, are you giving in order to gather? Do you do the work you do in order for it to pay off for you? And what, exactly, is the payoff? What are you gathering?
God, of course, cannot gather. That is the one thing that God cannot do. God cannot gather anything. That is because everything God would gather, God is. There’s nothing to gather.
I gather that you understand this.
What, then, to do?
Yet if God cannot gather, and if you are God, then you cannot gather, either. Perhaps you’ve already noticed this. Perhaps you’ve already noticed that, even if you do manage to collect a few things along the way, sooner or later it all disappears. At the end, none of it is there. You go on, but none of it goes with you. What is it that they say? “You can’t take it with you.”
In fact, it’s all starting to disappear right now. You don’t have the friends you had. You don’t have the stuff you had. You don’t even have the feelings you had. Everything you thought was “you”, or that at least helped to define you, has disappeared.
There is nothing that is permanent. There is nothing that stays. Everything goes.
Which is an interesting fact about life.
Everything goes.
And when you understand this, everything goes.
There are no restrictions anymore. You can do anything you wish, say anything you wish, think anything you wish, because you’re not trying to hold onto anything anymore. What’s the point? You can’t hold onto it anyway. It’s all going to go away. In the end, if not before.
This may sound like a desolate and despairing scenario, yet the truth is, it’s liberating. You can’t have anything forever. If you had it forever the having of it would mean nothing.
The Holy Experience is knowing this.
Each moment becomes truly holy, because each moment ends. It cannot be held onto forever. Not a single moment can. Therefore, every single moment is sacred. Like a snowflake, the moments fall and form a collection that melts into the stream of our lives that evaporates into nothingness, disappearing from sight but not from Reality, condensing and forming cloudy formations, spirits who then drop down like snowflakes, starting the whole cycle over again.
Each snowflake is utterly magnificent, cryingly, achingly, tearfully beautiful, unfathomably perfect.
As is each life.
From The Holy Experience, by Neale Donald Walsch, 2007

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Today’s gift of poetry
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Sun breaks open in my heart
without moderation.
There is Heaven, here.
But don’t ask me to come Home, just yet.
Don’t try to summon all of this Love, Home
for I have only just found
a Living Place.
Somewhere I can put my love.
A grassy knoll, where on my back I lay
musing at the broad sky, knowing I can light it –
even the stars disappear
in the making of this kind of love.
There are too many ways to say the same thing…
that is why god likes to rest at my feet –
to hear what Love will say next.
*
(A Living Place – m. claire – copyright 2007 – all rights reserved)
For more of the work of this new American poet, go to www.mclairepoet.com.