October, 2013
As I was driving to work the other day, I heard the local radio personality announce, “And stay tuned for the three things you need to know from the radio station that keeps you up to date with what is important in the world.”
Oh, my goodness, I was going to arrive at my destination well before they told me the three things I need to know. Should I stay in my car and risk being late for my appointment while I wait for these vital pieces of information? What will happen to me if I don’t hear these three crucial nuggets of wisdom? Because if I need to know them, won’t the absence of knowing them surely have dire circumstances for me?
Could it be that I need to know that the American government is continuing to play intramural hardball with each other at the expense of the very people who voted them into office, the very people who they claim to have their best interests in mind?
Could it be that I need to know that former Olympian Bruce Jenner and his wife, Kris Jenner, are now officially separated after 22 years of marriage?
Could it be that I need to know that there are people who reacted sharply with racist comments and harsh accusations in response to Nina Davuluri becoming the most recent Miss America because of her Indian origin?
Could it be that I need to know that a young pregnant woman in Mexico City gave birth on the front lawn of a medical clinic after being denied care from the medical personnel inside the facility who told her she was not ready to deliver?
Or maybe I need to know that the foods I am eating are entirely wrong or what movies I must be watching. Perhaps I need to know which preschools my children should be going to in order to ensure they will be successful adults or how to Feng Shui the furniture in my living room. Maybe someone will tell me what car I’m supposed to be driving, what brand of jeans someone “my age” should wear, what length my hair is supposed to be. And surely I need to know which politician is involved in the latest sex scandal. And, of course, here is the big one that someone must tell me now: which version of God I am supposed to be embracing?
Where does the long list of “things I need to know” end?
And how is it that everyone else knows what I need to know, and I don’t?
Of course, I’m being slightly facetious here to make a point. But how many times and in what kinds of ways are we being told we need something in our lives in order to be, do, or have something else? In order to be happy? In order to be abundant? In order to be in a relationship? And do we ever stop to consider where we are getting that information?
Buried deep beneath our belief that somehow we are incomplete, insufficient, less-than, it seems we have forgotten the nature of who we really are. We have caused ourselves to miss entirely the opportunity to experience ourselves as the source of our own joy and happiness by looking to and accepting external sources of information for our answers and our truth, even when that information is not in alignment with our own wisdom. Can you imagine a more perfectly vulnerable position for someone to be in if and when somebody else wants their truth to also be yours?
For me, it has been my experience that the understanding of what I need to know is most often realized in the space of nothingness, in the stillness of nature, and in the absence of words. And while the outside world provides us an extraordinary opportunity to apply our consciousness through the process of choosing and creating and recreating, I believe there are not 3 things we need to know, nor are there 100 things or one million things. There is only one thing we need to know; and that is this: we already know.
“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.”~ Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Vol. 1
(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.)
When we help others in our own special way, we open ourselves up to the magic of the soul, bathing us in its light. And isn’t that a great place to be?
Everyone has a life purpose; everyone has a message to share with the world. But how are they conveying this message? Are they basing their message on their own personal experience or on their “intellectual” knowledge? In other words, are they coming from the mind or the heart? Have they had a life event, which has taken them to the place where they have met their inner gremlins face on and have battled with them, only to embrace them afterwards and taken them on as allies instead of adversaries? Or is it an intellectual exercise, a means to gain admiration and attention for what they profess to know? Have you ever seen, heard or read about someone who takes a workshop or two on a subject that interests them and then hangs out their shingle as if to say they are now an expert? Can they really “connect” with a person at a soul level if they haven’t really “been there, done that?”
That’s where I was when I first started my coaching practice. Oh, I had the deep desire to be a life coach for women, based on my own 40 years of experience (at the time), but my focus on helping was outwardly based. I was being directed by my ego, that part of the mind that is focused on our outer reality: our self importance, our self esteem. And if one’s focus is on outer reality, how can one really connect with her clients deeply, at the place where a person’s seed of life begins to sprout, allowing them to blossom into the glorious creature that they are meant to be? Life doesn’t begin outside of oneself; it begins with the divine spark within that is her guiding principle. And how can one help facilitate her clients’ journey down the road to their self discovery if she hasn’t traveled the road herself? If she hasn’t gone through the muck of her own life, confronting the skeletons in her closet, the demons in the shadows of her psyche? Only then can she truly relate to her clients’ needs… because she HAS “been there, done that.”
