CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD

Book 1

an uncommon dialogue

NEALE DONALD WALSCH

1995

www.cosmic-people.com

www.angels-heaven.org





CONTENTS

(*)

Acknowledgments

(**)

Introduction

(1)

Chapter 1

(2)

Chapter 2

(3)

Chapter 3

(4)

Chapter 4

(5)

Chapter 5

(6)

Chapter 6

(7)

Chapter 7

(8)

Chapter 8

(9)

Chapter 9

(10)

Chapter 10

(11)

Chapter 11

(12)

Chapter 12

(13)

Chapter 13

(14)

Chapter 14

(***)

In Closing

(****)

About the Author





(*)

Acknowledgments

First, last, and always, I want to acknowledge the Source of everything that is in this book, everything that is life—and of life itself.

Second, I want to thank my spiritual teachers, who include the saints and sages of all religions.

Third, it is clear to me that all of us could produce a list of people who have touched our lives in ways so meaningful and so profoundly as to defy categorization or description; people who have shared with us their wisdom, told us their truth, suffered us our faults and our foibles in their infinite patience, and who have seen us through all of it; seeing the best in us there was to see. People who, in their acceptance of us, as well as their refusal to accept the parts of us they knew we really didn’t choose, caused us to grow; to get bigger somehow.

The people, in addition to my parents, who have been there for me in that way include Samantha Gorski, Tara-Jenelle Walsch, Wayne Davis, Bryan Walsch, Martha Wright, the late Ben Wills, Jr., Roland Chambers, Dan Higgs, C. Berry Carter II, Ellen Moyer, Anne Blackwell, Dawn Dancing Free, Ed Keller, Lyman W. (Bill) Griswold, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, and dear, dear Terry Cole- Whittaker.

I want to include in this group my former mates, whose privacy I wish to respect by not naming them here, but whose contributions to my life are deeply grasped and appreciated.

And as gratitude for the gifts I have received from all these wonderful people swells my heart, I am especially warmed by the thought of my helpmate, spouse, and partner, Nancy Fleming Walsch, a woman of extraordinary wisdom, compassion and love, who has shown me that my highest thoughts about human relationships do not have to remain fantasies, but can be dreams come true.

Fourth and finally, I want to recognize some people I have never met, but whose lives and work have impacted me with such force that I cannot let this moment pass without thanking them from the depth of my being for the moments of exquisite pleasure, insight into the human condition, and pure, simple Lifegefeelkin (I made up that word!) they have given me.

You know what it is like when someone has given you a taste, a glorious moment, of what is really true about life? For me, most of these have been creative or performing artists, because it is from art that I receive inspiration, to which I retreat in moments of reflection, and in which I find that which we call God most beautifully expressed.

And so I want to thank… John Denver, whose songs touch my soul and fill it with new hope about how life could be; Richard Bach, whose writings reach into my life as if they were my own, describing so much of what has been my experience; Barbra Streisand, whose directing, acting, and musical artistry grips my heart time and time again, causing it to feel what is true, not merely know it; and the late Robert Heinlein, whose visionary literature has raised questions and posed answers in ways no one else has dared even approach.





For

ANNE M. WALSCH

Who not only taught me that God exists,

but opened my mind to the wondrous truth

that God is my best friend;

and who was far more than a mother to me,

but gave birth in me

to a longing for and a love of God,

and all that is good.

Mom was

my first meeting

with an angel.

And for

ALEX M. WALSCH

Who told me repeatedly throughout my life,

“There’s nothing to it,”

“You don’t have to take No for an answer,”

“You make your own luck,”

and

“There’s more where that came from.”

Dad was

my first experience

of fearlessness.





(**)

Introduction

You are about to have an extraordinary experience. You are about to have a conversation with God. Yes, yes. I know…that’s not possible. You probably think (or have been taught) that’s not possible. One can talk to God, sure, but not with God. I mean, God is not going to talk back, right? At least not in the form of a regular, everyday kind of conversation!

That’s what I thought, too. Then this book happened to me. And I mean that literally. This book was not written by me, it happened to me. And in your reading of it, it will happen to you, for we are all led to the truth for which we are ready.

My life would probably be much easier if I had kept all of this quiet. Yet that wasn’t the reason it happened to me. And whatever inconveniences the book may cause me (such as being called a blasphemer, a fraud, a hypocrite for not having lived these truths in the past, or—perhaps worse—a holy man), it is not possible for me to stop the process now. Nor do I wish to. I have had my chances to step away from this whole thing, and I haven’t taken them. I’ve decided to stick with what my instincts are telling me, rather than what much of the world will tell me, about the material here.

Those instincts say this book is not nonsense, the overworking of a frustrated spiritual imagination, or simply the self-justification of a man seeking vindication from a life misled. Oh, I’ve thought of all of those things—every one of them. So I gave this material to a few people to read while it was still in manuscript form. They were moved. And they cried. And they laughed for the joy and the humor in it. And their lives, they said, changed. They were transfixed. They were empowered.

Many said they were transformed.

That’s when I knew this book was for everyone, and that it had to be published; for it is a wonderful gift to all those who truly want answers and who truly care about the questions; for all those who have embarked upon quests for truth with sincerity of heart, longing of soul, and openness of mind. And that’s pretty much all of as.

This book addresses most, if not all, of the questions we have ever asked about life and love, purpose and function, people and relationships, good and evil, guilt and sin, forgiveness and redemption, the path to God and the road to hell…everything. It directly discusses sex, power, money, children, marriage, divorce, life work, health, the hereafter, the before-now…everything. It explores war and peace, knowing and not knowing, giving and taking, joy and sorrow. It looks at the concrete and the abstract, the visible and the invisible, the truth and the untruth.

You could say that this book is “God’s latest word on things,” although some people might have a little trouble with that, particularly if they think that God stopped talking 2,000 years ago or that, if God has continued communicating, it’s been only with holy men, medicine women, or someone who has been meditating for 30 years, or good for 20, or at least half-decent for 10 (none of which categories includes me).

The truth is, God talks to everybody. The good and the bad. The saint and the scoundrel. And certainly all of us in between. Take you, for instance. God has come to you many ways in your life, and this is another of them. How many times have you heard the old axiom: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear? This book is our teacher.

Shortly after this material began happening to me, I knew that I was talking with God. Directly, personally. Irrefutably. And that God was responding to my questions in direct proportion to my ability to comprehend. That is, I was being answered in ways, and with language, that God knew I would understand. This accounts for much of the colloquial style of the writing and the occasional references to material I’d gathered from other sources and prior experiences in my life. I know now that everything that has ever come to me in my life has come to me from God, and it was now being drawn together, pulled together, in a magnificent, complete response to every question I ever had.

And somewhere along the way I realized a book was being produced—a book intended for publication. Indeed, I was told specifically during the latter part of the dialogue (in February 1993) that three books would actually be produced, and that:

1. The first would deal mainly with personal topics, focusing on an individual’s life challenges and opportunities.

2. The second would deal with more global topics of geopolitical and metaphysical life on the planet, and the challenges now facing the world.

3. The third would deal with universal truths of the highest order, and the challenges and opportunities of the soul.

This is the first of those books, completed in February 1993. For clarity I should explain that, as I transcribed this dialogue by hand, I underlined or circled words and sentences which came to me with particular emphasis—as if God were booming them out —and these were later placed in italics by the typesetter.

I need now to say that I am—having read and reread the wisdom contained here—deeply embarrassed by my own life, which has been marked by continued mistakes and misdeeds, some very shameful behaviors, and some choices and decisions which I’m certain others consider hurtful and unforgivable. Though I have profound remorse that it was through others’ pain, I am unspeakably grateful for all that I have learned, and found that I have still yet to learn, because of the people in my life. I apologize to everybody for the slowness of that learning. Yet I am encouraged by God to grant myself forgiveness for my failings and not to live in fear and guilt but to always keep trying—keep on trying—to live a grander vision.

I know that’s what God wants for all of us.

Neale Donald Walsch

Central Point, Oregon

Christmas 1994





(1)

Chapter 1

In the spring of 1992—it was around Easter as I recall—an extraordinary phenomenon occurred in my life. God began talking with you. Through me.

Let me explain.

I was very unhappy during that period, personally, professionally, and emotionally, and my life was feeling like a failure on all levels. As I’d been in the habit for years of writing my thoughts down in letters (which I usually never delivered), I picked up my trusty yellow legal pad and began pouring out my feelings.

This time, rather than another letter to another person I imagined to be victimizing me, I thought I’d go straight to the source; straight to the greatest victimizer of them all. I decided to write a letter to God.

It was a spiteful, passionate letter, full of confusions, contortions, and condemnations. And a pile of angry questions. Why wasn’t my life working? What would it take to get it to work? Why could I not find happiness in relationships? Was the experience of adequate money going to elude me forever? Finally —and most emphatically—What had I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?

To my surprise, as I scribbled out the last of my bitter, unanswerable questions and prepared to toss my pen aside, my hand remained poised over the paper, as if held there by some invisible force. Abruptly, the pen began moving on its own. I had no idea what I was about to write, but an idea seemed to be coming, so I decided to flow with it. Out came…

Do you really want an answer to all these questions, or are you just venting?

