April, 2013
Are you surprised when you have low energy or when you are tired and listless? Are you aware that you could easily be more productive, stress-free, and healthier starting today, right now? All you have to do is choose to be healthy instead of continuing to choose the opposite. Everytime you eat or drink something, it is totally your own choice, and you probably know how it will make you feel.
Today, let’s look at some ways you can choose good health today, right NOW.
Choose plant-based. Choose plants over animals. You don’t have to be 100% vegan or vegetarian unless you have health issues. Choose plants 90% of time if you need to. If you choose animal products, know where they came from and how the animals were treated. Stick to animal products such as yogurt, honey, and eggs instead of flesh if you can. Do a little research and find out how corporate animal farmers actually treat their animals. You will be appalled. The senseless torture and inhumane practices used to butcher animals is not what your God, my God, or anyone else’s God intended. Choose not to be ignorant about how your animal products came about.
Choose whole. Choose whole foods. Instead of purchasing processed foods in boxes and bags, or pre-prepared foods, prepare your own meals using whole foods! Stop ordering food for delivery and stop going to restaurants so much! Increase what you know about the food you are eating by preparing it yourself. There are super-simple, quick recipes you will love and can make. Find them. Make up your own recipes from foods that you like. Of course you may have to experiment, but once you have it figured out, you are set for life!
Choose local. Support your local farmers. Choose products that have been grown locally. Even if you can’t find or afford organic produce, choose local produce. This will boost your local economy and at the same time reduce the income going to big business, GMO-filled, super-agricultural companies. We were meant to eat what is grown right around us! Try every locally grown fruit and vegetable you can find! Join a Consumer Supported Agricultural (CSA) group and find out what you have been missing. REAL FOOD has super taste and so many more nutrients, vitamins, and minerals than everything else. Experience it for yourself and you will make new choices!
Choose what you know is the right thing to do. You already know what is the right thing to do. Stop making poor choices for lazy or unconsciously self-sabotaging reasons. DECIDE TODAY THAT YOU WILL MAKE GOOD FOOD CHOICES AND DO IT WITHOUT EXCEPTION. If you don’t, you are choosing disease, every time you make a poor choice.
In Conversations with God, Book 1, we learned that people are making themselves sick, and “Most people do so quite unconsciously. (They don’t even know what they’re doing.) So when they get sick, they don’t know what hit them. It feels as though something has befallen them, rather than that they did something to themselves.
This occurs because most people move through life—not simply health issues and consequences – unconsciously.”
Choose to be conscious. Choose to be healthy today!
(Beth Anderson is a certified Holistic Health Coach and founder of the Holistic Health Hotspot in Evansville, Indiana. She is also the author of “The Holistic Diet: Achieve Your Ideal Weight, Be Happy and Healthy for Life.” Beth received her training from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Beth offers holistic health coaching to individuals and groups via internet, phone, or face-to-face visit. Contact Beth for a consultation. You can find Beth on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/HolisticHealthHotspot or email her at beth@holistichealthhotspot.com)
LET’S DISCUSS IT: One of the men allegedly responsible for the Boston bombing has been killed in a confrontation with police. The second suspect has been caught. If he is tried and should be convicted of the bombing, what do you believe an appropriate sentence would be?
Have you ever watched a young child look in the mirror? They are mesmerized with what they see! They make goofy faces, smile and giggle…but you do not see them looking at themselves with criticism or derision. You don’t hear many four-year-olds say “my nose is too big” or “my eyes are too narrow.” Children do not learn these concepts until other people teach them to feel that way about themselves.
In recent years, the cosmetic company, Dove, has embarked on a “Social Mission” to increase the self-esteem of females. As part of this larger mission, they recently conducted a campaign called “Real Beauty Sketches.” The basic idea was that they surreptitiously paired strangers for a brief time and then had each person sit with a forensic sketch artist to create drawings of one of the participants. The drawings that resulted from the self-descriptions were much more critical — and far less accurate — than the descriptions given by the strangers, even though they had only met for a brief period. I wonder what this says about us, as a species, that others see us more clearly than we see ourselves.
