The Moment of Choice is Here -- It Is Time To Change Course

The time has come to make a decision. Humanity as a collec­tive is nearing the end of its ability to go on the way it has been.

That isn’t meant to be a doomsday warning, just a word to the wise. We have to change course here, and the fastest way we can do it is to change our ideas about God.

That’s the decision we’re now being invited to make. Are we ready to change our mind about God? And while we’re at it, are we ready to make a firm and final decision about ourselves and about who we are?

Nearly Five Billion People Believe In A Higher Power

With nearly five billion of the world’s seven billion people professing a belief in a higher power, you can bet your life (in fact, you are) that important decisions are being made—politi­cal decisions, economic decisions, environmental decisions, educational decisions, social decisions, and spiritual deci­sions—based on what people believe about  this higher power. That includes you.

So this business of how humanity thinks about God, and how human beings think of themselves in relationship to God, is no small matter.


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For instance, think of the lives that would be saved if our species simply dropped all behaviors that arose from the notion that we are all separated from each other and from God.

Imagine How Life Would Be

Imagine how life would be on this planet if we simply acted as if there is no separation between us—that it really is true that what I do for you, I do for me, and what I fail to do for you, I fail to do for me. The political, economic, and social ramifications of that single idea are staggering. With the on-the-ground implementation of such a thought, all of the systems we have created to produce a better life for everyone could actually work.

Finally.

Starvation could end. Oppression could end. Domination could end. Terrorism could end. Despoiling of the environ­ment could end. Abject poverty could end. Worldwide human suffering could end.

Survival of the Whole, Not Just of the Parts

Our dysfunctional behaviors can’t  end now because they are based on, and emerge from, a “survival of the fittest” mentality that only a belief in separation could produce. And in every civ­ilization where the highest value is survival of the Whole rather than survival of its parts, a huge transformation takes place.

This can happen now on the earth.

Not overnight. No. Not in a week or a month or a year. No. But sooner rather than later? Yes. In decades rather than cen­turies? Yes. Because our collective consciousness of oneness will rapidly override and render undesirable all of our previ­ous unconscionable behaviors.

Yet this is not a matter of only global consequence. Chang­ing your mind about your oneness with God and with each other can have immediate and remarkable implications in your own life.

More peace can be yours. More joy can be yours. Greater sufficiency can be yours. More love and companionship can be yours. And not just temporarily. Not just once in a while. Not just now and then, but all through the rest of your life. And all from a simple shift in your thinking.

A Single Decision That Could Change Your Life Forever

This text is intended to get you started in that direction with an invitation for you to start here. It challenges you to make a simple choice. That choice has to do with how you see yourself in the universe.

I wrote about this in The Storm Before the Calm, and I want to repeat here what I said there, because the following single decision could change your life forever.

Proposition: You (and all of us) have two choices when it comes to how you think of yourself.

Choice #1: You could conceive of yourself as a chemical creature, a “logical biological incident.” That is, the logical outcome of a biological process engaged in by two older biological pro­cesses called your mother and your father.

If you see yourself as a chemical creature, you would see yourself as having no more connection to the larger processes of life than any other chemical or biological life form.

Like all the others, you would be impacted by life, but could have very little impact on life. You certainly couldn’t create events, except in the most remote, indirect sense. You could create more life (all chemical creatures carry the biological capacity to recreate more of themselves), but you could not create what life does, or how it “shows up” in any given moment.

Further, as a chemical creature you would see yourself as having very limited ability to create an intentioned response to the events and conditions of life. You would see yourself as a creature of habit and instinct, with only those resources that your biology brings you.

You would see yourself as having more resources than a turtle, because your biology has gifted you with more. You would see yourself as having more resources than a butterfly, because your biology has gifted you with more.

Yet that is all you would see yourself as having in terms of resources.

You would see yourself as having to deal with life day-by-day pretty much as it comes, with perhaps a tiny bit of what seems like “control” based on advance planning, etc., but you would know that at any minute anything could go wrong— and often does.

Choice #2: You could conceive of yourself as a spiritual being inhabiting a biological mass—what I call a “body.”

If you saw yourself as a spiritual being, you would see yourself as having powers and abilities far beyond those of a simple chemical creature; powers that transcend basic physicality and its laws.

You would understand that these powers and abilities give you collaborative control over the exterior elements of your individual and collective life and complete control over the interior elements—which means that you have total ability to create your own reality, because your reality has nothing to do with producing the exterior elements of your life and every­thing to do with how you respond to the elements that have been produced.

