{"id":306,"date":"2008-05-18T05:37:10","date_gmt":"2008-05-18T05:37:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html"},"modified":"2008-05-18T05:37:10","modified_gmt":"2008-05-18T05:37:10","slug":"interview-with-nealepart-iv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Neale-Part IV"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>People talk about a consciousness shift on the planet, but is it happening fast enough to really help humanity? That&#8217;s the question facing our species today, and in the years immediately ahead.<br \/>\n<strong>= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =    = = = = = = = = = = = = = =<br \/>\nSunday 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\u2026but on Sunday, we reserve this space for a specific teaching derived from the material in <em>Conversations with God<\/em><br \/>\nThrough 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 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.<br \/>\nThis week\u2019s offering: <em><strong>The fourth in a series of excerpts from an interview with Neale Donald Walsch first appearing in Spiritual Growth Monthly<\/strong><\/em><br \/>\n= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =    = = = = = = = = = = = = = =<br \/>\nMatt: How do you see the messages of Conversations with God applying to life \u201con the ground\u201d in the world today?<br \/>\nNeale: The message of God is very simple, direct and clear: We are all one. There\u2019s only one of us, and the idea of separation and what God calls \u201cseparation theology\u201d is what is creating the largest number of our problems in the world, and nearly all of our conflicts as well. This is because separation theology produces separation sociology, which ultimately produces separation pathology; that is, a pathological behavior that causes us to treat each other different from how we would treat ourselves.<br \/>\nIf we make that one, single shift in consciousness and we\u2019ll heal the world virtually overnight. And that\u2019s something that most people are aware of, at some level, but don\u2019t seem to be able to know how to apply as a functioning, practical truth in their day-to-day lives.<br \/>\nWhat is needed, therefore, is a new kind of spirituality, and the message of Conversations<br \/>\nwith God is that such a new spirituality could now be very beneficial on the earth. I am talking about a new understanding of God and of what God wants; a new understanding of life and what life really is; a new awareness of ourselves, who we really are, and what our right relationship is to each other, to God and to all of life\u2026<br \/>\nThose new understandings, generated by a new spirituality, could change the world. It would be impossible, to put it another way, for the people in the world to treat each other the way they\u2019re treating each other, if they thought that they were treating themselves in that way. But they don\u2019t. They see the so-called \u201cenemy\u201d as \u201cother\u201d than themselves. In fact, in some cases, they see their enemy even as sub-human, or as not human, as the infidel, as the apostate, as the person who deserves to be killed or eliminated<br \/>\nbecause they\u2019re not even human in some ways.<br \/>\nSo a fundamental shift must take place, this the <em>Conversations with God<\/em> books make very clear. We must shift our consciousness and create&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n&#8230;a new cultural story that redefines ourselves and who we are in relationship to each other, to life and to the thing that we call God, Allah or Brahman or Yahweh, or whatever it is that we choose to give as a name for All That Is.<br \/>\nMatt: Yes, it seems to be happening. A lot of people talk about a huge shift in consciousness that\u2019s going on.<br \/>\nNeale: Well, it better happen much faster and on a much broader scale. I know that it seems to be happening, but I think that what has to occur now is a speed-up in that process, an exponential increase in this whole process. If we don\u2019t see that, if we don\u2019t create it, then life as we know it on this planet could well be eliminated before we can put the solution into place.<br \/>\nThere is a great force now in the universe that is a working\u2014it is the extremist force, on the extreme left and the extreme right of all the political, social, economic and<br \/>\nspiritual questions of our time.<br \/>\nThese are extremists whose views are not merely unusual or revolutionary, but in fact, extreme, and these are people who believe that violence is an appropriate means to resolve the differences that exist across the spectrum of human thought.<br \/>\nIt is these extremists that have created much of the terror that we find in the day-to-day lives of our world.<br \/>\nMatt: When you face that kind of extremism, it\u2019s difficult to know what to do. How do you face that when you come across it?<br \/>\nNeale: We have to get uncomfortable again. The comfortable are the damned, in a sense. That\u2019s an old saying and I think it\u2019s true\u2026the comfortable are the damned.<br \/>\nThat is, they are condemned to lives of mediocrity. It is a sad truth that most people live<br \/>\nunexceptional lives because they\u2019re so comfortable; that is, most people, at least in<br \/>\ncertain parts of the world. It\u2019s not true of the largest number of people on the planet, but it is the uncomfortable who agitate, and always will. And it is the extremists among the uncomfortable who will take that agitation to extreme lengths in order to make the comfortable uncomfortable.<br \/>\nSo what we have to do is get uncomfortable without being made uncomfortable.<br \/>\nThat is to say, we need to be uncomfortable right now without having to have violence forced upon us in order to become uncomfortable. It\u2019s a sad observation that not enough people are uncomfortable with the fact that 400 children die an hour of starvation on this planet. Not enough people are uncomfortable with the fact that 500,000 people have been killed in Darfur, and over two million have been forced out of their homes. It\u2019s a sad fact that not enough people are uncomfortable with the oppression of the masses, with the prejudice that occurs in all parts of the world.<br \/>\nWith the way things are, we are just too comfortable and we do not look at the suffering<br \/>\nin the world, and we have become wildly self-indulgent and self-congratulatory and comfortable.<br \/>\nSo the solution is going to have to be, for those who are comfortable, to find a level of<br \/>\ndiscomfort sufficient to motivate them to get up, walk across the room and actually do something, rather than simply think or talk about it with regard to the people in the world who are not comfortable. Otherwise, the uncomfortable will become extreme in their reaction, and will change the world very quickly into a kind of place where none of us are<br \/>\ncomfortable any more, ever again. That\u2019s the place where we are right now in our world.<br \/>\nAll that will change that is a new outlook, and then a determination to do something about it, not just  \u201com\u201d ourselves to death or sit in front of a candle, breathe deeply and<br \/>\nplay nice, soft music and talk about how nice the world really is, but actually to get out on the street where the rubber meets the road, and start making on-the-ground alterations and changes in our day-to-day life.<br \/>\nThat\u2019s where it\u2019s going to have to happen, because that\u2019s where the terror is happening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People talk about a consciousness shift on the planet, but is it happening fast enough to really help humanity? That&#8217;s the question facing our species today, and in the years immediately ahead. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looking-up-close-at-life"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Interview with Neale-Part IV - 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=\"Interview with Neale-Part IV - Conversations with God\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"People talk about a consciousness shift on the planet, but is it happening fast enough to really help humanity? 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That&#8217;s the question facing our species today, and in the years immediately ahead. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html","og_site_name":"Conversations with God","article_published_time":"2008-05-18T05:37:10+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\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html","name":"Interview with Neale-Part IV - Conversations with God","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-05-18T05:37:10+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-18T05:37:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/#\/schema\/person\/59dec2a2c0645950921b5cb7864ffc64"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/2008\/05\/interview-with-nealepart-iv.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Interview with Neale-Part IV"}]},{"@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\/306","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=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/conversationswithgod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}