I blinked…and then my mind came up with a reply. I wrote that down, too.

Both. I’m venting, sure, but if these questions have answers, I’d sure as hell like to hear them!

You are “sure as hell”…about a lot of things. But wouldn’t it be nice to be “sure as Heaven”?

And I wrote:

What is that supposed to mean?

Before I knew it, I had begun a conversation…and I was not writing so much as taking dictation.

That dictation went on for three years, and at the time, I had no idea where it was going. The answers to the questions I was putting on paper never came to me until the question was completely written and I’d put my own thoughts away. Often the answers came faster than I could write, and I found myself scribbling to keep up. When I became confused, or lost the feeling that the words were coming from somewhere else, I put the pen down and walked away from the dialogue until I again felt inspired —sorry, that’s the only word which truly fits—to return to the yellow legal pad and start transcribing again.

These conversations are still going on as I write this. And much of it is found on the pages which follow…pages which contain an astounding dialogue which at first I disbelieved, then assumed to be of personal value, but which I now understand was meant for more than just me. It was meant for you and everyone else who has come to this material. For my questions are your questions.

I want you to get into this dialogue as soon as you can, because what’s really important here is not my story, but yours. It is your life story which brought you here. It is your personal experience to which this material has relevance. Otherwise you would not be here, with it, right now.

So let’s enter the dialogue with a question I had been asking for a very long time: How does God talk, and to whom? When I asked this question, here’s the answer I received:

I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens?

Intrigued, I asked God to expand on this subject. Here’s what God said:

First, let’s exchange the word talk with the word communicate. It’s a much better word, a much fuller more accurate one. When we try to speak to each other—Me to you, you to Me, we are immediately constricted by the unbelievable limitation of words. For this reason, I do not communicate by words alone. In fact, rarely do I do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling.

Feeling is the language of the soul.

If you want to know what’s true for you about something, look to how you’re feeling about it.

Feelings are sometimes difficult to discover—and often even more difficult to acknowledge. Yet hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.

The trick is to get to those feelings. I will show you how. Again. If you wish.

I told God that I did wish, but that right now I wished even more for a complete and full answer to my first question. Here’s what God said:

I also communicate with thought. Thought and feelings are not the same, although they can occur at the same time. In communicating with thought, I often use images and pictures. For this reason, thoughts are more effective than mere words as tools of communication.

In addition to feelings and thoughts, I also use the vehicle of experience as a grand communicator.

And finally, when feelings and thoughts and experience all fail, I use words. Words are really the least effective communicator. They are most open to misinterpretation, most often misunderstood.

And why is that? It is because of what words are. Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experience. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing.

Words may help you understand something. Experience allows you to know. Yet there are some things you cannot experience. So I have given you other tools of knowing. And these are called feelings. And so too, thoughts.

Now the supreme irony here is that you have all placed so much importance on the Word of God, and so little on the experience. In fact, you place so little value on experience that when what you experience of God differs from what you’ve heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be just the other way around.

Your experience and your feelings about a thing represent what you factually and intuitively know about that thing. Words can only seek to symbolize what you know, and can often confuse what you know.

These, then, are the tools with which I communicate, yet they are not the methods, for not all feelings, not all thoughts, not all experience, and not all words are from Me.

Many words have been uttered by others, in My name. Many thoughts and many feelings have been sponsored by causes not of My direct creation. Many experiences result from these.

The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a basic rule:

Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source.

Now the task of differentiation becomes easy, for it should not be difficult even for the beginning student to identify the Highest, the Clearest, and the Grandest.

Yet will I give you these guidelines:

The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.

Joy, truth, love.

These three are interchangeable, and one always leads to the other. It matters not in which order they are placed.

Having with these guidelines determined which messages are Mine and which have come from another source, the only question remaining is whether My messages will be heeded.

Most of My messages are not. Some, because they seem too good to be true. Others, because they seem too difficult to follow. Many, because they are simply misunderstood. Most, because they are not received.

My most powerful messenger is experience, and even this you ignore. Especially this you ignore.

Your world would not be in its present condition were you to have simply listened to your experience. The result of your not listening to your experience is that you keep re-living it, over and over again. For My purpose will not be thwarted, nor My will be ignored. You will get the message. Sooner or later. I will not force you to, however. I will never coerce you. For I have given you a free will—the power to do as you choose—and I will never take that away from you, ever.

And so I will continue sending you the same messages over and over again, throughout the millennia and to whatever corner of the universe you occupy. Endlessly will I send you My messages, until you have received them and held them close, calling them your own.

My messages will come in a hundred forms, at a thousand moments, across a million years. You cannot miss them if you truly listen. You cannot ignore them once truly heard. Thus will our communication begin in earnest. For in the past you have only talked to Me, praying to Me, interceding with Me, beseeching Me. Yet now can I talk back to you, even as I am doing here.

How can I know this communication is from God? How do I know this is not my own imagination?

What would be the difference? Do you not see that I could just as easily work through your imagination as anything else? I will bring you the exact right thoughts, words or feelings, at any given moment, suited precisely to the purpose at hand, using one device, or several.

You will know these words are from Me because you, of your own accord, have never spoken so clearly. Had you already spoken so clearly on these questions, you would not be asking them.

To whom does God communicate? Are there special people? Are there special times?

All people are special, and all moments are golden. There is no person and there is no time one more special than another. Many people choose to believe that God communicates in special ways and only with special people. This removes the mass of the people from responsibility for hearing My message, much less receiving it (which is another matter), and allows them to take someone else’s word for everything. You don’t have to listen to Me, for you’ve already decided that others have heard from Me on every subject, and you have them to listen to.

By listening to what other people think they heard Me say, you don’t have to think at all.

This is the biggest reason for most people turning from My messages on a personal level. If you acknowledge that you are receiving My messages directly, then you are responsible for interpreting them. It is far safer and much easier to accept the interpretation of others (even others who have lived 2,000 years ago) than seek to interpret the message you may very well be receiving in this moment now.

Yet I invite you to a new form of communication with God. A two-way communication. In truth, it is you who have invited Me. For I have come to you, in this form, right now, in answer to your call.

Why do some people, take Christ, for example, seem to hear more of Your communication than others?

Because some people are willing to actually listen. They are willing to hear, and they are willing to remain open to the communication even when it seems scary, or crazy, or downright wrong.

We should listen to God even when what’s being said seems wrong?

Especially when it seems wrong. If you think you are right about everything, who needs to talk with God?

Go ahead and act on all that you know. But notice that you’ve all been doing that since time began. And look at what shape the world is in. Clearly, you’ve missed something. Obviously, there is something you don’t understand. That which you do understand must seem right to you, because “right” is a term you use to designate something with which you agree. What you’ve missed will, therefore, appear at first to be “wrong.”

The only way to move forward on this is to ask yourself, “What would happen if everything I thought was ‘wrong’ was actually ‘right’?” Every great scientist knows about this. When what a scientist does is not working, a scientist sets aside all of the assumptions and starts over. All great discoveries have been made from a willingness, and ability, to not be right. And that’s what’s needed here.

You cannot know God until you’ve stopped telling yourself that you already know God. You cannot hear God until you stop thinking that you’ve already heard God.

I cannot tell you My Truth until you stop telling Me yours.

But my truth about God comes from You.

Who said so?

Others.

What others?

Leaders. Ministers. Rabbis. Priests. Books. The Bible, for heaven’s sake!

Those are not authoritative sources.

They aren’t?

No.

Then what is?

Listen to your feelings. Listen to your Highest Thoughts. Listen to your experience. Whenever any one of these differ from what you’ve been told by your teachers, or read in your books, forget the words. Words are the least reliable purveyor of Truth.

There is so much I want to say to You, so much I want to ask. I don’t know where to begin.

For instance, why is it that You do not reveal Yourself? If there really is a God, and You are It, why do You not reveal Yourself in a way we can all understand?

I have done so, over and over. I am doing so again right now.

No. I mean by a method of revelation that is incontrovertible; that cannot be denied.

Such as?

Such as appearing right now before my eyes.

I am doing so right now.

Where?

Everywhere you look.

No, I mean in an incontrovertible way. In a way no man could deny.

What way would that be? In what form or shape would you have Me appear?

In the form or shape that you actually have.

That would be impossible, for I have no form or shape you understand. I could adopt a form or shape that you could understand, but then everyone would assume that what they have seen is the one and only form and shape of God, rather than a form or shape of God—one of many.

People believe I am what they see Me as, rather than what they do not see. But I am the Great Unseen, not what I cause Myself to be in any particular moment. In a sense, I am what I am not. It is from the am-notness that I come, and to it I always return.

Yet when I come in one particular form or another—a form in which I think people can understand Me—people assign Me that form forevermore. And should I come in any other form, to any other people, the first say I did not appear to the second, because I did not look to the second as I did to the first, nor say the same things—so how could it have been Me? You see, then, it matters not in what form or in what manner I reveal Myself—whatever manner I choose and whatever form I take, none will be incontrovertible.

But if You did something that would evidence the truth of who You are beyond doubt or question…

…there are still those who would say, it is of the devil, or simply someone’s imagination. Or any cause other than Me.

