My dear friends…

Last week in this space I offered the opinion that humanity would surely benefit now by starting to write a different story. I said that the world is receiving many “wake-up calls” these days, and I happen to believe that humanity is at a real crossroad. We are deciding about ourselves; about who we are as a species, and who we choose to be. These are spiritual decisions, not political ones, as I see it. And that is where you come in.

Each of us has an important role to play in the creation of our collective tomorrows. I’m not sure that many of us appreciate the nature of the opportunity and the invitation now being placed before us.

So much is happening in our world right now. They’re calling the swine flu a pandemic. Pirates are seizing huge cargo ships in the waters off Somalia every other day and no one seems to know how to stop them. The Taliban have announced a new offensive in Afghanistan against U.S. and NATO forces. The global community is dealing with a financial meltdown. And everyone’s idea about everything — God, life, marriage, parenting, schooling — is changing by the hour.

The question is not whether our world is changing, the question is, who shall decide how it is changing? For that matter, who shall decide how you own life is changing?

We have to come to some conclusions around here. I mean, some new conclusions, not the same old ones that have been driving humanity’s cultural story forever. We have to decide again who we are, where we are, why we are where we are, and what we are doing here. As a species, and as individuals.

There may seem little that you can do to “decide” these things “as a species,” – but there is a great deal you can do to decide these things as an individual. And if enough individuals decide these things in a particular way, then the species itself is impacted and affected in a similar way. Our reach is much farther than we think it is; our influence much greater.

The challenge 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.

There is, of course, no “right” answer to these questions; there is no single appropriate response. Everybody’s response, whatever it is, is right, precisely because it is their response. There is also no final answer. Everybody’s answer is subject to revision in any moment. So it isn’t a you-made-your-bed-now-you-have-to-lie-in-it situation. You can decide one thing today and another thing entirely different tomorrow. But you must decide something. You have to make up your mind about these things, or you will be moving through your life willy-nilly, having no idea of any larger purpose or reason for being or doing anything.

It is of enormous benefit when this larger purpose is what motivates your smaller choices in life — including something as simple as your choice around how to feel about a certain event or experience.

What I am saying here, what I am trying to articulate through all of this, is that you and I are being invited to make some big decisions during these days and times, decisions having to do with a great deal more than what shirt shall I wear, what car should I buy, or even what person ought I marry…? These are the biggest decisions either of us will ever make in our lives. These decisions will affect the quality of our lives like no spouse or car or anything else in our physical world ever could.

So let’s look at the first of these questions — who am I? — when next we meet here. Until then…make it 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: A reflection on relationships offered in a series of commentaries during the days preceding Valentine’s Day, 2007. This commentary will continue over the next three editions of the Weekly Bulletin because the subject deserves all the attention we can give it.

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Life’s Most
Important Experience

Relationship is the most important experience of our lives. Without it, we are nothing.
Literally.
That is because, in the absence of anything else, we are not.
Fortunately, there is not a one of us who does not have a relationship. Indeed, all of us are in relationship with everything and everyone, all of the time. We have a relationship with ourselves, we have a relationship with our family, we have a relationship with our environment, we have a relationship with our work, we have a relationship with each other.
In fact, everything that we know and experience about ourselves, we understand within the context that is created by our relationships. For this reason, relationships are sacred. All relationships. And somewhere within the deepest reaches of our heart and soul, we know this. That is why we yearn so for relationships-and for relationships of meaning. It is also, no doubt, why we have such trouble with them. At some level, we must be very clear how much is at stake. And so, we’re nervous about them. Normally confident, competent people fumble and fall, stumble and stall, crumble and call for help.
Indeed, nothing has caused more problems for our species, created more pain, produced more suffering, or resulted in more tragedy, than that which was intended to bring us our greatest joy-our relationships with each other. Neither individually nor collectively, socially nor politically, locally nor internationally, have we found a way to live in harmony. We simply find it very difficult to get along-much less actually love each other.
What’s this all about? What’s up here? I think I know. Not that I’m some kind of a genius, mind you, but I am a good listener. And I’ve been asking questions about this for a very long time. A few years ago, I began receiving answers. I believe those responses to have come from God. At the time I received them, I was so impacted and so impressed that I decided to keep a written record of what I was being given. That record became the Conversations with God series of books, which have become best sellers around the world.
It is not necessary for you to join me in my belief about the source of my replies in order to receive benefit from them. All that is necessary is to remain open to the possibility that there just might be something that most humans do not fully understand about relationships, the understanding of which could change everything.
Essentially, what God tells us in CWG is that we — most of us — enter into relationships for the wrong reasons. That is, for reasons having nothing to do with our overall purpose in life. When our reason for relationship is aligned with our soul’s reason for being, not only are our relationships understood to be sacred, they are rendered joyful as well.
Joyful relationships. For far too many people, that phrase almost sounds like an oxymoron-a self-contradicting, mutually exclusive term. Something like military intelligence, or efficient government. Yet it is possible to have joyful relationships, and the extraordinary insights in the Conversations with God books show us how.

