There is a problem in the world today, but it has nothing to do with politics, economics, or military excursions. Can you guess what it might be?
A fascinating discussion took place at a three-day CwG event I recently facilitated in Scotland. In the presentation hall tucked into the heart of the fabled and famous alternative community known as Findhorn, I ventured in my third visit there to explore the possibility of personal transformation as an achievable experience.
Titled The Real God, the Real You–the Process of Re-identification, the program spoke of humanity’s actual place in the overall scheme of things, rather than the place to which we have relegated ourselves through what I call Separation Theology

Separation Theology is a theology which says that God is “over there” and we are “over here,” and that the two shall never become one–unless they do. It all depends on how we live our lives. If we are good human beings and do what God wants, we will be allowed back into the Kingdom of Heaven from which we (or, more precisely, our ancestors) had been evicted. If we are bad human beings and do not do what God wants, our banishment shall never be lifted, but continue forever in more severe form, accompanied as it will be extraordinary and unthinkable pain inflicted by unending torture–this as a punishment from God for offending Him by acting badly…or, if we have actually acted pretty well, for seeking to return to Him in the Wrong Way, along the Wrong Path.
The exploration at Findhorn emerged from the Conversations with God series of books–nine in all, covering 3,000 pages of dialogue surrounding these and other ecclesiastical issues. Speaking to the group assembled there, I shared that to me the single most impacting piece of information in the CwG texts was the statement in HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends that “death is a process of re-identification.”
In this final installment of the CwG series God reveals to humanity the process of what we call “death” and what happens after it, as well as the Eternal Journey of the Soul from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical Realm and back again, and the purpose of all of Life
Without getting into that in detail here (a close reading or re-reading of this remarkable and theologically exciting book may be in order for you here if you have an interest in life’s cosmology, its purpose, its point, and its outcome), let me simply say that the situation in which we find ourselves on this planet today is that we continue to try to solve the world’s problem at every level except the level at which the problem exists.
First, we try to solve it as if it was a political problem, because we are used to using political pressure on this planet to push energy around to get people to do what they don’t want to do. We hold discussions and write laws and pass legislation and adopt resolutions in every local, national, regional, and global organization we can think of to try to solve the problem with words–but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate over time, the problem reemerges. It will not go away. So we say, “Okay, this is not a political problem and it cannot be solved with political means. It must be an economic problem…” You see, we are used to using economic power on this planet to push energy around to get people to do what they don’t want to do.
So we try to solve the problem as if it were an economic problem. We throw money at it, or withhold money from it (as in the form of sanctions), to try to solve the problem with cash–but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate over time, the problem reemerges. It will not go away. And so we say, “Okay, this is not an economic problem, and it cannot be solved by economic means. It must be a military problem…” We are used to using military might on this planet to push energy around to get people to do what they don’t want to do.
So we try to solve the problem as if it were a military problem. We throw bullets at it and drop bombs on it to try to solve the problem with weapons –but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate over time, the problem reemerges. It will not go away. And so we say, “Okay, this is not an easy problem. This is going to be a long, hard slog. Many lives will be lost in trying to solve this problem. But we are not going to give up. We are going to solve this problem if it kills us.” And we don’t even see the irony in our own statements.
You see, we are very used to trying to force solutions in our world. Yet solutions that are forced are never solutions at all, they are simply postponements. I know that you have all heard the definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.
The sadness of humanity is that we are forever ready to settle for postponements in place of solutions. Only primitive cultures and primitive beings do that. Highly evolved beings would never, ever settle for a 10,000-year-postponement in the solving of their largest problem.
The problem in the world today is a spiritual problem. It has to do with what people believe. It has to do with our most fervently held thoughts and ideas about Life, about God, and most of all, about ourselves.
This problem of beliefs creates a condition of hopelessness, helplessness, anger, and rebellion. That condition produces a circumstance of run-away violence.
The problem of beliefs is a problem which all of us have helped to create. This is true because all of us have beliefs–and if those beliefs are mistaken, and we then pass on those beliefs to our children and our grandchildren and our neighbors and our friends–we join together to write a Cultural Story that creates the very Conditions which produce the very Circumstances we are trying to avoid. Yet we cannot eliminate them and we cannot avoid them until we eliminate and avoid the beliefs that created them.
And that is OUR work, my friends. That is OUR job. We must change the Cultural Story that created the Conditions that produce the Circumstances we seek to avoid. Yet we will never do that, we will never even be able to, as long as we refuse to acknowledge our own responsibility in the matter.
It is WE who hold the beliefs that we hold, that create the Cultural Stories that start the spiral going. We, ALL of us — including the people who use violence to announce and to scream out their discontent — must change our cultural story, must change our beliefs, if we expect and hope to see a change in humanity’s behavior.
This is because all behavior springs from belief. All behavior. Everything you do, you do because you believe something. You believe something about who you are, you believe something about what is currently happening, you believe something about what you are doing–and, most sadly of all, you believe that you are “right” about all of that. The possibility that you may be “wrong” never occurs to you.
Yet we are wrong. About almost everything. Certainly about almost everything that is important, such as God, and who God is, and what God wants. And Life, and how it works, and its purpose and function. And we are wrong about each other, and about ourselves, and who we are in relationship to each other…and to God.
The problem in life is a spiritual problem–and the spiritual problem is a simple problem of misidentification. We have misidentified Who We Really Are. We have failed to answer accurately life’s four major questions: Who are we? Where are we? Why are we? What are we doing here?
Most people have not even asked themselves those questions, much less answered them.
We will answer those questions our our Sunday School All Week continues.