If I revealed myself as God Almighty, King of Heaven and Earth, and moved mountains to prove it, there are those who would say, “It must have been Satan.”

And such is as it should be. For God does not reveal Godself to Godself from or through outward observation, but through inward experience. And when inward experience has revealed Godself, outward observation is not necessary. And if outward observation is necessary, inward experience is not possible.

If, then, revelation is requested, it cannot be had, for the act of asking is a statement that it is not there; that nothing of God is now being revealed. Such a statement produces the experience. For your thought about something is creative, and your word is productive, and your thought and your word together are magnificently effective in giving birth to your reality. Therefore shall you experience that God is not now revealed, for if God were, you would not ask God to be.

Does that mean I cannot ask for anything I want? Are You saying that praying for something actually pushes it away from us?

This is a question which has been asked through the Ages—and has been answered whenever it has been asked. Yet you have not heard the answer, or will not believe it.

The question is answered again, in today’s terms, and today’s language, thusly:

You will not have that for which you ask, nor can you have anything you want. This is because your very request is a statement of lack, and your saying you want a thing only works to produce that precise experience— wanting—in your reality.

The correct prayer is therefore never a prayer of supplication, but a prayer of gratitude.

When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you, in effect, acknowledge that it is there… in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God; an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered.

Therefore never supplicate. Appreciate.

But what if I am grateful to God in advance for something, and it never shows up? That could lead to disillusionment and bitterness.

Gratitude cannot be used as a tool with which to manipulate God; a device with which to fool the universe. You cannot lie to yourself. Your mind knows the truth of your thoughts. If you are saying “Thank you, God, for such and such,” all the while being very clear that it isn’t there in your present reality, you can’t expect God to be less clear than you, and so produce it for you.

God knows what you know, and what you know is what appears as your reality.

But how then can I be truly grateful for something I know is not there?

Faith. If you have but the faith of a mustard seed, you shall move mountains. You come to know it is there because I said it is there; because I said that, even before you ask, I shall have answered; because I said, and have said to you in every conceivable way, through every teacher you can name, that whatsoever you shall choose, choosing it in My Name, so shall it be.

Yet so many people say that their prayers have gone unanswered.

No prayer—and a prayer is nothing more than a fervent statement of what is so—goes unanswered. Every prayer—every thought, every statement, every feeling—is creative. To the degree that it is fervently held as truth, to that degree will it be made manifest in your experience.

When it is said that a prayer has not been answered, what has in actuality happened is that the most fervently held thought, word, or feeling has become operative. Yet what you must know—and here is the secret—is that always it is the thought behind the thought—what might be called the Sponsoring Thought—that is the controlling thought.

If, therefore, you beg and supplicate, there seems a much smaller chance that you will experience what you think you are choosing, because the Sponsoring Thought behind every supplication is that you do not have now what you wish. That Sponsoring Thought becomes your reality.

The only Sponsoring Thought which could override this thought is the thought held in faith that God will grant whatever is asked, without fail. Some people have such faith, but very few.

The process of prayer becomes much easier when, rather than having to believe that God will always say “yes” to every request, one understands intuitively, that the request itself is not necessary. Then the prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving. It is not a request at all but a statement of gratitude for what is so. angels-heaven.org

When you say that a prayer is a statement of what is so, are you saying that God does nothing; that everything which happens after a prayer is a result of the prayer’s action?

If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says “yes” to some, “no” to others, and “maybe, but not now” to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide?

If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken.

God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect.

It is not God’s function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.

In this sense, your will for you is God’s will for you.

You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.

This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do.

I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, or hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an environment which you consider friendly and very okay.

Of course, you will always hope that they do not hurt themselves. And if they do, you will be right there to help them, heal them, allow them to feel safe again, to be happy again, to go and play again another day. But whether they choose hide and seek or pretend will not matter to you the next day, either.

You will tell them, of course, which games are dangerous to play. But you cannot stop your children from doing dangerous things. Not always. Not forever. Not in every moment from now until death. It is the wise parent who knows this. Yet the parent never stops caring about the outcome. It is this dichotomy—not caring deeply about the process, but caring deeply about the result—that comes close to describing the dichotomy of God.

Yet God, in a sense, does not even care about the outcome. Not the ultimate outcome. This is because the ultimate outcome is assured. And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt.

It is this doubt about ultimate outcome that has created your greatest enemy, which is fear. For if you doubt outcome, then you must doubt Creator —you must doubt God. And if you doubt God, you must live in fear and guilt all your life.

If you doubt God’s intentions—and God’s ability to produce this ultimate result—then how can you ever relax? How can you ever truly find peace? Yet God has full power to match intentions with results. You cannot and will not believe in this (even though you claim that God is all-powerful), and so you have to create in your imagination a power equal to God, in order that you may find a way for God’s will to be thwarted. And so you have created in your mythology the being you call “devil.” You have even imagined a God at war with this being (thinking that God solves problems the way you do). Finally, you have actually imagined that God could lose this war. All of this violates everything you say you know about God, but this doesn’t matter. You live your illusion, and thus feel your fear, all out of your decision to doubt God.

But what if you made a new decision? What then would be the result? I tell you this: you would live as the Buddha did. As Jesus did. As did every saint you have ever idolized.

Yet, as with most of those saints, people would not understand you. And when you tried to explain your sense of peace, your joy in life, your inner ecstasy, they would listen to your words, but not hear them. They would try to repeat your words, but would add to them.

They would wonder how you could have what they cannot find. And then they would grow jealous. Soon jealousy would turn to rage, and in their anger they would try to convince you that it is you who do not understand God.

And if they were unsuccessful at tearing you from your joy, they would seek to harm you, so enormous would be their rage. And when you told them it does not matter, that even death cannot interrupt your joy, nor change your truth, they would surely kill you. Then, when they saw the peace with which you accepted death, they would call you saint, and love you again.

For it is the nature of people to love, then destroy, then love again that which they value most.

But why? Why do we do that?

All human actions are motivated at their deepest level by one of two emotions—fear or love. In truth there are only two emotions—only two words in the language of the soul. These are the opposite ends of the great polarity which I created when I produced the universe, and your world, as you know it today.

These are the two points—the Alpha and the Omega—which allow the system you call “relativity” to be. Without these two points, without these two ideas about things, no other idea could exist.

Every human thought, and every human action, is based in either love or fear. There is no other human motivation, and all other ideas are but derivatives of these two. They are simply different versions—different twists on the same theme.

Think on this deeply and you will see that it is true. This is what I have called the Sponsoring Thought. It is either a thought of love or fear. This is the thought behind the thought behind the thought. It is the first thought. It is prime force. It is the raw energy that drives the engine of human experience.

And here is how human behavior produces repeat experience after repeat experience; it is why humans love, then destroy, then love again: always there is the swing from one emotion to the other. Love sponsors fear sponsors love sponsors fear…

… And the reason is found in the first lie—the lie which you hold as the truth about God—that God cannot be trusted; that God’s love cannot be depended upon; that God’s acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God’s love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also?

… And so it is that in the moment you pledge your highest love, you greet your greatest fear.

For the first thing you worry about after saying “I love you” is whether you’ll hear it back. And if you hear it back, then you begin immediately to worry that the love you have just found, you will lose. And so all action becomes a reaction—defense against loss—even as you seek to defend yourself against the loss of God.

Yet if you knew Who You Are—that you are the most magnificent, the most remarkable, the most splendid being God has ever created—you would never fear. For who could reject such wondrous magnificence? Not even God could find fault in such a being.

But you do not know Who You Are, and you think you are a great deal less. And where did you get the idea of how much less than magnificent you are? From the only people whose word you would take on everything. From your mother and your father.

These are the people who love you the most. Why would they lie to you? Yet have they not told you that you are too much of this, and not enough of that? Have they not reminded you that you are to be seen and not heard?

Have they not scolded you in some of the moments of your greatest exuberance? And, did they not encourage you to set aside some of your wildest imagining?

These are the messages you’ve received, and though they do not meet the criteria, and are thus not messages from God, they might as well have been, for they have come from the gods of your universe surely enough.

It was your parents who taught you that love is conditional—you have felt their conditions many times—and that is the experience you take into your own love relationships.

It is also the experience you bring to Me.

From this experience you draw your conclusions about Me. Within this framework you speak your truth. “God is a loving God,” you say, “but if you break His commandments, He will punish you with eternal banishment and everlasting damnation.”

For have you not experienced the banishment of your own parents? Do you not know the pain of their damnation? How, then, could you imagine it to be any different with Me?

You have forgotten what it was like to be loved without condition. You do not remember the experience of the love of God. And so you try to imagine what God’s love must be like, based on what you see of love in the world.

You have projected the role of “parent” onto God, and have thus come up with a God Who judges and rewards or punishes, based on how good He feels about what you’ve been up to. But this is a simplistic view of God, based on your mythology. It has nothing to do with Who I Am.