Before proceeding, I feel two things bear clarification: first, I wish Dove would include boys; it is just as important for them to value themselves as girls. Second, I feel the point is not to focus on physical beauty as a status symbol or that there is some arbitrary level of perfection to which to aspire. My point is that every human being, no matter the gender, color, size, shape, ethnicity, and/or level of perfection based on societal standards, is perfect and should feel perfect when looking in the mirror. Every child deserves to love what he or she sees in him or her SELF.
So what can we, as parents, do about it? We can put our children in a bubble until they turn 18 so that society never teaches them negative stories about themselves! Oh wait, that won’t work? Darn! Hmm. You really want to make me think on this one then, don’t you?
I have, personally, tried to limit my own negative self-talk in front of my child because I know that she is learning how to view herself through how she understands my view of myself. But I think that is only part of the puzzle.
What we can do is apply the principles of Conversations with God to our interactions with our children in a way which will help them to grow up confident and secure in their inner beauty, their inner connection to God, and their inner knowing of their value and place in the Universe. My goal would be to help children to know that they do not have to internalize the ideas others have about them. Some concepts that may be helpful are:
We are all one – This might help your child to overcome feelings of pain if other children taunt or ostracize him or her for being, looking, or sounding different. Remembering that you are connected to the All, even in the face of others being mean to you, can help you to feel that you are not alone.
Love is all there is – Remembering to love yourself, even when others are not showing you love is huge in remembering your perfection. It is also helpful if you can, in the face of being hurt by someone, be love back to them instead of reacting back in meanness. It helps you stop the cycle of meanness. You may even change their mind about how to treat someone! And there is nothing more beautiful to anyone than love shining through.
No human beings are better than other human beings – This concept is typically used on the context of the fallacies of life and how human try to separate themselves from each other, finding reasons to produce conflict, killing and war. However, I find that it is applicable here because to assess beauty in societal terms is to classify some as better than others. If we can teach children from a young age that differences in facial or body features do not equate to better or worse, they just mean different, then children will not judge their own beauty according to the standards of others. Instead, they will see their beauty as inherent, internal and all-encompassing.
Children come into this world feeling love, promise and open to possibilities. They only learn about limits from what they are told and experience. We can help them learn to overcome society’s limits by fostering a deep sense of self-love and connection to God from a young age.
Hopefully, through these small efforts we can help our children to see the beauty we see in them, long into adulthood!
(Emily A. Filmore is the Creative Co-Director of www.cwgforparents.com. She is also the author/illustrator of the “With My Child” Series of books about bonding with your child through everyday activities. Her books are available at www.withmychildseries.com. To contact Emily, please email her at Emily@cwgforparents.com.)
The great sadness that enveloped the people of Boston and the participants in the Boston Marathon is the same great sadness that envelopes people everywhere in our global village. The two bombs that exploded in Boston, USA, killed three people and injured 176; the bomb that exploded on that same day in Mogadishu, Somalia, killed twenty people and injured more; and the twenty bombs that exploded on that same day across Iraq in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Tikrit, and three other cities killed 37 people and injured 140. One week earlier a bomb that exploded in rural Afghanistan killed 5 people, and on that same day an American airstrike – another bomb – killed 10 children. All of these bombings had the same cause, created the same effect, and forced the same question upon us.
The cause of these bombings was the pain of powerlessness, of feeling vulnerable and not being able to do anything about it, the pain of helplessness and hopelessness, the desperate need to feel superior, righteous, and powerful for at least a moment. It is a pain so deep and terrible that we push love aside without thought or regret in order to avoid it and shatter lives and bodies with satisfaction. Who among us has not felt the depths of this terrible pain and the magnetic attraction of anything that can mask it from us?
The effect of these bombings is violence and destruction – emotional violence and destruction between family members, neighbors, and friends, and physical violence and destruction as well between nations and groups. Who among us is safe from it?
