{"id":101,"date":"2007-10-20T14:56:07","date_gmt":"2007-10-20T14:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html"},"modified":"2007-10-20T14:56:07","modified_gmt":"2007-10-20T14:56:07","slug":"living-and-working-with-lifes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html","title":{"rendered":"Living and Working with Life&#8217;s Illusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday is Prose &amp; 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, <em>Openings.<\/em><br \/>\nThis week&#8217;s prose&#8230;an excerpt from <em>Communion with God<\/em>&#8230;<br \/>\nTo live as an Enlightened Master, you must become a heretic and a blasphemer, for you will not believe what everyone else believes, and others will deny your New Truth even as you deny their old one.<br \/>\nAs did those who denied that the world is flat, you will deny that the world as others are experiencing it is real. As in those days, this will fly in the face of what seems incontrovertible, based on the appearance of things. As in those days, this will generate argument and disagreement, and you will set sail across stormy oceans to discover endless horizons. And, as in those days, you will live in a New World.<br \/>\nThis is the world that you have been waiting to create, and which you have been meant to experience, from the beginning of time. Time, too, is an Illusion, so it might more correctly be said, \u201csince The Illusion began.\u201d<br \/>\nAlways remember: The Illusion is not something you are enduring, it is something you are choosing.<br \/>\nYou do not have to live The Illusion if you do not choose to.<br \/>\nYou are here because you wish to be. If you did not so wish, it would not so be.<br \/>\nYet know that The Illusion in which you live is being created BY you, not FOR you by Someone Else.<br \/>\nHuman beings who do not wish to take responsibility for the life they are experiencing want to say that God has created it, and that they have nothing to do with it, except to endure it.<br \/>\nYet I tell you that the world you live in is the way it is because that is the way you have chosen it to be. When you no longer wish the world to be the way it is, you will change it.<br \/>\nThis is a truth that not many humans can accept, because to accept it they would have to acknowledge their complicity in the matter, and this is something they cannot bring themselves to do. They would rather cast themselves in the role of Unwilling Victim than of unwitting Co-Creator.<br \/>\nThis is understandable, of course. You could not forgive yourself if you thought that your world as it is was the product of your own creation, the result of your own wills and desires. And why could you not forgive yourself?  Because you do not think that I will forgive YOU.<br \/>\nYou have been taught that there is such a thing as The Unforgivable. And how can you forgive yourself for something for which you know that you will not be forgiven by God? You cannot. And so, you do the next best thing. You excuse yourself from having had anything to do with it.<br \/>\nYou deny responsibility for what you imagine that I will call the inexcusable sins of Man.<br \/>\nYet your logic is tortured, because if you did not create the world as it is, then who did?  If someone says that God created these horrible things, you jump up to defend Me. \u201cNo, no, no,\u201d you say, \u201cGod merely gave Man free will. It is Man who has created these things.\u201d<br \/>\nYet if I say, \u201cYou are right. I did not create, and I do not create, your life as it is. YOU are the creator of your reality,\u201d you deny that, too.<br \/>\nThus,  you seek to have it both ways. God did not create these things, and you do not create these things. We are both merely sadly observing them.<br \/>\nBut when you become really angry or frustrated with life in your world, some of you change your tune. When things get bad enough, you are ready to blame Me after all.<br \/>\n\u201cHow can you let this happen?\u201d, you call out to me. Some of you even shake your fist at the heavens.<br \/>\nThe Illusion has turned to confusion. Not only is the world a cruel place, it has been created that way by a cruel and heartless God.<br \/>\nTo sustain this thought, you must see yourself as separate from this God, since creating the world as a cruel and heartless place is not something that you would do.  You must imagine a God who would do what you would never do, and you must see yourself as subject to His whim.<br \/>\nThis you have done\u2014religiously.<br \/>\nStill, even in this you see a contradiction, for the God of your highest understanding, also, would not do these things. So who did do them? Who is doing them to this very day?<br \/>\nSomebody must be responsible, so who is it?<br \/>\nEnter Satan.<br \/>\nTo resolve the contradiction of a loving God who would do unloving things, and to escape your own responsibility in the matter, you have created a third party altogether.<br \/>\nThe perfect scapegoat.<br \/>\nThe Devil.<br \/>\nNow, at last, everything is understandable. There is a Another, who stands between what you want and what I want, and who makes us both miserable.<br \/>\nYou are not responsible for the uncaring, unloving world in which you live. You did not create it.<br \/>\n\u201cWell,\u201d you might say, \u201cmaybe at some level I did create it, but it was not my fault. The Devil made me do it.\u201d<br \/>\nA comedian\u2019s line has become your theology.<br \/>\nOr is it that your theology has become a comedian\u2019s line?<br \/>\nOnly you can decide.<br \/>\n= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =<br \/>\n<em>This week&#8217;s gift of poetry<\/em><br \/>\n= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =<br \/>\nBetween words,<br \/>\nWe, are in sweet repose.<br \/>\nLet the rest of the world<br \/>\nfill God\u2019s clarity<br \/>\nwith their needs<br \/>\nand with their regrets.<br \/>\nIt is all, Free Will.<br \/>\n*<br \/>\nYet even what I write<br \/>\ncreates<br \/>\na<br \/>\nnoise.<br \/>\n(Between Words &#8211;  m. claire &#8211; copyright 2007 &#8211; all rights reserved) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For more of the work of this new American poet, go to www.mclairepoet.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday is Prose &amp; 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&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-and-the-new-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Living and Working with Life&#039;s Illusion - Conversations with God<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Living and Working with Life&#039;s Illusion - Conversations with God\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Saturday is Prose &amp; 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. 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Claire, author of the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html","og_site_name":"Conversations with God","article_published_time":"2007-10-20T14:56:07+00:00","author":"Neale Donald Walsch","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html","name":"Living and Working with Life's Illusion - Conversations with God","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-10-20T14:56:07+00:00","dateModified":"2007-10-20T14:56:07+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#\/schema\/person\/59dec2a2c0645950921b5cb7864ffc64"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2007\/10\/living-and-working-with-lifes.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Living and Working with Life&#8217;s Illusion"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/","name":"Conversations with God","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#\/schema\/person\/59dec2a2c0645950921b5cb7864ffc64","name":"Neale Donald Walsch","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/27b\/27bce5d8beddfd11309a88e8e70a1ef3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/27b\/27bce5d8beddfd11309a88e8e70a1ef3x96.jpg","caption":"Neale Donald Walsch"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/author\/ndwalsch"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}