Having thus created an entire thought system about God based on human experience rather than spiritual truths, you then create an entire reality around love. It is a fear-based reality, rooted in the idea of a fearful, vengeful God. Its Sponsoring Thought is wrong, but to deny that thought would be to disrupt your whole theology. And though the new theology which would replace it would truly be your salvation, you cannot accept it, because the idea of a God Who is not to be feared, Who will not judge, and Who has no cause to punish is simply too magnificent to he embraced within even your grandest notion of Who and What God is.

This fear-based love reality dominates your experience of love; indeed, actually creates it. For not only do you see yourself receiving love which is conditional, you also watch yourself giving it in the same way. And even while you withhold and retreat and set your conditions, a part of you knows this is not what love really is. Still, you seem powerless to change the way you dispense it You’ve learned the hard way, you tell yourself, and you’ll be damned if you’re going to leave yourself vulnerable again. Yet the truth is, you’ll be damned if you don’t.

[By your own (mistaken) thoughts about love do you damn yourself never to experience it purely. So, too, do you damn yourself never to know Me as I really am. Until you do. For you shall not be able to deny Me forever, and the moment will come for our Reconciliation.]

Every action taken by human beings is based in love or fear, not simply those dealing with relationships. Decisions affecting business, industry, politics, religion, the education of your young, the social agenda of your nations, the economic goals of your society, choices involving war, peace, attack, defense, aggression, submission; determinations to covet or give away, to save or to share, to unite or to divide—every single free choice you ever undertake arises out of one of the only two possible thoughts there are: a thought of love or a thought of fear.

Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms.

Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals.

Fear wrap our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.

Every human thought, word, or deed is based in one emotion or the other. You have no choice about this, because there is nothing else from which to choose. But you have free choice about which of these to select.

You make it sound so easy, and yet in the moment of decision fear wins more often than not. Why is that?

You have been taught to live in fear. You have been told about the survival of the fittest and the victory of the strongest and the success of the cleverest. Precious little is said about the glory of the most loving. And so you strive to be the fittest, the strongest, the cleverest—in one way or another— and if you see yourself as something less than this in any situation, you fear loss, for you have been told that to be less is to lose.

And so of course you choose the action fear sponsors, for that is what you have been taught. Yet I teach you this: when you choose the action love sponsors, then will you do more than survive, then will you do more than win, then will you do more than succeed. Then will you experience the full glory of Who You Really Are, and who you can be.

To do this you must turn aside the teachings of your well-meaning, but misinformed, worldly tutors, and hear the teachings of those whose wisdom comes from another source.

There are many such teachers among you, as always there have been, for I will not leave you without those who would show you, teach you, guide you, and remind you of these truths. Yet the greatest reminder is not anyone outside you, but the voice within you. This is the first tool that I use, because it is the most accessible.

The voice within is the loudest voice with which I speak, because it is the closest to you. It is the voice which tells you whether everything else is true or false, right or wrong, good or bad as you have defined it. It is the radar that sets the course, steers the ship, guides the journey if you but let it.

It is the voice which tells you right now whether the very words you are reading are words of love or words of fear. By this measure can you determine whether they are words to heed or words to ignore.

You said that when I always choose the action that love sponsors, then I will experience the full glory of who I am and who I can be. Will you expand on this please?

There is only one purpose for all of life, and that is for you and all that lives to experience fullest glory.

Everything else you say, think, or do is attendant to that function. There is nothing else for your soul to do, and nothing else your soul wants to do. The wonder of this purpose is that it is never-ending. An ending is a limitation, and God’s purpose is without such a boundary. Should there come a moment in which you experience yourself in your fullest glory, you will in that instant imagine an ever greater glory to fulfill. The more you are, the more you can become, and the more you can become, the more you can yet be.

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation.

You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek, therefore, not to find out Who You Are, seek to determine Who You Want to Be.

There are those who say that life is a school, that we are here to learn specific lessons, that once we “graduate” we can go on to larger pursuits, no longer shackled by the body. Is this correct?

It is another part of your mythology, based on human experience.

Life is not a school?

No.

We are not here to learn lessons?

No.

Then why are we here?

To remember, and re-create, Who You Are.

I have told you, over and over again. You do not believe Me. Yet that is well as it should be. For truly, if you do not create yourself as Who You Are, that you cannot be.

Okay, You’ve lost me. Let’s go back to this school bit. I’ve heard teacher after teacher tell us that life is a school. I’m frankly shocked to hear You deny that.

School is a place you go if there is something you do not know that you want to know. It is not a place you go if you already know a thing and simply want to experience your knowingness.

Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it.

I’m not sure I understand.

Let’s start here. The soul—your soul—knows all there is to know all the time. There’s nothing hidden to it, nothing unknown. Yet knowing is not enough. The soul seeks to experience.

You can know yourself to be generous, but unless you do something which displays generosity, you have nothing but a concept. You can know yourself to be kind, but unless you do someone a kindness, you have nothing but an idea about yourself.

It is your soul’s only desire to turn its grandest concept about itself into its greatest experience. Until concept becomes experience, all there is is speculation. I have been speculating about Myself for a long time. Longer than you and I could collectively remember. Longer than the age of this universe times the age of the universe. You see, then, how young is—how new is—My experience of Myself!

You’ve lost me again. Your experience of Yourself?

Yes. Let me explain it to you this way:

In the beginning, that which Is is all there was, and there was nothing else. Yet All That Is could not know itself—because All That Is is all there was, and there was nothing else. And so, All That Is… was not. For in the absence of something else, All That Is, is not.

This is the great Is/Not Is to which mystics have referred from the beginning of time.

Now All That Is knew it was all there was—but this was not enough, for it could only know its utter magnificence conceptually, not experientially. Yet the experience of itself is that for which it longed, for it wanted to know what it felt like to be so magnificent. Still, this was impossible, because the very term “magnificent” is a relative term. All That Is could not know what it felt like to be magnificent unless that which is not showed up. In the absence of that which is not, that which IS, is not.

Do you understand this?

I think so. Keep going.

Alright The one thing that All That Is knew is that there was nothing else. And so It could, and would, never know Itself from a reference point outside of Itself. Such a point did not exist. Only one reference point existed, and that was the single place within. The “Is-Not Is.” The Am-Not Am.

Still, the All of Everything chose to know Itself experientially.

This energy—this pure, unseen, unheard, unobserved, and therefore unknown-by-anyone-else energy—chose to experience Itself as the utter magnificence It was. In order to do this, It realized It would have to use a reference point within.

It reasoned, quite correctly, that any portion of Itself would necessarily have to be less than the whole, and that if It thus simply divided Itself into portions, each portion, being less than the whole, could look back on the rest of Itself and see magnificence.

And so All That Is divided Itself—becoming, in one glorious moment, that which is this, and that which is that. For the first time, this and that existed, quite apart from each other. And still, both existed simultaneously. As did all that was neither.

Thus, three elements suddenly existed: that which is here. That which is there. And that which is neither here nor there—but which must exist for here and there to exist.

It is the nothing which holds the everything. It is the non-space which holds the space. It is the all which holds the parts.

Can you understand this?

Are you following this?

I think I am, actually. Believe it or not, you have used such a clear illustration that I think I’m actually understanding this.

I’m going to go further. Now this nothing which holds the everything is what some people call God. Yet that is not accurate, either, for it suggests that there is something God is not—namely, everything that is not “nothing.” But I am All Things—seen and unseen—so this description of Me as the Great Unseen—the No-Thing, or the Space Between, an essentially Eastern mystical definition of God, is no more accurate than the essentially Western practical description of God as all that is seen. Those who believe that God is All That Is and All That Is Not, are those whose understanding is correct.

Now in creating that which is “here” and that which is “there,” God made it possible for God to know Itself. In the moment of this great explosion from within, God created relativity—the greatest gift God ever gave to Itself. Thus, relationship is the greatest gift God ever gave to you, a point to be discussed in detail later.

From the No-Thing thus sprang the Everything—a spiritual event entirely consistent, incidentally, with what your scientists call The Big Bang theory. As the elements of all raced forth, time was created, for a thing was first here, then it was there—and the period it took to get from here to there was measurable.

Just as the parts of Itself which are seen began to define themselves, “relative” to each other, so, too, did the parts which are unseen. God knew that for love to exist—and to know itself as pure love—its exact opposite had to exist as well. So God voluntarily created the great polarity—the absolute opposite of love—everything that love is not—what is now called fear. In the moment fear existed, love could exist as a thing that could be experienced.

It is this creation of duality between love and its opposite which humans refer to in their various mythologies as the birth of evil, the fall of Adam, the rebellion of Satan, and so forth.

Just as you have chosen to personify pure love as the character you call God, so have you chosen to personify abject fear as the character you call the devil.

Some on Earth have established rather elaborate mythologies around this event, complete with scenarios of battles and war, angelic soldiers and devilish warriors, the forces of good and evil, of light and dark.

This mythology has been mankind’s early attempt to understand, and tell others in a way they could understand, a cosmic occurrence of which the human soul is deeply aware, but of which the mind can barely conceive.