The question that these bombings force upon us is: Why should I not seek vengeance? Why should I not tear out the hearts of those who have torn out mine? Why should I stand for love while others stand for violence and death? Why should I respond with compassion to those who have none?
Two different understandings of power now present themselves to humankind. The first is the understanding of power as the ability to manipulate and control, the alignment of yourself with your time-bound personality, its five-sensory limitations, and its self-focused wants. This kind of power is the obsolete remnant of a dying human consciousness. The second is the understanding of power as the alignment of yourself with your immortal, timeless soul and its intentions – humbleness, forgiveness, clarity, and love – and the world that it longs to create of harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. This kind of power is now necessary for human evolution. Love is the energy of the soul. Fear is the energy of the personality. You must choose between them moment by moment.
Now is the time to choose love instead of fear, soul instead of personality – now while the smoke is still settling over the finish line at the Boston Marathon, now while the wailing of Afghani mothers for their dead children still hangs in the air, now while innocents still suffer in Guantanamo and prisons around the world, now as you awaken to your ability and responsibility to transform the perception upon our planet of life as a cheap commodity into the perception of Life as precious, Life as pervading everything that is.
Now is the time to feel the pain and suffering of all the terrible, horrible, unfathomable experiences of our history – slavery, holocaust, massacres of Native peoples – and use them to cultivate within ourselves the compassion and wisdom that call to us now, that always call to us now, and act accordingly.
That is how to stop the bombing.
(Gary Zukav’s gentle presence, humor, and insightful wisdom have inspired millions to realize their soul’s greatest potential. A master teacher and the eloquent author of four consecutive New York Times bestsellers, Gary is dedicated to the current extraordinary transformation in human consciousness – an unprecedented threshold in the human experience. This transformation is no less than a Revolution of the Soul, one that touches the heart of all humanity and is based on spiritual growth, conscious choices, and a deep celebration and reverence for Life. His insight, thoughtful presence, and contagious enthusiasm have endeared Gary Zukav to millions of viewers through his 34 appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Six million copies of his books are in print and translations have been published in 32 languages. To find out more, please visit his website The Seat of the Soul Institute, a source of information, tools, support, and community, as you explore, learn about, and create authentic power.)
(If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)
GOD: 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 be 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 wraps 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 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.
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The above excerpt is from Conversations with God – Book One
Part 2: Get off the Wall and Raise the Roof!!
In the teenage years, both scientists in white lab coats and psychologists in tan khakis pants tell us that we undergo a complete “identity crisis” of Who We Are. With such a high level of uncertainty in our own lives, we do the most logical thing possible: attach on to our even more unstable peers. As a result of this decision, we begin to rely on our associations to guide us on what to do, how to think, and the way to act. Regardless of the type of group we decide to fall into, we quickly note that there is a policy for “right” and “wrong” behavior. Some groups have this explicitly written out, while others are much more subtle in their unwritten codes. So, has this changed, or are things still the same?
Even as our society becomes more accepting, the norms still persist. Unfortunately, more and more people still seem to be following these unwritten codes concerning race, gender, and intellect quite religiously. No matter how absurd the notions are, most teenage lives are filled with these crazy lists of expectations, rules, and rituals outlining what “can” and “can’t” be done. We fall in line with group ‘peersonality’ so unobjectively because we want to make the group happy, which, in turn, is supposed to eventually make us happy. In sake of the group/culture/society we belong to, we sacrifice our own instantaneous happiness to let the group/culture/society prosper. The most common dogma for this, in popular culture and political culture, is simply “For the Greater Good.”
As a result of following this doctrine, if you would like, we are becoming the true definition of a wallflower. Not socially inhibited, but rather, spiritually inhibited. A wallflower can occur in two primary settings: never being oneself to a group, or never being oneself in a group. Both are dangerous forms of conformity. By sacrificing our own personal desires to be with the group on the sidelines of life, we miss out on an immense number of opportunities to expand our awareness and fulfill our potential. We all hold the ability to grow and thrive, but have yet to detach ourselves from the wall to blossom in the glory of the sun.
