My dear friends…
Last week in this space I offered the opinion that the challenge for human beings these days is to take the individual decisions that most of us have already made about ourselves and apply them in our lives fully, fearlessly, absolutely, and completely. The challenge is to walk our talk, and to do so in such a way that there can be no mistake about our innermost thoughts and choices about who we are, where we are, why we are where we are, and what we are doing here.
I said that we would talk about the first of those questions in this issue of the Bulletin - so let’s get to it. First, let me say that these are the Four Fundamental Questions of Life. Until we answer these questions, very little in our life will make much sense — at least, not for very long. We can get through a day or a week, or even a month, just moving through our life and looking at what’s coming next. But if we want a truly fulfilling life, one that seems to be going somewhere and getting something done and accomplishing and achieving something on some kind of grander scale, we are going to have to ask and answer these questions.
Now I made the point last week that it doesn’t matter how we answer them. In other words, there is no “right answer.” Each of us will create the answer that feels true to us. But we must create some kind of answer, because our answer becomes the Road Map of Our Lives. Because answering those questions gives us a larger sense of identity; of where we are and why; of what we are doing here in the first place. And that, in turn, gives direction and purpose to our lives.
In my own conversation with God I asked these Four Fundamental Questions, and the answer I received to the first question was:
“You are an Individuation of Divinity. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing That Is. Life is God, expressing Itself. You are a part of life, therefore, you are a part of God. The only way this could not be true would be if Life and God were somehow separate. Such a thing is impossible.”
This is a very large statement. If we look deeply into its implications, and if we make a commitment to apply the true and full meaning of this statement in our everyday life, our everyday life would change dramatically.
Imagine if you really thought that you were a part of God. I mean, not just conceptually, or theoretically, but actually. If you thought that were actually true, you have to change your thinking, no? On a lot of things. Would you agree?
For instance, you could never imagine your needing anything ever again. You would suddenly see yourself as the Source of all that you would desire, rather than the Seeker of it. And if you really experienced yourself as the Source of it, you would spend no more time trying to find it, but rather, you would spend your time trying to find a way to give it away — so that others may have it, too.
(It is not a coincidence that this is what every true master has ever done.)
Yet here is the irony: It would be in the giving of it that you would experience the having of it — for it is axiomatic in the Universe that you cannot give what you do not already know yourself to have. Therefore, the act of giving to others what you, yourself, wish to receive causes you to experience that you already have it.
The truth is, you already have all of everything that you could possibly desire — you just don’t know it. You don’t “real-ize” it. That is, you don’t “make it real” in your life, because it is your imagining that you do not possess it. Giving it away causes you to instantly understand that you possess it.
This changes your whole life.
I am here to tell you that everything your mind could imagine that your soul could possibly want, your soul already has in profusion. All you have to do to experience that is to give it away.
This is why every religion on the face of the earth has its own version of the Golden Rule. Do, they all say, unto others as you would have it done unto you. Not because this is a nice thing to do. Not because God wants us to do this. No. Do unto others as you would have it done unto you because this is how the Universe works. This is the mechanism of life. It is how everything happens. What we send out, we get back. Because we are God.
And that is just one way that Who You Are can and will change your life, if you decide that Who You Are is Divinity Individuated. Next week, a look at another aspect of this. If you believe that Who You Are is God, “particularized”, then you will necessarily conclude that it is impossible for you to be damaged or hurt in any way. And THAT has extraordinary implications for your life…
All of which we will look at in our next Weekly Bulletin! Until then, pass this on…and have a wonderful week.
Love and Hugs,
Neale.
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The CwG Reader
Further explorations of the Conversations with God material from the author
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Neale Donald Walsch through the years has given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles revolving around the messages he received in his Conversations with God. Now, every seven days, we will present in this space a transcript or reprint 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 second of three reflections on relationships offered in a series of commentaries during the days preceding Valentine’s Day, 2007. This commentary will continue next week because the subject deserves all the attention we can give it.
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The Same Person
Many people marry or partner with the same person throughout their adult lives. Some people actually remain with the same human being, other people partner with several different human beings over the years, but it is the same person.
Many people remove themselves from relationships because they are not going well, not serving either partner, really, but then go out and create a new relationship with the exact same person merely wearing a new body. There is a different human being in the room, but not a different person…if you know what I mean.
I know a woman who has married the same man three times. Each guy was different, but exactly the same. (In this case, they were all alcoholic abusers, sorry to say.)
Why do we do this? Why do some people “marry their parents,” as the saying goes? Why do others choose the same kind and type of person to be their spouse or life partner over and over again? Some say it is to pay off a karmic debt. But Conversations with God says there is not such thing as karmic debt. There is, however, a Cosmic Wheel; a cycle of life that brings us back to the same starting point, and that gives us an eternity of opportunities to heal/experience what we choose to work with in our physical lives.