In rendering the universe as a divided version of Itself, God produced, from pure energy, all that now exists—both seen and unseen. In other words, not only was the physical universe thus created, but the metaphysical universe as well. The part of God which forms the second half of the Am/Not Am equation also exploded into an infinite number of units smaller than the whole. These energy units you would call spirits. In some of your religious mythologies it is stated that “God the Father” had many spirit children. This parallel to the human experiences of life multiplying Itself seems to be the only way the masses could be made to hold in reality the idea of the sudden appearance—the sudden existence—of countless spirits in the “Kingdom of Heaven.”

In this instance, your mythical tales and stories are not so far from ultimate reality—for the endless spirits comprising the totality of Me are, in a cosmic sense, My offspring.

My divine purpose in dividing Me was to create sufficient parts of Me so that I could know Myself experientially. There is only one way for the Creator to know Itself experientially as the Creator, and that is to create. And so I gave to each of the countless parts of Me (to all of My spirit children) the same power to create which I have as the whole.

This is what your religions mean when they say that you were created in the “image and likeness of God.” This doesn’t mean, as some have suggested, that our physical bodies look alike (although God can adopt whatever physical form God chooses for a particular purpose). It does mean that our essence is the same. We are composed of the same stuff. We ARE the “same stuff”! With all the same properties and abilities—including the ability to create physical reality out of thin air.

My purpose in creating you, My spiritual offspring, was for Me to know Myself as God. I have no way to do that save through you. Thus it can be said (and has been, many times) that My purpose for you is that you should know yourself as Me.

This seems so amazingly simple, yet it becomes very complex— because there is only one way for you to know yourself as Me, and that is for you first to know yourself as not Me.

Now try to follow this—fight to keep up—because this gets very subtle here. Are you ready?

I think so.

Good. Remember, you’ve asked for this explanation. You’ve waited for it for years. You’ve asked for it in layman’s terms, not theological doctrines or scientific theories.

Yes—I know what I’ve asked.

And having asked, so shall you receive.

Now, to keep things simple, I’m going to use your children of God mythological model as a basis for discussion, because it is a model with which you are familiar—and in many ways it is not that far off.

So let’s go back to how this process of self-knowing must work.

There is one way I could have caused all of My spiritual children to know themselves as parts of Me—and that was simply to tell them. This I did. But you see, it was not enough for Spirit to simply know Itself as God, or part of God, or children of God, or inheritors of the kingdom (or whatever mythology you want to use).

As I’ve already explained, knowing something, and experiencing it, are two different things. Spirit longed to know Itself experientially (just as I did!). Conceptual awareness was not enough for you. So I devised a plan. It is the most extraordinary idea in all the universe—and the most spectacular collaboration. I say collaboration because all of you are in it with Me.

Under the plan, you as pure spirit would enter the physical universe just created. This is because physicality is the only way to know experientially what you know conceptually. It is, in fact, the reason I created the physical cosmos to begin with—and the system of relativity which governs it, and all creation.

Once in the physical universe, you, My spirit children, could experience what you know of yourself—but first, you had to come to know the opposite. To explain this simplistically, you cannot know yourself as tall unless and until you become aware of short. You cannot experience the part of yourself that you call fat unless you also come to know thin.

Taken to ultimate logic, you cannot experience yourself as what you are until you’ve encountered what you are not. This is the purpose of the theory of relativity, and all physical life. It is by that which you are not that you yourself are defined.

Now in the case of the ultimate knowing—in the case of knowing yourself as the Creator—you cannot experience your Self as creator unless and until you create. And you cannot create yourself until you uncreate yourself. In a sense, you have to first “not be” in order to be. Do you follow?

I think…

Stay with it.

Of course, there is no way for you to not be who and what you are—you simply are that (pure, creative spirit), have been always, and always will be. So, you did the next best thing. You caused yourself to forget Who You Really Are.

Upon entering the physical universe, you relinquished your remembrance of yourself. This allows you to choose to be Who You Are, rather than simply wake up in the castle, so to speak.

It is in the act of choosing to be, rather than simply being told that you are, a part of God that you experience yourself as being at total choice, which is what, by definition, God is. Yet how can you have a choice about something over which there is no choice? You cannot not be My offspring no matter how hard you try—but you can forget.

You are, have always been, and will always be, a divine part of the divine whole, a member of the body. That is why the act of rejoining the whole, of returning to God, is called remembrance. You actually choose to remember Who You Really Are, or to join together with the various parts of you to experience the all of you—which is to say, the All of Me.

Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to re-member Who You Are. And to re-member who everyone else is. That is why a big part of your job is to remind others (that is, to re-mind them), so that they can re-member also.

All the wonderful spiritual teachers haw been doing just that. It is your sole purpose. That is to say, your soul purpose.

My God, this is so simple—and so… symmetrical. I mean, it all fits in! It all suddenly fits! I see, now, a picture I have never quite put together before.

Good. That is good. That is the purpose of this dialogue. You have asked Me for answers. I have promised I would give them to you. You will make of this dialogue a book, and you will render My words accessible to many people. It is part of your work. Now, you have many questions, many inquiries to make about life. We have here placed the foundation. We have laid the groundwork for other understandings. Let us go to these other questions. And do not worry. If there is something about what we’ve just gone through you do not thoroughly understand, it will all be clear to you soon enough.

There is so much I want to ask. There are so many questions. I suppose I should start with the big ones, the obvious ones. Like, why is the world in the shape it’s in?

Of all the questions man has asked of God, this is the one asked most often. From the beginning of time man has asked it. From the first moment to this you have wanted to know, why must it be like this?

The classic posing of the question is usually something like: If God is all-perfect and all-loving, why would God create pestilence and famine, war and disease, earthquakes and tornados and hurricanes and all manner of natural disaster, deep personal disappointment, and worldwide calamity?

The answer to this question lies in the deeper mystery of the universe and the highest meaning of life.

I do not show My goodness by creating only what you call perfection all around you. I do not demonstrate My love by not allowing you to demonstrate yours.

As I have already explained, you cannot demonstrate love until you can demonstrate not loving. A thing cannot exist without its opposite, except in the world of the absolute. Yet the realm of the absolute was not sufficient for either you or Me. I existed there, in the always, and it is from where you, too, have come.

In the absolute there is no experience, only knowing. Knowing is a divine state, yet the grandest joy is in being. Being is achieved only after experience. The evolution is this: knowing, experiencing, being. This is the Holy Trinity—the Triune that is God.

God the Father is knowing—the parent of all understandings, the begetter of all experience, for you cannot experience that which you do not know.

God the Son is experiencing—the embodiment, the acting out, of all that the Father knows of Itself, for you cannot be that which you have not experienced.

God the Holy Spirit is being—the disembodiment of all that the Son has experienced of Itself; the simple, exquisite is-ness possible only through the memory of the knowing and experiencing.

This simple being is bliss. It is God-state, after knowing and experiencing Itself. It is that for which God yearned in the beginning. Of course, you are well past the point where you must have it explained to you that the father-son descriptions of God have nothing to do with gender. I use here the picturesque speech of your most recent scriptures. Much earlier holy writings placed this metaphor in a mother-daughter context. Neither is correct. Your mind can best hold the relationship as: parent-offspring. Or: that-which-gives-rise-to, and that-which-is-risen. Adding the third part of the Trinity produces this relationship: That which gives rise to / That which is risen / That which is. This Triune Reality is God’s signature. It is the divine pattern. The three- in-one is everywhere found in the realms of the sublime. You cannot escape it in matters dealing with time and space, God and consciousness, or any of the subtle relationships. On the other hand, you will not find the Triune Truth in any of life’s gross relationships.

The Triune Truth is recognized in life’s subtle relationships by everyone dealing with such relationships. Some of your religionists have described the Triune Truth as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Some of your psychiatrists use the terms superconscious, conscious and subconscious. Some of your spiritualists say mind, body, and spirit. Some of your scientists see energy, matter, ether. Some of your philosophers say a thing is not true for you until it is true in thought, word, and deed. When discussing time, you speak of three times only: past, present, future. Similarly, there are three moments in your perception—before, now, and after. In terms of spatial relationships, whether considering the points in the universe, or various points in your own room, you recognize here, there, and the space in between.

In matters of gross relationships, you recognize no “in-between.” That is because gross relationships are always dyads, whereas relationships of the higher realm are invariably triads. Hence, there is left-right, up-down, big- small, fast-slow, hot-cold, and the greatest dyad ever created: male-female. There are no in-betweens in these dyads. A thing is either one thing or the other, or some greater or lesser version in relationship to one of these polarities.

Within the realm of gross relationships, nothing conceptualized can exist without a conceptualization of its opposite. Most of your day-to-day experience is foundationed in this reality.

Within the realm of sublime relationships nothing which exists has an opposite. All Is One, and everything progresses from one to the other in a never-ending circle.

Time is such a sublime realm, in which what you call past, present, and future exist inter-relationally. That is, they are not opposites, but rather parts of the same whole; progressions of the same idea; cycles of the same energy; aspects of the same immutable Truth. If you conclude from this that past, present, and future exist at one and the same “time,” you are right. (Yet now is not the moment to discuss that. We can get into this in much greater detail when we explore the whole concept of time—which we will do later.)