To truly live off the wall, my philosophy has been to be as proactive in my own happiness as possible – essentially, not being afraid to do the things that make me happy instead of the group happy. By realizing what I desire does not always fit what the group desires, I recognized that a level of independence and detachment is clearly needed. Deciding to do life differently has made a massive impact on the ability to simply Be Happy.. Instead of suppressing these roles to conform to example, I have decided to take matters into my own hand, and have sculpted my own fate. Without worrying about the group, but rather the individual, I have created my own story.
Oddly enough, by creating my own story, I am changing the cultural story as a result. By being proactive, I have seemed to unintentionally challenge traditional gender roles. By deciding to make decisions in my life that included competing in the male dominated speaking event, majoring in Civil Engineering, and asking the guy of my choice to prom, I have broken some pretty standard societal norms and have actually gained a high level of respect for my actions. Despite all this glass ceiling breaking, I’m not even a feminist. I’m just a forward thinker. As a result of my journey, I am changing opinions, and changing stories. By raising my awareness of what I can accomplish, I am also raising the opinion of others around me as well. Showing that there is another way is just as empowering as living that other way. And that is when the individual AND the collective prosper. No wallflowers needed.
While this week’s message is identifiable on multiple different levels, the core idea “be who YOU wish to be” still applies to the social spectrum. By disregarding the Old Cultural Story’s standards, and deciding to live your life in the highest definition of who you are, you can enjoy every minute of life as a participant, not a spectator. So expand yourself – and raise the roof of your own group’s expectations.
(Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)
Lately it seems like I’m surrounded with sadness, tragedy, drama, and heavy, heavy emotions. Most of the time this is coming from people around me, as I am usually the one my friends and family go to when something is troubling them. Right now it’s more than usual, and with the tragedies happening in the world lately I’m not quite sure how to handle any of it, I feel so overwhelmed by how bad things really seem to be right now. How do I handle the heaviness of it all and help make a difference?!
Juan, Pennsylvania
Hi Juan,
I hear you, and I agree with you, there seems to be a lot more upheaval right now than usual, or at least many of us are more aware of it that usual. And with Monday’s explosions in Boston a lot of people are at a loss as to what to do. I encourage you to read Neale’s headline article of this newspaper, which you can access here. It offers great insight, hope and solutions as to what we as a whole can do, how we can help shift the way humanity has been living. In terms of dealing with the emotions of it all, read on.
When problems arise, or tragedy strikes, we are often left with shocked and outraged reactions, as well as with a lot of desperate questions (“who would do such thing”, “why doesn’t somebody do something about this”, “what else could go wrong?” etc.). This is our way of recognizing that we are not okay with what happened, we are not in alignment with this, and it’s a perfectly normal response. Those emotions and reactions can be really difficult to deal with, and if they’re not processed or dealt with properly, can turn into depression, despair, extreme fear and hopelessness, among other things. When not dealt with or processed, they also contribute to the problem, not the solution.
So the trick to dealing with these emotions, then, is to first acknowledge what you’re feeling and let whatever that is be okay – meet yourself where you’re at, talk to someone, journal about it. But don’t stay there. Instead, ask yourself, “Who am I in light of this? Who do I want to be here?” Then find ways to express and demonstrate that. This is when our normal initial “reactions” turn into conscious creation.
Furthermore, make it your business to focus on nothing but love, gratitude, kindness and compassion, and express that, too. Energetically speaking, this is the most powerful thing we can do in such situations, whether it’s in response to a worldwide tragedy or some trouble in your personal life. Focusing on the negative aspects simply magnifies them, draws more negativity, and as I said above, contributes to the problem. Shifting your attention to the good consistently raises your vibration, and the vibration of the world, contributing to the solution.
