{"id":277,"date":"2008-04-19T06:15:25","date_gmt":"2008-04-19T06:15:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/04\/where-to-from-hereand-how.html"},"modified":"2008-04-19T06:15:25","modified_gmt":"2008-04-19T06:15:25","slug":"where-to-from-hereand-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/04\/where-to-from-hereand-how.html","title":{"rendered":"Where to from here–and how?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days after September 11, 2001 I made a personal appeal to God. I asked her to help me understand what was going on in our world, and why. The answers I received made up a book which is as relevant today as it was then.
\nToday, April 19, 2008, we are in the midst of an election season, seeking to select the next President of the United States by the most circuitous of routes. Many of the problems which faced humanity seven years ago face humanity today. And there are new ones which have been added. And so today I begin a series of excerpts from the document that emerged as a result of my plaintive plea in the Autumn of 2001.
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\nNOTE: Saturday is Prose 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.<\/em>
\nFor this week’s prose we offer…the first in a series of excerpts from The New Revelations<\/em>…
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\nGod, please be here. We need help.<\/p>\n

I am here.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We need help.<\/p>\n

I know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Right now.<\/p>\n

I understand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The world is on the brink of disaster. And I\u2019m not talking about natural disaster; I\u2019m talking about man-made calamity.<\/p>\n

I know. And you\u2019re right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I mean, humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions and disagreements can lead not simply to wars\u2014which are bad enough\u2014but to the end of civilization as we know it.<\/p>\n

That is correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.
\nYou understand the severity of the problem, you simply do not understand the nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is?<\/p>\n

The level of belief.
\nThe problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.
\nYour ideas about spirituality are killing you.
\nYou keep trying to solve the world\u2019s problem as if it was a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It is a spiritual problem. And that is the one problem human beings don\u2019t seem to know how to solve.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then help us.<\/p>\n

I am.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How?<\/p>\n

In many ways.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Name one.<\/p>\n

This book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This book will help us?<\/p>\n

It can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do we have to do?<\/p>\n

Read it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then what?<\/p>\n

Heed it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s what they all say. \u201cIt\u2019s all in The Book,\u201d they say. \u201cRead it and heed it. That\u2019s all you have to do.\u201d The problem is, they all hold up a different book.<\/p>\n

I know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And every book says something else.<\/p>\n

I know.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So now we should \u201cread and heed\u201d this book?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a question of what you should do. It\u2019s a question of what you may do if you choose to. It is an invitation, not a requirement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why would I want to read this book when I\u2019ve already been told by True Believers that all the answers are in the other books\u2014the books that they are telling me to heed?<\/p>\n

Because you have not heeded them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, we have. We believe that we have.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.
\nYou keep saying that your Holy Book (each of your cultures has a different one) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing.
\nYou are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But we have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!<\/p>\n

No. You are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does that mean?<\/p>\n

It means that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is different is how human beings have been interpreting them.
\nThere is nothing \u201cwrong\u201d with having different interpretations. What may not benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences.
\nThis is what you are now doing.
\nIt is what you have been doing for quite some time.
\nYou cannot agree even within a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications for slaughter.
\nYou argue among yourselves about what the Qur\u2019an says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-y\u00fc says, what the Pali Canon says, what the Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of Mormon says\u2026
\nAnd what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi, the Kojiki?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, we get the point.<\/p>\n

No, actually, you don\u2019t. And that\u2019s the point. The point is, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures, and you act as if there is only one.
\nIt is your<\/em> sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.
\nNot only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is also only one way to interpret that Scripture: your<\/em> way.
\nThis spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a species. You have suffered more\u2014and caused other people to suffer more\u2014over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human experience.
\nYou have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest pain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That\u2019s crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?<\/p>\n

Because there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.
\nThey will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health, harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their sanity, for this one thing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What?
\nBeing right.<\/p>\n