The world is the way it is because it could not be any other way and still exist in the gross realm of physicality. Earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and tornados, and events that you call natural disasters are but movements of the elements from one polarity to the other. The whole birth-death cycle is part of this movement. These are the rhythms of life, and everything in gross reality is subject to them, because life itself is a rhythm. It is a wave, a vibration, a pulsation at the very heart of the All That Is.

Illness and disease are opposites of health and wellness, and are made manifest in your reality at your behest. You cannot be ill without at some level causing yourself to be, and you can be well again in a moment by simply deciding to be. Deep personal disappointments are responses which are chosen, and worldwide calamities are the result of worldwide consciousness.

Your question infers that I choose these events, that it is My will and desire they should occur. Yet I do not will these things into being, I merely observe you doing so. And I do nothing to stop them, because to do so would be to thwart your will. That, in turn, would deprive you of the God experience, which is the experience you and I have chosen together.

Do not condemn, therefore, all that you would call bad in the world. Rather, ask yourself, what about this have you judged bad, and what, if anything, you wish to do to change it.

Inquire within, rather than without, asking: “What part of my Self do I wish to experience now in the face of this calamity? What aspect of being do I choose to call forth?” For all of life exists as a tool of your own creation, and all of its events merely present themselves as opportunities for you to decide, and be, Who You Are.

This is true for every soul, and so you see there are no victims in the universe, only creators. The Masters who have walked this planet all knew this. That is why, no matter which Master you might name, none imagined themselves to be victimized—though many were truly crucified.

Each soul is a Master—though some do not remember their origins or their heritages. Yet each creates the situation and the circumstance for its own highest purpose and its own quickest remembering—in each moment called now.

Judge not, then, the karmic path walked by another. Envy not success, nor pity failure, for you know not what is success or failure in the soul’s reckoning. Call not a thing calamity, nor joyous event, until you decide, or witness, how it is used. For is a death a calamity if it saves the lives of thousands? And is a life a joyous event if it has caused nothing but grief? Yet even this you should not judge, but keep always your own counsel, and allow others theirs.

This does not mean ignore a call for help, nor the urging of your own soul to work toward the change of some circumstance or condition. It does mean avoiding labels and judgment while you do whatever you do. For each circumstance is a gift, and in each experience is hidden a treasure.

There once was a soul who knew itself to be the light. This was a new soul, and so, anxious for experience. “I am the light,” it said. “I am the light.” Yet all the knowing of it and all the saying of it could not substitute for the experience of it. And in the realm from which this soul emerged, there was nothing but the light. Every soul was grand, every soul was magnificent, and every soul shone with the brilliance of My awesome light. And so the little soul in question was as a candle in the sun. In the midst of the grandest light —of which it was a part—it could not see itself, nor experience itself as Who and What it Really Is.

Now it came to pass that this soul yearned and yearned to know itself. And so great was its yearning that I one day said, “Do you know, Little One, what you must do to satisfy this yearning of yours?”

“Oh, what, God? What? I’ll do anything!” The little soul said.

“You must separate yourself from the rest, of us,” I answered, “and then you must call upon yourself the darkness.’

“What is the darkness, o Holy One?” the little soul asked.

“That which you are not,” I replied, and the soul understood.

And so this the soul did, removing itself from the All, yea, going even unto another realm. And in this realm the soul had the power to call into its experience all sorts of darkness. And this it did.

Yet in the midst of all the darkness did it cry out, “Father, Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Even as have you in your blackest times. Yet I have never forsaken you, but stand by you always, ready to remind you of Who You Really Are; ready, always ready, to call you home.

Therefore, be a light unto the darkness, and curse it not.

And forget not Who You Are in the moment of your encirclement by that which you are not. But do you praise to the creation, even as you seek to change it.

And know that what you do in the time of your greatest trial can be your greatest triumph. For the experience you create is a statement of Who You Are—and Who You Want to Be.

I have told you this story—the parable of the little soul and the sun—so that you might better understand why the world is the way it is—and how it can change in an instant the moment everyone remembers the divine truth of their highest reality.

Now there are those who say that life is a school, and that these things which you observe and experience in your life are for your learning. I have addressed this before, and I tell you again:

You came into this life with nothing to learn—you have only to demonstrate what you already know. In the demonstration of it will you function it out, and create yourself anew, through your experience. Thus do you justify life, and give it purpose. Thus do you render it holy.

Are you saying that all the bad things that happen to us are things of our own choosing? Do you mean that even the world’s calamities and disasters are, at some level, created by us so that we can “experience the opposite of Who We Are”? And, if so, isn’t there some less painful way—less painful to ourselves and others—to create opportunities for us to experience ourselves?

You’ve asked several questions, and they are all good ones. Let’s take them one at a time.

No, not all the things which you call bad which happen to you are of your own choosing. Not in the conscious sense—which you mean. They are all of your own creation.

You are always in the process of creating. Every moment. Every minute. Every day. How you can create we’ll go into later. For now, just take my word for it—you are a big creation machine, and you are turning out a new manifestation literally as fast as you can think.

Events, occurrences, happenings, conditions, circumstances—all are created out of consciousness. Individual consciousness is powerful enough. You can imagine what kind of creative energy is unleashed whenever two or more are gathered in My name. And mass consciousness? Why, that is so powerful it can create events and circumstances of worldwide import and planetary consequences.

It would not be accurate to say—not in the way you mean it—that you are choosing these consequences. You are not choosing them anymore than I am choosing them. Like Me, you are observing them. And deciding Who You Are with regard to them.

Yet there are no victims in the world, and no villains. And neither are you a victim of the choices of others. At some level you have all created that which you say you detest—and, having created it, you have chosen it.

This is an advanced level of thinking, and it is one which all Masters reach sooner or later. For it is only when they can accept responsibility for all of it that they can achieve the power to change part of it.

So long as you entertain the notion that there is something or someone else out there “doing it” to you, you disempower yourself to do anything about it. Only when you say “I did this” can you find the power to change it.

It is much easier to change what you are doing than to change what another is doing.

The first step in changing anything is to know and accept that you have chosen it to be what it is. If you can’t accept this on a personal level, agree to it through your understanding that. We are all One. Seek then to create change not because a thing is wrong, but because it no longer makes an accurate statement of Who You Are.

There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement to the universe of Who You Are.

Used in this way, life becomes Self creative. You use life to create your Self as Who You Are, and Who You’ve Always Wanted to Be. There is also only one reason to un-do anything: because it is no longer a statement of Who You Want to Be. It does not reflect you. It does not represent you. (That is, it does not re-present you…)

If you wish to be accurately re-presented, you must work to change anything in your life which does not fit into the picture of you that you wish to project into eternity.

In the largest sense, all the “bad” things that happen are of your choosing. The mistake is not in choosing them, but in calling them bad. For in calling them bad, you call your Self bad, since you created them.

This label you cannot accept, so rather than label your Self bad, you disown your own creations. It is this intellectual and spiritual dishonesty which lets you accept a world in which conditions are as they are. If you had to accept—or even felt a deep inner sense of—personal responsibility for the world, it would be a far different place. This would certainly be true if everyone felt responsible. That this is so patently obvious is what makes it so utterly painful, and so poignantly ironic.

The world’s natural calamities and disasters—its tornados and hurricanes, volcanoes and floods—its physical turmoils—are not created by you specifically. What is created by you is the degree to which these events touch your life.

Events occur in the universe which no stretch of the imagination could claim you instigated or created.

These events are created by the combined consciousness of man. All of the world, co-creating together, produces these experiences. What each of you do, individually, is move through them, deciding what, if anything, they mean to you, and Who and What You Are in relationship to them.

Thus, you create collectively, and individually, the life and times you are experiencing, for the soul purpose of evolving.

You’ve asked if there is a less painful way to undergo this process—and the answer is yes—yet nothing in your outward experience will have changed. The way to reduce the pain which you associate with earthly experiences and events—both yours and those of others—is to change the way you behold them.

You cannot change the outer event (for that has been created by the lot of you, and you are not grown enough in your consciousness to alter individually that which has been created collectively), so you must change the inner experience. This is the road to mastery in living.

Nothing is painful in and of itself. Pain is a result of wrong thought. It is an error in thinking.

A Master can disappear the most grievous pain. In this way, the Master heals.

Pain results from a judgment you have made about a thing. Remove the judgment and the pain disappears.

Judgment is often based upon previous experience. Your idea about a thing derives from a prior idea about that thing. Your prior idea results from a still prior idea—and that idea from another, and so forth, like building blocks, until you get all the way back in the hall of mirrors to what I call first thought.

All thought is creative, and no thought is more powerful than original thought. That is why this is sometimes also called original sin. Original sin is when your first thought about a thing is in error. That error is compounded many times over when you have a second or third thought about a thing. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to inspire you to new understandings, which can free you from your mistakes.

Are you saying that I shouldn’t feel bad about the starving children of Africa, the violence and injustice in America, the earthquake that kills hundreds in Brazil?

There are no “shoulds” or “shouldn’ts” in God’s world. Do what you want to do. Do what reflects you, what re-presents you as a grander version of your Self. If you want to feel bad, feel bad.

But judge not, and neither condemn, for you know not why a thing occurs, nor to what end.

And remember you this: that which you condemn will condemn you, and that which you judge, you will one day become.