Also, as a spiritual being, you would know that you are here (on the earth, that is) for a spiritual reason. This is a highly focused purpose and has little to do directly with your occupation or career, your income or possessions or achievements or place in society, or any of the exterior conditions or circumstances of your life.

You would know that your purpose has to do with your interior life—and that how well you do in achieving  your pur­pose may very often have an effect  on your exterior life.

(For the interior life of each individual cumulatively produces the exterior life of the collective. That is, those people around you, and those people who are around those people who are around you. It is in this way that you, as a spiritual being, participate in the evolution of your species.)

My own answer: I’ve decided that I am a spiritual being, a three-part being made up of body, mind, and soul. Each part of my tri-part being has a function and a purpose. As I come to understand each of those functions, each aspect of me begins to more efficiently serve its purpose in my life.

I am an Individuation of Divinity, an expression of God, a singularization of the singularity. There is no separation between me and God, nor is there any difference, except as to proportion. Put simply, God and I are one.

This brings up an interesting question. Am I rightly accused of heresy? Are people who believe that they are divine nothing but raving lunatics? Are they, worse yet, apostates?

I wondered. So I did a little research. I wanted to find out what religious and spiritual sources had to say on the subject. Here’s some of what I found . . . .

Isaiah 41:23—Shew the things that are to come hereaf­ter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold together.

Psalm 82:6—I have said, ‘Gods ye are, And sons of the Most High—all of you.

John 10:34—Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, “I said, Ye are gods?”

The Indian philosopher Adi Shankara (788 CE – 820 CE), the one largely responsible for the initial expounding and consolidation of Advaita Vedanta, wrote in his famous work, Vivekachudamani: “Brahman is the only Truth, the spatio-temporal world is an illusion, and there is ultimately Brahman and individual self.”

Sri Swami Krishnananda Saraswati Maharaj (April 25, 1922 – November 23, 2001), a Hindu saint: “God exists; there is only one God; the essence of man is God.”

According to Buddhism there ultimately is no such thing as a Self that is independent from the rest of the universe (the doctrine of anatta). Also, if I understand certain Buddhist schools of thought correctly, humans return to the earth in subsequent lifetimes in one of six forms, the last of which are called Devas . . . which is variously translated as Gods or Deities.

Meanwhile, the ancient Chinese discipline of Tao­ism speaks of embodiment and pragmatism, engaging prac­tice to actualize the Natural Order within themselves. Taoists believe that man is a microcosm for the universe.

Hermeticism is a set of philosophical and reli­gious beliefs or gnosis based primarily upon the Hellenistic Egyptian pseudepigraphical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Hermeticism teaches that there is a transcen­dent God, The All, or one “Cause,” of which we, and the entire universe, participate.

The concept was first laid out in The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, in the famous words: “That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above, corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.”

And in Sufism, an esoteric form of Islam, the teaching, There is no God but God was long ago changed to, There is nothing but God. Which would make me . . . well . . . God.

What Is Your Response?

Enough? Do you wish or need more? You might find it instructive and fascinating to go to Wikipedia, the source to which I owe my appreciation for much of the above information.

As well, read the remarkable books of Huston Smith, a globally honored professor of religion. Among titles of his that I most often recommend: The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions (1958, revised edition 1991, HarperOne), and Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World’s Religions (1976, reprint edition 1992, HarperOne).

So . . . that is my response to the invitation that life is presenting me, and all of us, regarding the making of a choice about Who I Am. I am an out-picturing of The Divine. I am God in human form. As are we all.

What is your response?

Subtitles by InnerSelf.

©2014 by Neale Donald Walsch. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher: Rainbow Ridge Books.

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God's Message to the World: You've Got Me All Wrong by Neale Donald Walsch.
God's Message to the World: You've Got Me All Wrong

by Neale Donald Walsch.

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About the Author

Neale Donald Walsch, author of "God's Message to the World: You've Got Me All Wrong"NEALE DONALD WALSCH is the author of nine books in the Conversations with God series, which have sold over ten million copies in 37 languages. He is one of the major authors in the new spirituality movement, having written 28 other books, with eight books on the New York Times bestseller's list. His life and work have helped to create and sustain a worldwide spiritual renaissance, and he travels globally to bring the uplifting message of the CwG  books to people everywhere.