Sunday is Message Day on the blog. Monday through Friday we look at contemporary events and day-to-day occurrences at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality…but on Sunday, we reserve this space for a specific teaching derived from the material in Conversations with God
Through the years I have given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles revolving around this material. Every seven days we will present in this space a transcript or reprint of one of those presentations. We invite you to Copy and Save each one of them, creating a personal a collection of contemporary and uplifting spiritual thought which you may reference at any time. We hope you will find this a constant source of insight and inspiration.

This week’s offering: The fifth in a series of Sunday pieces taken from the transcript of a talk on the nature of Enlightenment and how to achieve it, before a live audience in Ashland, Oregon in July, 2004.
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Now I want to discuss a thing called “health,” because many people believe that you are not enlightened unless you are in good health.
Is enlightenment being in good health? And what is good health anyway?
Is good health having a body that has nothing wrong with it? Is good health living until you are 90 or 100 or 200 or 500? Is good health having no pain or nothing wrong with your physical form? Is good health the absence of anything that is not perfect or good in your physical experience? Or is good health being okay and in a place of joy and peace, no matter how things are…?
What is health? What is optimum health, if it is not happiness?
I know people who exercise every day. They are lifting weights and they run and they work out, and their bodies are in great health, but their hearts and their minds and their souls are desperately sad. And I know people who are hardly able to lift up a toothpick, their bodies are in such bad health, but their hearts and their minds and their souls are so bright and they are so happy.
I know such a man whose name is Ram Dass. Do you know of whom I speak? Ram Dass is a master, and he taught many people for many years. He wrote a book called…Be Here Now. Now a few years ago Ram Dass had a stroke. His body had a stroke and suddenly, and I’m not making fun of Ram Dass, because he would enjoy this characterization as much as I’m enjoying it… suddenly Ram Dass was like this [Neale imitating the result of Ram Dass’ stroke; physical as well as speech]: He’s drooling, he could not keep the saliva in his mouth, it was dripping down. He couldn’t move his arm at all, I think it was his left arm that wouldn’t move. He could barely barely talk. And he was a young man; he was only 63 or something like that.
I met Ram Dass after his stroke, in a hotel room in Denver, and I want to tell you something. I’ve never met a healthier man. I sat in that room with a master. I said, “Ram Dass, how are you?” And he sat there in his wheel chair and took a long time saying the words: “I am won-der-ful.”
That’s health…that’s health. That’s peace. That’s joy. And when you have so much happiness, peace and joy that you spend your life sharing it with everyone else whose life you touch, that’s enlightenment. You have become a master.
When your life is no longer about you, has nothing to do with you, but is about everyone whose life you touch, you have become a master. For in the end, that is why you came here. Not to somehow “get better,” not to work on yourself. Consider the possibility that all the work you will ever need to do on yourself is already done. All you have to do is know that. Then you will have realized that the wonderful message from Conversations with God is true:
“There is nothing you have to do, there is no where you have to go, and there is no one you have to be, except exactly who you are being right now.”
(Next Week, Part VI in this series of entries on Enlightenment.)