Rather, seek to change those things—or support others who are changing those things—which no longer reflect your highest sense of Who You Are.

Yet, bless all—for all is the creation of God, through life living, and that is the highest creation.

Could we just stop here for a moment and let me catch my breath? Did I hear you say there are no “shoulds” or “should nots” in God’s world?

That is correct.

How can that be? If there are none in Your world, where would they be?

Indeed—where…?

I repeat the question. Where else would “shoulds” and “should nots” appear, if not in Your world?

In your imagination.

But those who have taught me all about the rights and wrongs, the dos and don’ts, the shoulds and shouldn’ts, told me all those rules were laid down by You—by God.

Then those who taught you were wrong. I have never set down a “right” or “wrong,” a “do” or a “don’t.” To do so would be to strip you completely of your greatest gift—the opportunity to do as you please, and experience the results of that; the chance to create yourself anew in the image and likeness of Who You Really Are; the space to produce a reality of a higher and higher you, based on your grandest idea of what it is of which you are capable.

To say that something—a thought, a word, an action—is “wrong” would be as much as to tell you not to do it. To tell you not to do it would be to prohibit you. To prohibit you would be to restrict you. To restrict you would be to deny the reality of Who You Really Are, as well as the opportunity for you to create and experience that truth.

There are those who say that I have given you free will, yet these same people claim that if you do not obey Me, I will send you to hell. What kind of free will is that? Does this not make a mockery of God—to say nothing of any sort of true relationship between us?

Well, now we’re getting into another area I wanted to discuss, and that’s this whole business about heaven and hell. From what I’m gathering here, there is no such thing as hell.

There is hell, but it is not what you think, and you do not experience it for the reasons you have been given.

What is hell?

It is the experience of the worst possible outcome of your choices, decisions, and creations. It is the natural consequence of any thought which denies Me, or says no to Who You Are in relationship to Me.

It is the pain you suffer through wrong thinking. Yet even the term “wrong thinking” is a misnomer, because there is no such thing as that which is wrong.

Hell is the opposite of joy. It is unfulfillment. It is knowing Who and What You Are, and failing to experience that. It is being less. That is hell, and there is none greater for your soul.

But hell does not exist as this place you have fantasized, where you burn in some everlasting fire, or exist in some state of everlasting torment. What purpose could I have in that?

Even if I did hold the extraordinarily unGodly thought that you did not “deserve” heaven, why would I have a need to seek some kind of revenge, or punishment, for your failing? Wouldn’t it be a simple matter for Me to just dispose of you? What vengeful part of Me would require that I subject you to eternal suffering of a type and at a level beyond description?

If you answer, the need for justice, would not a simple denial of communion with Me in heaven serve the ends of justice? Is the unending infliction of pain also required?

I tell you there is no such experience after death as you have constructed in your fear-based theologies. Yet there is an experience of the soul so unhappy, so incomplete, so less than whole, so separated from God’s greatest joy, that to your soul this would be hell. But I tell you I do not send you there, nor do I cause this experience to be visited upon you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever and however you separate your Self from your own highest thought about you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever you deny your Self; whenever you reject Who and What You Really Are.

Yet even this experience is never eternal. It cannot be, for it is not My plan that you shall be separated from Me forever and ever. Indeed, such a thing is an impossibility—for to achieve such an event, not only would you have to deny Who You Are—I would have to as well. This I will never do. And so long as one of us holds the truth about you, the truth about you shall ultimately prevail.

But if there is no hell, does that mean I can do what I want, act as I wish, commit any act, without fear of retribution?

Is it fear that you need in order to be, do, and have what is intrinsically right? Must you be threatened in order to “be good”? And what is “being good”? Who gets to have the final say about that? Who sets the guidelines? Who makes the rules?

I tell you this: You are your own rule-maker. You set the guidelines. And you decide how well you have done; how well you are doing. For you are the one who has decided Who and What You Really Are—and Who You Want to Be. And you are the only one who can assess how well you’re doing.

No one else will judge you ever, for why, and how, could God judge God’s own creation and call it bad? If I wanted you to be and do everything perfectly, I would have left you in the state of total perfection whence you came. The whole point of the process was for you to discover yourself, create your Self, as you truly are—and as you truly wish to be. Yet you could not be that unless you also had a choice to be something else.

Should I therefore punish you for making a choice that I Myself haw laid before you? If I did not want you to make the second choice, why would I create other than the first?

This is a question you must ask yourself before you would assign Me the role of a condemning God.

The direct answer to your question is, yes, you may do as you wish without fear of retribution. It may serve you, however, to be aware of consequences.

Consequences are results. Natural outcomes. These are not at all the same as retributions, or punishments. Outcomes are simply that. They are what results from the natural application of natural laws. They are that which occurs, quite predictably, as a consequence of what has occurred.

All physical life functions in accordance with natural laws. Once you remember these laws, and apply them, you have mastered life at the physical level.

What seems like punishment to you—or what you would call evil, or bad luck—is nothing more than a natural law asserting itself.

Then if I were to know these laws, and obey them, I would never have a moment’s trouble again. Is that what you’re telling me?

You would never experience your Self as being in what you call “trouble.” You would not understand any life situation to be a problem. You would not encounter any circumstance with trepidation. You would put an end to all worry, doubt, and fear. You would live as you fantasize Adam and Eve lived— not as disembodied spirits in the realm of the absolute, but as embodied spirits in the realm of the relative. Yet you would have all the freedom, all the joy, all the peace, and all the wisdom, understanding and power of the Spirit you are. You would be a fully realized being.

This is the goal of your soul. This is its purpose—to fully realize itself while in the body; to become the embodiment of all that it really is. This is My plan for you. This is My ideal: that I should become realized through you. That thus, concept is turned into experience, that I might know my Self experientially.

The Laws of the Universe are laws that I laid down. They are perfect laws, creating perfect function of the physical.

Have you ever seen anything more perfect than a snowflake? Its intricacy, its design, its symmetry, its conformity to itself and originality from all else—all are a mystery. You wonder at the miracle of this awesome display of Nature. Yet if I can do this with a single snowflake, what think you I can do—have done —with the universe?

Were you to see the symmetry of it, the perfection of its design—from the largest body to the smallest particle—you would not be able to hold the truth of it in your reality. Even now, as you get glimpses of it, you cannot yet imagine or understand its implications. Yet you can know there are implications—far more complex and far more extraordinary than your present comprehension can embrace. Your Shakespeare said it wonderfully: There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Then how can I know these laws? How can I learn them?

It is not a question of learning, but of remembering.

How can I remember them?

Begin by being still. Quiet the outer world, so that the inner world might bring you sight. This in-sight is what you seek, yet you cannot have it while you are so deeply concerned with your outer reality. Seek, therefore, to go within as much as possible. And when you are not going within, come from within as you deal with the outside world. Remember this axiom:

If you do not go within, you go without.

Put it in the first person as you repeat it, to make it more personal:

If I do not

go within

I

go without

You have been going without all your life. Yet you do not have to, and never did.

There is nothing you cannot be, there is nothing you cannot do. There is nothing you cannot have.

That sounds like a pie-in-the-sky promise.

What other kind of promise would you have God make? Would you believe Me if I promised you less?

For thousands of years people have disbelieved the promises of God for the most extraordinary reason: they were too good to be true. So you have chosen a lesser promise—a lesser love. For the highest promise of God proceeds from the highest love. Yet you cannot conceive of a perfect love, and so a perfect promise is also inconceivable. As is a perfect person. Therefore you cannot believe even in your Self.

Failing to believe in any of this means failure to believe in God. For belief in God produces belief in God’s greatest gift—unconditional love—and God’s greatest promise—unlimited potential.

May I interrupt you here? I hate to interrupt God when He’s on a roll… but I’ve heard this talk of unlimited potential before, and it doesn’t square with the human experience. Forget the difficulties encountered by the average person—what about the challenges of those born with mental or physical limitations? Is their potential unlimited?

You have written so in your own Scripture—in many ways and in many places.

Give me one reference.

Look to see what you have written in Genesis, chapter 11, verse 6, of your Bible.

It says, “And the Lord said, ‘Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.’ ”

Yes. Now, can you trust that?

That does not answer the question of the feeble, the infirm, the handicapped, those who are limited.

Do you think they are limited, as you put it, not of their choice? Do you imagine that a human soul encounters life challenges—whatever they may be—by accident? Is this your imagining?

Do you mean a soul chooses what kind of life it will experience ahead of time?

No, that would defeat the purpose of the encounter. The purpose is to create your experience—and thus, create your Self—in the glorious moment of Now. You do not, therefore, choose the life you will experience ahead of time.

You may, however, select the persons, places, and events—the conditions and circumstances, the challenges and obstacles, the opportunities and options—with which to create your experience. You may select the colors for your palette, the tools for your chest, the machinery for your shop. What you create with these is your business. That is the business of life.

Your potential is unlimited in all that you’ve chosen to do. Do not assume that a soul which has incarnated in a body which you call limited has not reached its full potential, for you do not know what that soul was trying to do. You do not understand its agenda. You are unclear as to its intent.