Let’s be clear about something, though, this is not what some refer to as a “spiritual bypass”, an increasingly popular term some people in New Age and New Thought arenas like to use to describe using positivity as avoiding and ignoring the problem, invalidating the emotions that come up. That’s not what this is at all. Remember, my very first suggested step here was to acknowledge how you feel and let it be okay. What we’re doing here is transforming those emotions, or energy (emotions = energy in motion), into something more useful. Instead of wallowing in despair, hopelessness, and frustration, we are choosing to raise our vibration and get into alignment with Who We Really Are, and it is from this place that we gain clarity and access to the actions we can take, from a place of love instead of fear.
I believe this is how we transform the fear, hate, violence and separation in the world (both on a large, worldwide scale and smaller, personal scale) into love, peace, compassion and unity. It starts with each of us, the individual, doing our part, taking responsibility for our role in this Universe. So I challenge you, Juan, and anyone else who may be reading this, to take the steps above. And when you reach that place of clarity, love and alignment, see what you’re inspired to do from there. Perhaps it’s joining a cause or organization that is taking specific steps towards a solution, perhaps it’s coming up with a brand new one no one has ever thought of. Or perhaps it’s a deep shift within you where kindness, love, and compassion towards all becomes your first language from now on.
Thanks for being willing to do your part, Juan.
(Nova Wightman is a CWG Life Coach, as well as the owner and operator of Go Within Life Coaching, www.gowithincoaching.com, specializing in helping individuals blend their spirituality with their humanity in a way that makes life more enjoyable, easy, and fulfilling. She can be reached at Nova@theglobalconversation.com. )
(If you would like a question considered for publication, please submit your request to: Advice@TheGlobalConversation.com, where our team is waiting to hear from you.)
An additional resource: ChangingChange.net offers spiritual assistance from a team of non-professional/volunteer Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less. Nothing on the CCN site should be construed or is intended to take the place of or be in any way similar to professional therapeutic or counseling services. The site functions with the gracious willing assistance of lay persons without credentials or experience in the helping professions. What these volunteers possess is an awareness of the theology of Conversations with God. It is from this context that they offer insight, suggestions, and spiritual support during moments of unbidden, unexpected, or unwelcome change on the journey of life.
The only good thing about bad things,
is that it brings people together in love.
Love will always prevail. Always.
For many, the past 24 hours has been filled with tears and disbelief in regards to the terrible bombing that took place at the Boston Marathon. It is hard for us to wrap our hearts around why anyone would choose to do this to innocent people. Our televisions have been filled with images of explosions, chaos, disbelief, and reporters frantically running about trying to get as many details to the public as possible.
Unfortunately, our eyes have seen way too many images of anguish lately instead of happiness. But here is where the pivotal decision comes in… we can either choose to curl up and wallow in fear about the state of our world, or we can stand up in love and continue to spread our light across a bleak landscape.
Join me in… Choosing to love. Choosing to smile. Choosing to help your neighbor. Choosing kindness over hatred. Choosing understanding over judgement. Choosing life over death. Choosing to RISE and SHINE your light onto others of this world. That is what this world so desperately needs right now… love.
It was not that long ago I was sitting at my notebook, writing words to those suffering after the mass shooting in Newtown. When yesterday’s tragedy happened, I was immediately drawn back to the original post. I re-read it and saw clearly that this letter is my promise to anyone, anywhere that is suffering… This, my friends, is My Promise to You!
When you no longer hope; I will hope for you
When you no longer believe; I will believe for you
When you no longer love; I will love for you
When you no longer see the light; I will see it for you
When you no longer can stand the pain; I will stand it for you
When you can no longer shed a tear; I will shed tears for you
When you can no longer get up; I will carry you!
I feel your heart and I feel your pain.
Do whatever it is you need to do to heal. Go through any process you need to go through to bring peace… I understand if you want to take a break from the game of life for a while. I understand if you want to hunker down in solitude with your loved ones and escape the world… bury yourself in your blankets and never come out. Please do whatever it is you need to do during this time, and trust that myself, and millions of others, will take care of holding the space, light and love until you are ready to come back to the game. I will save your spot for you. I will be there for you.