There is a way to break this chain, however. It is not necessary to keep running into the same problem in every relationship. It is possible to find and create a new kind of relationship, where we finally give ourselves a break from the age-old pattern. A relationship that is happy, healthy, and fine. The relationship of our dreams.
Yes, it is possible to have-find-create such a relationship.
Step One: Get Clear on the Reason
The first step in finding-creating-having the relationship of our dreams is to get clear with ourselves about the real reason to enter into a relationship to begin with.
The purpose of relationship, CwG tells us, is not to find a person who can meet all or most of our needs, but to experience ourselves in the most extraordinary way…which is, basically, a person who has no needs.
Our relationship with everything was designed as the perfect vehicle through which we might announce and declare, experience and express, fulfill and become the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.
We cannot do this in a vaccuum. We can only do this in relationship to someone or something else. Therefore it could be said that, in a sense, all other people, places, and events exist so that we can create this experience of and for ourselves. Indeed, we call these people, places, and events into our lives for that precise reason.
They call us into their lives for the very same reason. We are all co-creating together, collaborating in the biggest enterprise the Universe has ever seen: God, godding!
We cannot enter into this experience with the most beneficial results, however, if we have not taken the Second Step necessary to the creation of all fulfilling relationships. Fascinatingly, this is a step that most people fail to take, have never taken, and have in many cases never even heard about.
Step Two:
Life’s Biggest Decision
The Second Step necessary to the creation of all fulfilling relationships is, fascinatingly, a step that most people fail to take, have never taken, and have in many cases never even heard about.
You must decide Who You Are and who you Choose To Be.
Very few people do this. Very few. Over the past two decades I have counseled privately and in group sessions with well over 15,000 people. Most of them have had issues in one of three areas: prosperity, relationship, life purpose. Nothing surprising there, because there isn’t much else going on…however, here is something that, at first, did surprise me:
Virtually none of the people who were coming to me had any idea what in the world they were trying to do with their life. They had no thoughts about their True Identity, no clarity about The Process of Life, and in no insight into the Journey of the Soul upon which they were embarked.
They had not made the most basic life decision: they had not decided who they are or who they chose to be. This made it extraordinarily difficult to live their lives in any rewarding or fruitful manner. They were like children running around with blindfolds on, playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. They kept walking into walls and bumping into the furniture of their lives. They were getting nowhere, and tiring themselves out doing it. This led to anger, frustration, emotional upset, unexplained outbursts, and an underlying sea of discontent and disharmony upon which they set sail, hoping to reach the distant shore of goals they had not even set for their lives.
Very little in their lives seemed to be working, least of all their most important relationships. Flailing about in this sea of discontent, they reached out to others in the hopes of saving themselves from drowning. But rather than finding themselves being pulled out of their discontent and dysfunction, they pulled others into it along with them.
Relationships — and, most significantly, romantic relationships — can never work optimally in the long run if they are entered into for the wrong reason. They can seem to work, but even those relationships that appear to be providing some modicum of happiness are only touching the surface of what is truly possible in a Sacred Relationship that is entered into for the true purpose of the souls.
There is only one reason to enter into a relationship, and that has to do with providing oneself the opportunity to announce and declare, experience and express, become and fulfill our highest notion of who we really are.
Masters enter into all relationships — from the most casual and seemingly insignificant to the most intimate and important — not as someone who seeks to receive, but as someone who seeks to give. And what it is that they seek to give is the Essence of who they really are. Masters do this not for altruistic reasons (that is, to please the other and to serve the other), but for self-creating reasons (that is, to experience the Self as Who They Choose to Be). The irony is that by accomplishing the second, they accomplish the first as well. They do please and serve the other.
We can do the same as Masters do…yet if we have not decided who we really are, there is no way that we can express the Essence of that.
Therefore, the second step in creating fulfilling relationships is the making of the most important decision one could ever make: Who am I, and who do I choose to be, in relationship not only to this other person, but to all of life?
This decision will set the course of our lives. It identifies the shore to which we would set sail. It creates the target. It becomes the destination. And no matter how stormy the sea becomes, it is our safe harbor — one which we cannot fail to reach — for it draws us to it like a magnet. The attraction of the Self to the Self’s highest idea about the Self cannot be overcome by the momentary storms of day-to-day encounters with life.
This does not mean that we will never “end” a relationship — or that we never should. It does mean that we will enter them and “end” them for entirely different reasons than we might have used as our summons before. It does mean that our relationships can be healthier than they have ever been. Even those that we are changing can be healthy, for a change in the nature of a relationship need not lead to anger and upset, sadness or frustration, and need not produce the experience of damage or hurt.