You are willing to give up everything you\u2019ve ever worked for, everything you\u2019ve ever wanted, everything you\u2019ve ever created, in order to be \u201cright.\u201d
\nIndeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But isn\u2019t that how it should be? I mean, you have to stand up for something in life. And the Word of God IS what\u2019s right!<\/p>\n

Which God?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which God?<\/p>\n

Yes, which God?
\nAdonai? Allah? Elohim? God? Hari? Jehovah? Krishna? Lord? Rama? Vishnu? Yahwey?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The God whose words were brought to us clearly by the Master and the Prophets.<\/p>\n

Which Master and which Prophets?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which Master? Which Prophets?<\/p>\n

Yes.
\nAdam? Noah? Abraham? Moses? Confucius? Siddhartha Gautama? Jesus? Patanjali? Muhammad? Baha\u2019u\u2019llah? Jalal al-Din Rumi? Martin Luther? Joseph Smith? Paramahansa Yogananda?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019re not equating all of those with each other, are you?<\/p>\n

Why not? Is one greater than the other?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Certainly!<\/p>\n

Which one?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The one in whom I believe!<\/p>\n

Exactly. Now<\/em> you get the point.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So what do you want me to do, give up my beliefs?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t \u201cwant\u201d you to do anything. The question is, what do you want to do?
\nI want to find a way to get past all of these mixed up beliefs that humans have.
\nThere is a way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which is?<\/p>\n

Transcend them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What does that mean?<\/p>\n

Transcending means to go beyond, to move past. It does not mean to completely reject or totally destroy. You do not have to destroy a thing in order to move past it.
\nYou would not want to destroy your old belief system in any event, because there is too much of it that you will wish to retain.
\n\u201cTranscending\u201d does not mean always being \u201cother than,\u201d it means always being \u201clarger than.\u201d Your new, larger belief system will no doubt retain some of the old\u2014that part of the old belief system which you experience as still serving you\u2014and so it will be a combination of the new and the old, not a rejection of the old from top to bottom.
\nCan you see the difference?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think so.<\/p>\n

Good. Then you can stop your resistance.
\nThe reason humans have hung so tenaciously to their old beliefs is that they do not want to dishonor those beliefs by rejecting them completely, out of hand. They think that this is the choice they have: reject the old or accept the old, totally. Yet that is not the only choice you have. You can review the old and see what parts of the old no longer work. You can expand the old to make some parts of the old work better. You can add to the old to make some parts of your belief system new.
\nRejecting completely your present beliefs would be to discredit so much of what has been taught, so much of what has been understood, so much of what has been done\u2014and so much of what has been good.
\nIt would make too much of the world feel \u201cwrong\u201d. It would make ancestors \u201cwrong,\u201d it would make entire scriptures \u201cwrong,\u201d it would make present-day lives \u201cwrong.\u201d People would have to admit that all of the spiritual aspects of the human experience have been a mistake, a misunderstanding.
\nThis is more than most people can acknowledge. It is more than they should acknowledge, because it is not true.
\nIn fact, you don\u2019t have to declare that you were \u201cwrong\u201d about anything, because you weren\u2019t. You simply didn\u2019t have a complete understanding. You needed more information.
\nTranscending current beliefs is not an outright rejection of them, it is an \u201cadding to\u201d them.
\nNow that you have more information that you can add to what you presently believe, you can enlarge your beliefs \u2014 not completely reject them, enlarge them \u2013 and move on with your lives in a new way.
\nA way that works.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I don\u2019t have more information.<\/p>\n

Yes, you do. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I do?<\/p>\n

You have this book.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Next Saturday, installment #2 from The New Revelations<\/em>.)
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\nIf you liked Conversations with God<\/em> you are going to love Happier Than God<\/em>, the newest book from Neale Donald Walsch. Described as “a Master’s Guide to Spiritual Awakening,” this extraordinary new work has just been released and is available now. Click on the Happier Than God icon at the right of this blog page for more info, and enjoy the most empowering book you have read since CWG-Book 1!
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