We will all be there for you.
Until then, you will be missed but I look forward to greeting you with open arms upon your return. Trust that all will be fine until then.
(Jaimie Schultz , a/k/a Pajamas, is a fun-loving, passionate, adventure seeker who loves life and loves helping others see how much they should love theirs. She is passionate about all things mystical and out of her control. You can visit her website at www.pajamasnotebook.com)
(If you would like to contribute an article you have authored to the Guest Column, please submit it to our Managing Editor, Lisa McCormack, for possible publication in this space. Not all submissions can be published, due to the number of submissions and sometimes because of other content considerations, but all are encouraged. Send submissions to Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com. Please label the topic: “Guest Column.”)
I can think of no wiser words than those that 8-year-old Martin Richard scrawled in brightly colored markers on a poster for one of his school assignments:
“no more hurting people”
However, as perceptive and hope-filled as his short and powerful message was, ironically Martin Richard’s life on earth came to an abrupt end at the Boston Marathon while he excitedly waited for his father to cross the finish line, not knowing that a bomb was placed within a short distance of him and his family by someone who had the specific intent of doing the very thing he was championing against: hurting people.
The utterance of these four words “no more hurting people” should cause us to pause and put some serious thought into where it is as a world we want to go – and how we are going to get there. Martin’s call for peace is one that we have an opportunity to carry the torch forward on. Does anybody out there feel a responsibility to at least make an effort to see to it that a world like the one that this young child envisioned and yearned for will one day be a reality not only for a handful of people, but for all of Humanity?
If even the youngest in our society are choosing to be part of the change, what will you choose to do?
If even the most innocent in our world are stepping up and declaring their thoughts and ideas, what will you declare?
If even the most vulnerable among us have the courage to demonstrate Who They Are, who will you demonstrate yourself to be?
In the process of answering these questions, we may find ourselves wondering if God has anything to say about any of this. Conversations with God tells us that God talks to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom does God talk, but who listens?
Are we willing to consider the possibility that one of the ways in which God is speaking to us right here, right now, is through this bright young man named Martin Richard? Perhaps in the same way that She spoke through another young man almost 2,000 years ago named Jesus?
If we are willing to consider that possibility, then the bigger question for each and every one of us to consider is: Are we going to listen — and stop hurting people?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team at www.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
WRITTEN and PUBLISHED September 12, 2001…
re-published the day after the Boston Bombings of April 15, 2013…
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The events of September 11, 2001 cause every thinking person to stop their daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger questions of life.
We search again for not only the meaning of life, but the purpose of our individual and collective experience as we have created it—and we look earnestly for ways in which we might recreate ourselves anew as a human species, so that we may end at last the cycle of violence which has marred our history.
The hour has brought us much sorrow, yet behind the sorrow, if we look closely and long, we will see opportunity. It is the opportunity for us to take a new path, to show the world a new way, to demonstrate at the highest level our most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are—as a people, as a nation, and as a human family.
The whole human race is invited now is look to see what it is we truly wish to experience on this planet. Then we are invited to be the source of that for each other.
If we wish to experience peace, we are invited to provide peace for each other.
If we wish to know that we are safe, we are invited to create safety for each other.
If we wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, we are invited to help each other to better understand.
If we wish to heal our own sadness or anger, we are invited to heal the sadness or anger in each other.
If we wish to have justice done, we are invited to act justly with each other.
The world is waiting now. It is anxiously awaiting the morrow, not knowing what may come. Its people are looking for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking for love.
The words to that familiar song were never, ever more meaningful than they are today:
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No, not just for some, but for everyone.
This is the moment of your ministry. This could be the time of your greatest teaching. What you teach at this time, through your every word and action, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives you touch, both now, and for years to come.
We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this moment.
