Friday is normally Book Day on this blog, but on this particular Friday before Christmas I want to look at a question: Is peace on earth possible?
\nHere is what I observe on this subject: Humanity is losing patience with itself\u2014and rightly it should.
\nWe are seeing that most of the institutions we\u2019ve put into place to make life better have only made life worse. That includes government and politics, business and commerce, education, and yes, even religion.
\nOur governments and politicians have made a mockery of us, our businesses and industries have betrayed us, our educational systems have failed us, and, to our great sadness, our religions have been unable to save us from the tragedies and the indignities and the horrors of our own devise. Indeed, in many cases our religions have created them.
\nViolence is everywhere, terrorism has become the new century\u2019s chief political tool, and a year ago the world was moved to a new and dangerous frontier with the establishment of \u201cpreemptive strike\u201d as a legitimate action of nation against nation. Scarcely a day goes by that we do not hear about some major corporation cheating and hoaxing and bilking people out of billions.
\nIn the midst of all of this I, like a lot of people, have done a lot of hard thinking. I\u2019ve even done a little praying. In my own way. A few years ago I wrote a very angry letter to God\u2014and God answered. This may seem unbelievable, but that was my experience.
\nI received God\u2019s replies in the form of words gently spoken into my ear at first, and later, whispered inside my head. I kept a diary of those replies, and when one of them said that what I was hearing would one day become a book, I had my notes typed up and sent off to a publisher, as a test to see if what I was being told had any validity.
\nTo my surprise, those notes became a publishing phenomenon, producing the series of books known as Conversations with God. In one of these books, Tomorrow’s God (March 2004, Atria Books), I asked God exactly what is going on in our day-to-day life on this planet.
\nHere\u2019s what I was told.
\nAll that has happened has occurred for a very simple reason\u2014although one that is widely misunderstood: The beliefs upon which our lives have been built are mistaken. What we\u2019ve been told about Life turns out not to be true.
\nLife does not have to be about \u201csurvival of the fittest.\u201d It does not have to be about power over rather than power with. It does not have to be about struggle and suffering, oppression and repression, conflict and violence. And we are not separate from each other or from God, and so, we don\u2019t have to continue acting that way.
\nLife can be about love and harmony and joy and oneness with each other and with God. It can be about abundance and happiness and fulfillment and that elusive thing called peace. But what this will require is an entire restructuring of our thinking about Life and God.
\nDon\u2019t scoff. We\u2019ve done this before.
\nThe Renaissance was a period during which we changed our ideas of just about everything. The whole of human society was altered, shifted, transformed. It is time now for the Second Renaissance. It is time for us to have the courage of the great thinkers, writers, and artists of the 14th-16th Century in blazing new trails, opening new paths, embracing new concepts, expanding into new understandings and producing new expressions of Life.
\nIt is time to accept the possibility that there may be something we do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which could change everything.
\nRight now we believe that Life is arbitrary, capricious, vengeful and violent. We believe this because we believe in a God who is arbitrary, capricious, vengeful and violent. And because we believe this, we allow ourselves to be arbitrary, capricious, vengeful and violent. Our understanding of God forms the moral underpinning, and produces the outcomes, of our lives.
\nThere is only one way to change the way human beings behave with each other and the way they experience life, and that is to change the beliefs upon which those behaviors and those lives are built.
\nHere are some revolutionary new beliefs that humanity might find it beneficial to explore.
\n\u2022\tGod doesn\u2019t need anything, least of all for us to behave in a certain way in order to \u201cget into heaven.\u201d
\n\u2022\tThere is no One Path to God, with all other paths leading to hell and damnation.
\n\u2022\tThere is, in fact, no such thing as eternal damnation. There are consequences to our actions, but those consequences lead to the evolution of the human soul, not to something as simplistic as everlasting punishment or reward.
\n\u2022\tEverything and everyone is united, made of the same stuff and part of the One Thing There Is. That One Thing is called by many names, including Life, and God.
\nThese ideas form the basis of a movement that is now emerging on this planet that I call the New Spirituality. It is the Second Renaissance\u2014a civil rights movement for the soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its past beliefs about God, about Life, and about each other.
\nThe idea that we are separate from each other, and the idea that some of us are more worthy of God (and, therefore, more worthy, period), are two of the most self-destructive concepts ever embraced by humanity. Those ideas are killing us. They are causing most of those who are not being killed to live in poverty. (5% of the world\u2019s people now hold over 85% of the world\u2019s wealth and resources.) They are applying the brakes to humanity\u2019s evolution\u2014and may soon be bringing an end to life as we know it on this planet.
\nWe must try now, earnestly try, to open our minds to new thoughts about God and Life. Our future depends on it.
\nMy wish is that this Christmas Season may be the time when humanity works earnestly to create Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Humans Everywhere. I believe that it will take a New Spirituality for humanity to do this. I ask that you help me in creating the space of possibility for this New Spirituality to emerge upon the earth.
\nThe \u201cNew Spirituality\u201d is defined as \u201ca new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.\u201d Now, isn’t that a wonderful idea?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Friday is normally Book Day on this blog, but on this particular Friday before Christmas I want to look at a question: Is peace on earth possible? Here is what I observe on this subject: Humanity is losing patience with itself\u2014and rightly it should. We are seeing that most of the institutions we\u2019ve put into…<\/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-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-and-the-new-spirituality"],"yoast_head":"\n