Relationship’s Biggest Question

You must never give up.
No matter how hopeless it might seem, you must never give up Love’s Dream.
And no, it is not required that living The Dream must hurt. If it hurts, you are not living The Dream, you are living a nightmare and calling it a dream, hoping that it will become one.
Stop it. Stop the struggling. The Dream has no struggle in it. If you are struggling, you are not living The Dream.
Now “struggle” does not mean the small discomforts or the once-in-a-while feelings of not-okayness that are encountered by any two people who have chosen to be together intimately. It does not mean the little differences that from time to time have to be worked out. “Struggle” means just that: struggle. Ongoing difficulty. Frequent and recurring and serious discord, disharmony, disagreement.
“Struggle” means that things that ought to be simple become complex, moments which could easily be serene erupt into turmoil. Nervousness replaces excitement, sadness replaces bliss, walking on eggshells replaces walking on clouds.
You are struggling in your relationship when wariness overcomes eagerness, when pain pushes happiness out of the room…and when this happens often. Not once in a while. Not now and then. Often.
One can’t ever fully relax anymore. Just when it seems like, well, this isn’t so bad, I can make this work…boom…the door slams, the bomb drops, the sweetness crashes and reveals itself to be not the stuff of sturdiness that can be counted on, but an oh-so-fragile thing that cannot withstand even the gentle touch of intimacy.
I am asked, more than any other single question about relationship: When is it time to leave? When is it time to quit?
I am asked: How do I know I am not supposed to be here, learning something? How do I know that this is not all for my own good, my own evolution? How do I know that I am not just “giving up” — again…?
I am asked: What does it take to make “love” work? And I answer, “Love should not be work. Love should be play. It should feel playful and joyful, not stressful.”
The intimate relationships in many people’s lives have not been long lasting. Happily Ever After has not been a universal (or even a common) experience. Indeed, it must sometimes seem to many that there is just no way to do this thing called Relationship and do it well.
People look in the mirror and ask, “Is it only me who has not been given the necessary equipment? It is only me who lacks sufficient understanding? It is only me who falls short on willingness or commitment or determination or skill or patience or selflessness or whatever-in-the-world-it-takes to make Happily Ever After work?”
Or is it that human beings are simply chasing an impossible dream? Is The Dream of real and lasting and wonderfully joyful love nothing but a fantasy that can never be fulfilled?
No. I don’t believe that. And I believe that people who have tried and tried and failed have, at least, the opportunity to learn from their experience. There is no such thing as a lost cause. Love’s Dream can be lived. That is God’s promise.
There are couples who have lived it, who have made it to the Promised Land. Some found each other early in life, some found each other later, after much trial and error with others. All has not been perfect on their journey, all has not been smiles and laughter in every moment. But much of it has been. And all of it has been worth it. Every minute has been worth it.
There are those who say you have to “work” at relationship. Anything worth having is worth working for, the mantra goes. Okay. Fair enough. But this should be the kind of “work” that feels soooo good to do. Like Barbra Streisand singing. Like Richard Gere dancing. Like Nancy Kerrigan on ice. Like Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky and Mikhail Baryshnikov in ballet shoes. Like Roger Clemens throwing a baseball. Yes, there’s work involved…but oh, the joy of it, the sheer joy of it!
Yes, love — real love, true love, lasting love — may be “work,” but it should be a work of art. It should be something you love to do. A wise person once said, “May you always love the loving you are doing.”
Look at your relationship right now. Are you loving the loving you are doing?
If you love the loving you are doing, it is not “work” in the sense of being a struggle. It is a joy. Working to create something is very much different from working to hold something together. Everyone who has done both knows the difference. You can feel the difference, and no one has to tell you what is going on.
It has to do with effort and ease.
You know if, in your relationship, you are at a place of effort or if you are at ease.
Barbra Streisand sings effortlessly. The breathless grace of Nancy Kerrigan is effortless. That is precisely what makes it breathless grace. This is not to say that no “work” went into it. Surely it did. But joy came out of it. Work went in, and joy came out. When work goes in and joy does not come out, then “work” has become “effort.”
This is the state of many relationships.
When is enough enough?
That question cannot be answered by anyone other than the person asking it. But the question rarely goes without answer. The issue is not whether the person asking the question KNOWS the answer, but whether the person HEEDS it.

(This three-part series of reflections continues here next week.)

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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. Click here to see a short (2 minute) clip of this program.

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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.