Therefore bless every person and condition, and give thanks. Thus you affirm the perfection of God’s creation—and show your faith in it. For nothing happens by accident in God’s world, and there is no such thing as coincidence. Nor is the world buffeted by random choice, or something you call fate.

If a snowflake is utterly perfect in its design, do you not think the same could be said about something as magnificent as your life?

But even Jesus healed the sick. Why would he heal them if their condition was so “perfect”?

Jesus did not heal those he healed because he saw their condition as imperfect. He healed those he healed because he saw those souls asking for healing as part of their process. He saw the perfection of the process. He recognized and understood the soul’s intention. Had Jesus felt that all illness, mental or physical, represented imperfection, would he not have simply healed everyone on the planet, all at once? Do you doubt that he could do this?

No. I believe he could have.

Good. Then the mind begs to know: Why did he not do it? Why would the Christ choose to have some suffer, and others be healed? For that matter, why does God allow any suffering at anytime? This question has been asked before, and the answer remains the same. There is perfection in the process —and all life arises out of choice. It is not appropriate to interfere with choice, nor to question it. It is particularly inappropriate to condemn it.

What is appropriate is to observe it, and then to do whatever might be done to assist the soul in seeking and making a higher choice. Be watchful, therefore, of the choices of others, but not judgmental. Know that their choice is perfect for them in this moment now—yet stand ready to assist them should the moment come when they seek a newer choice, a different choice —a higher choice.

Move into communion with the souls of others, and their purpose, their intention, will be clear to you. This is what Jesus did with those he healed— and with all those whose lives he touched. Jesus healed all those who came to him, or who sent others to him supplicating for them. He did not perform a random healing. To have done so would have been to violate a sacred Law of the Universe:

Allow each soul to walk its path.

But does that mean we must not help anyone without being asked? Surely not, or we would never be able to help the starving children of India, or the tortured masses of Africa, or the poor, or the downtrodden anywhere. All humanitarian effort would be lost, all charity forbidden. Must we wait for an individual to cry out to us in desperation, or for a nation of people to plead for help, before we are allowed to do what is obviously right?

You see, the question answers itself. If a thing is obviously right, do it. But remember to exercise extreme judgment regarding what you call “right” and “wrong.”

A thing is only right or wrong because you say it is. A thing is not right or wrong intrinsically.

It isn’t?

“Rightness” or “wrongness” is not an intrinsic condition, it is a subjective judgment in a personal value system. By your subjective judgments do you create your Self—by your personal values do you determine and demonstrate Who You Are.

The world exists exactly as it is so that you may make these judgments. If the world existed in perfect condition, your life process of Self creation would be terminated. It would end. A lawyer’s career would end tomorrow were there no more litigation. A doctor’s career would end tomorrow were there no more illness. A philosopher’s career would end tomorrow were there no more questions.

And God’s career would end tomorrow were there no more problems!

Precisely. You have put it perfectly. We, all of us, would be through creating were there nothing more to create. We, all of us, have a vested interest in keeping the game going. Much as we all say we would like to solve all the problems, we dare not solve all the problems, or there will be nothing left for us to do.

Your industrial-military complex understands this very well. That is why it opposes mightily any attempt to install a war-no-more government— anywhere.

Your medical establishment understands this, too. That is why it staunchly opposes—it must, it has to for its own survival—any new miracle drug or cure—to say nothing of the possibility of miracles themselves.

Your religious community also holds this clarity. That is why it attacks uniformly any definition of God which does not include fear, judgment and retribution, and any definition of Self which does not include their own idea of the only path to God.

If I say to you, you are God—where does that leave religion? If I say to you, you are healed, where does that leave science, and medicine? If I say to you, you shall live in peace, where does that leave the peacemakers? If I say to you, the world is fixed—where does that leave the world?

What, now, of plumbers?

The world is filled with essentially two kinds of people: those who give you things you want, and those who fix things. In a sense, even those who simply give you things you want—the butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers—are also fixers. For to have a desire for something is often to have a need for it. That is why addicts are said to need a fix. Be careful, therefore, that desire not become addiction.

Are you saying the world will always have problems? Are you saying that you actually want it that way?

I am saying that the world exists the way it exists—just as a snowflake exists the way it exists—quite by design. You have created it that way—just as you have created your life exactly as it is.

I want what you want. The day you really want an end to hunger, there will be no more hunger. I have given you all the resources with which to do that. You have all the tools with which to make that choice. You have not made it. Not because you cannot make it. The world could end world hunger tomorrow. You choose not to make it.

You claim that there are good reasons that 40,000 people a day must die of hunger. There are no good reasons. Yet at a time when you say you can do nothing to stop 40,000 people a day from dying of hunger, you bring 50,000 people a day into your world to begin a new life. And this you call love. This you call God’s plan. It is a plan which totally lacks logic or reason, to say nothing of compassion.

I am showing you in stark terms that the world exists the way it exists because you have chosen for it to. You are systematically destroying your own environment, then pointing to so-called natural disasters as evidence of God’s cruel hoax, or Nature’s harsh ways. You have played the hoax on yourself, and it is your ways which are cruel.

Nothing, nothing is more gentle than Nature. And nothing, nothing has been more cruel to Nature than man. Yet you step aside from all involvement in this; deny all responsibility. It is not your fault, you say, and in this you are right It is not a question of fault, it is a matter of choice.

You can choose to end the destruction of your rain forests tomorrow. You can choose to stop depleting the protective layer hovering over your planet. You can choose to discontinue the ongoing, onslaught of your earth’s ingenious ecosystem. You can seek to put the snowflake back together—or at least to halt its inexorable melting—but will you do it?— You can similarly end all war tomorrow. Simply. Easily. All it takes—all it has ever taken—is for all of you to agree. Yet if you cannot all agree on something as basically simple as ending the killing of each other, how can you call upon the heavens with shaking fist to put your life in order?

I will do nothing for you that you will not do for your Self. That is the law and the prophets.

The world is in the condition it is in because of you, and the choices you have made—or failed to make.

(Not to decide is to decide.)

The Earth is in the shape it’s in because of you, and the choices you have made—or failed to make.

Your own life is the way it is because of you, and the choices you have made—or failed to make.

But I did not choose to get hit by that truck! I did not choose to get mugged by that robber, or raped by that maniac. People could say that. There are people in the world who could say that.

You are all at root cause for the conditions which exist which create in the robber the desire, or the perceived need, to steal. You have all created the consciousness which makes rape possible. It is when you see in yourself that which caused the crime that you begin, at last, to heal the condition from which it sprang.

Feed your hungry, give dignity to your poor. Grant opportunity to your less fortunate. End the prejudice which keeps masses huddled and angry, with little promise of a better tomorrow. Put away your pointless taboos and restrictions upon sexual energy—rather, help others to truly understand its wonder, and to channel it properly. Do these things and you will go a long way toward ending robbery and rape forever.

As for the so-called “accident”—the truck coming around the bend, the brick falling from the sky—learn to greet each such incident as a small part of a larger mosaic. You have come here to work out an individual plan for your own salvation. Yet salvation does not mean saving yourself from the snares of the devil. There is no such thing as the devil, and hell does not exist. You are saving yourself from the oblivion of non-realization.

You cannot lose in this battle. You cannot fail. Thus it is not a battle at all, but simply a process. Yet if you do not know this, you will see it as a constant struggle. You may even believe in the struggle long enough to create a whole religion around it. This religion will teach that struggle is the point of it all. This is a false teaching. It is in not struggling that the process proceeds. It is in surrendering that the victory is won.

Accidents happen because they do. Certain elements of the life process have come together in a particular way at a particular time, with particular results—results which you choose to call unfortunate, for your own particular reasons. Yet they may not be unfortunate at all, given the agenda of your soul.

I tell you this: There is no coincidence, and nothing happens “by accident.” Each event and adventure is called to your Self by your Self in order that you might create and experience Who You Really Are. All true Masters know this. That is why mystic Masters remain unperturbed in the face of the worst experiences of life (as you would define them).

The great teachers of your Christian religion understand this. They know that Jesus was not perturbed by the crucifixion, but expected it. He could have walked away, but he did not. He could have stopped the process at any point. He had that power. Yet he did not. He allowed himself to he crucified in order that he might stand as man’s eternal salvation. Look, he said, at what I can do. Look at what is true. And know that these things, and more, shall you also do. For have I not said, ye are gods? Yet you do not believe. If you cannot, then, believe in yourself, believe in me.

Such was Jesus’ compassion that he begged for a way—and created it —to so impact the world that all might come to heaven (Self realization)—if in no other way, then through him. For he defeated misery, and death. And so might you.

The grandest teaching of Christ was not that you shall have everlasting life—but that you do; not that you shall have brotherhood in God, but that you do; not that you shall have whatever you request, but that you do.

All that is required is to know this. For you are the creator of your reality, and life can show up no other way for you than that way in which you think it will.

You think it into being. This is the first step in creation. God the Father is thought. Your thought is the parent which gives birth to all things.

This is one of the laws we are to remember.

Yes.

Can you tell me others?

I have told you others. I’ve told you them all, since the beginning of time. Over and over have I told you them. Teacher after teacher have I sent