I have put the word “end” in quotation marks in the above paragraph because it is important to understand that one never truly “ends” any relationship, but merely changes its form.
Step Three:
Understanding
Relationship’s Forms
It is not really possible to end any human relationship.
That is because there is no such thing as “time” and there is no such thing as “another”.
These are very advanced spiritual/metaphysical concepts, and the average person may face a challenge in wrapping his or her thoughts around such ideas. Embracing or accepting such thoughts as one’s innermost reality can change one’s life in an instant. It can certainly change one’s experience of relationship.
Relationships, in the normal human understanding of that word, take many forms. In advanced spiritual understanding, relationships take only one form, for there is only one form of relationship: the relationship that one has with the Self.
There is no one else but the Self. There is no other time but the Present. In the Present and Only Moment of Now, I Am All There Is.
I am aware that saying such a thing could be seen as remarkably narcissistic and arrogant is not considered in a spiritual context. I am aware that saying such a thing even in a spiritual context to an audience that does not understand or accept the context which is being embraced would also be considered unbelievably arrogant. Perhaps even blasphemous.
Therefore, I say these things here with some caution, presuming to be speaking to an audience that fully understands, fully accepts, fully embraces, and attempts to fully practice the messages of Conversations with God.
Given that there was no one but the Self — that God is all there is — everything we do with and for another we do with and for the Self…and everything we fail to do with and for another we fail to do with and for the Self. Our awareness of this changes, for us, the entire nature of relationships. It alters our understanding of how we are invited by Life to “be” with each other. Indeed, it changes the whole purpose of our relationship with every person and every thing.
The purpose then becomes quite simple: to create the Self, to express the Self, to experience the Self, to become the Self in One’s Total Experience. By Total Experience I mean one’s spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, relative, and absolute experience.
Relationships, in the normal human understanding of the word, take many forms, as I have said. It is not necessary to take or retain any form in order to retain one’s True Identity. It is not necessary to function within the framework of any particular relationship form in order for the relationship with the Self to be fully developed and totally realized in the ever-present moment of Now.
Given the True Nature of our Identity, we are always in relationship with everything that exists. Therefore it is impossible for us to either “begin” or “end” any relationship. When, in normal human terms, we say we are going to “end” a relationship, what we mean is that we are going to change the form of that relationship. We are going to change the way we experience it. We are going to change the way we are creating it.
This is important for us to understand, because if we think that we are ever going to end a relationship, we are mistaken. You will always, and forever, have a relationship with every person with whom you have ever had any kind of relationship at all. (Which means, of coure, everybody on the planet.) You cannot “end a relationship.” You can only change the way it is being created and experienced.
Likewise, you cannot “begin a relationship” or “enter into a relationship.” You can only create and experience your relationship with any other person, place, or thing in a new way. That is, in a way in which you have not experienced it heretofore.
When you approach a person you have never “met” (encountered in physical form in this present lifetime), you may therefore wish to ask yourself a simple question: How do I now wish to recreate my relationship with this “new” person in my life?
Remembering that the True and Only Purpose of relationship is to announce and declare, express and fulfill, experience and become Who You Really Are… there can be only two questions that are asked with regard to human relationships:
1. Where am I going?
2. Who is going with me?
Do not invert the order of the questions.
Do not — under any circumstances — invert the order of the questions.
Is that clear?
Are you clear about that?
Good. Then we can move on.
(Next week: The last in this series of reflections on relationship)
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MONEY - LOVE - SEX - GOD
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These are the Four Cornerstones of the Human Experience, in reverse order of importance, and these topics are discussed in the Truth Seminar - the first spiritual program ever created by Neale Donald Walsch.
We’ve captured highlights of this presentation on a 3-disc set recorded at a retreat which Neale facilitated for a small group of people. Want to learn more about these subjects, and why “sex” is listed right next to “God” in importance in the human experience?
If you’ve been wanting to attend a retreat led by Neale and have just not been able to find the time or the financial resources, here is a wonderful and practical alternative. Close your eyes and listen to this recording and it will be almost like “being there.”
We are offering a special price for this abridged set: only $39.95 for a short time. Click here to “attend” this very special program by placing your order and start enjoying this wonderful visit with Neale Donald Walsch in The Truth Seminar.
Neal Donald Walsh
NOTE: The Weekly Bulletin is sent free of charge to anyone who asks for it. It is a publication of the ReCreation Foundation, a non-profit organization undertaking the work of sharing the message of Conversations with God with the world. That message is that the purpose of life is to recreate ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.
The CwG Weekly Bulletin is prepared by Neale Donald Walsch, m.Claire, Geek Squared, LEP Graduates and other friends.