There is much we can do, but there is one thing we cannot do. We cannot continue to co-create our lives together on this planet as we have in the past. Yet we will continue to do so if we focus our energy on pinpointing where blame falls, rather than where cause lies, in the unhappiest of our experiences.
Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our wounds, we will never heal. Instead, we will forever live in fear of retribution from those within the human family who feel aggrieved—and, likewise, we will forever seek retribution for them.
To me the cause is clear. The majority of the world’s people have not learned the most basic human lessons. They have not remembered the most basic human truths. They have not understood the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, most people have not been listening to God, and because they have not, they do ungodly things.
The message of God is clear. No matter what the religion, no matter what the culture, no matter what the spiritual or indigenous tradition, the bottom line is identical: we are all one.
The Bible, which is only one of humanity’s many sources of spiritual teaching, carries this message throughout, in both the Old Testament and the New.
(Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers? Malachi 2:10… so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Romans 12:5…Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body…1 Corinthians 10:17)
This is a message the human race has largely ignored.
Our religion, our politics, our economics, our education, our whole way of life is based on the idea that we are not one, but that we are separate from each other. We are thus willing to inflict all manner of injury upon each other. We would never do this if we thought that we were actually inflicting injury upon ourselves, yet this injury inevitably does fall upon ourselves—for like begets like, and negativity only breeds negativity.
Our history has proven this. Still, there seems to be one thing for which many human beings will give up anything. They will give up peace, love, happiness, joy, prosperity, romance, excitement, serenity, everything—even their own heath—for this one thing:
Being right.
But even if we are right, what is spirituality’s recommended course of action? What do the greatest spiritual teachers of all time, each in their own way, tell us at times such as these? It is something that many of us cannot (or do not wish to) hear.
…I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, (Matthew 5:44)
Can this be sound advice?
If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand why they have done so, what would be the final result? Yet if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then will be the outcome?
It is easy at times like this to fall into rage—and even to mistake it for justice. Yet rage never produces authentic justice. Indeed, it inevitably creates injustice—for someone. That is because rage is anger that has been repressed, and, when released, it is always misdirected. This is exactly what happened on September 11, 2001.
Anger itself is not inappropriate. Anger is a natural human response, and can even be a blessing, if it leads to change. Yet as we feel our anger and express, there is one thing about which we should make no mistake. The human race has the power to annihilate itself. We can end life as we know it on this planet in one afternoon.
In the early days of our civilization, we were able to inflict hurt upon each other using sticks and rocks and primitive weapons. Then, as our technology grew, we could destroy a village, or a town, or a major city, or even an entire nation. Yet now it is possible for us to destroy our whole world, and do it so fast that nothing can stop the process once it has begun.
Is that the process we wish to begin? This is the question we must answer.
In searching for our answer, I hope that each of us will have our own conversation with God, for only the grandest wisdom and the grandest truth can address the greatest problems, and we are now facing the greatest problems and the greatest challenges in the history of our species.
It should be no surprise that we are doing so. It is not as if we have not seen this coming. Spiritual, political, and philosophical writers for the past 50 years have predicted it. So long as we continue to treat each other as we have in the past, they have said, the circumstance we face in the present will continue to present itself in the future.
We must change ourselves. We must change the beliefs upon which our behaviors are based. We must create a different reality, build a new society. And we must do so not with political truths or with economic truths, and not with cultural truths or even the remembered truths of our ancestors—for the sins of the fathers are being visited upon the sons. We must do so with new spiritual truths. We must preach a new gospel, its healing message summarized in two sentences:
We are all one.
Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.
This 15-word message, delivered from every lectern and pulpit, from every rostrum and platform, could change everything overnight. I challenge every priest, every minister, every rabbi and religious cleric to preach this. I challenge every political party spokesperson and the head of every national government to declare it.
And I challenge all of us, right now, to become spiritual activists. If we want the beauty of the world and not its ugliness to be experienced by our children and our children’s children, we must choose to be at cause in the matter.
— Neale Donald Walsch