Unfortunately (or should I say “fortunately”) for me, it took a stroke in June 2011 for me to learn this lesson. It was a gift of the soul. I went through a total transformation of self, where I moved from the ego-based “what’s in it for me?” mindset to a more heart-centric “how can I serve others?” ethos. And my own trauma served as the catalyst for my ability to really minister to others with compassion and empathy, because I HAD been there and done that! Before I had my stroke, I had developed a program for women called Yin Radiance: The Journey to Inner Balance, based on my book Zesty Womanhood at 40 and Beyond. Being 40+ myself, I thought I would be able to help guide women with ease through their own process of going through the stage of their life when they began to nurture their own souls, instead of being caregivers of everyone else as they had been for decades before. And I thought I was speaking from my “heart”, where the divine goddess resides and radiates her love outward embracing all in her path with her warm glow. This was the natural, authentic way of being for a woman, was it not?
But it took a life-changing event to make me realize that my message to women was being filtered through my egoic mind that was more concerned about my outer appearance and how I was perceived by others, rather than coming from my core essence from which compassion and love flow. When I had this revelation about a shift in consciousness, the work I had done before my stroke took on so much more meaning, as I began to really connect with my own inner goddess. I no longer needed validation from anything outside myself. I felt suffused with the divine spark that is a part of every living creature. It was MY guiding principle.
With this new awareness, with my heart as the crux of this sacred equation, I will take delight in ministering to women’s divine souls, instead of indulging my ego’s whims. I have also begun plans to develop a program as a trauma recovery coach, using my book on healing and recovery Radiant Survivor as its foundation. And I have found that as one facilitates the self discovery of others, she herself continues down her own path of illumination. Although this notion has existed in my mind since I became a life coach in 2010, it has now moved to my heart where it resonates profoundly. When we help others in our own special way, we open ourselves up to the magic of the soul, bathing us in its light. And isn’t that a great place to be?
So I leave you with this… Do you have a message that you wish to convey? Have you traveled through the murky waters of life and have a story to tell? Follow your heart’s song. Use your life experiences to create that missive that you wish to share. And know that as you become an agent of change for others, so too will you be transformed. You can be a part of the new consciousness of the world.
(Erica Tucci had a full life as a corporate manager of a Fortune 500 company, a healing arts business owner and an author. It all came to a screeching halt in June 2011 when she had a stroke. During her recovery, she gained much wisdom about what’s really important in life and she re-entered the world with a new mission in life. She now wishes to use her story as an inspiration for others facing life challenges, which we all have, big or small, as well as continuing the work she was doing before her stroke, helping women find their “yin radiance” through their authentic voice and their own healing. She considers herself the Radiance Muse, inspiring you to live your life brilliantly. For more information, visit www.ericatucci.com and www.radiantsurvivor.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’m going to date myself here, but I grew up watching Laugh In and the Carol Burnett Show. I still laugh hysterically if I see a clip of Arte Johnson in his yellow raincoat riding a tricycle and simply tipping over or Ruth Buzzi as Gladys Ormphby. I can’t help but smile if I hear “Sock it to me!” or “Here comes the judge!” or “My name is Edith Ann and I’m six years old.” I get a bit teary eyed hearing “I’m so glad we had this time together” and I can’t think of Tim Conway without thinking of Harvey Korman. I remember sitting around the big colored TV in the living room with my entire family and not a minute went by without us at least chuckling.
The humor in those shows seemed innocent to me. Yes, some of it was stereotyped (like Goldie Hawn as the “dumb blond”) but as I remember it, it poked fun at humanity in general: at our foibles and quirks, at our idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. Individuals were not targeted for ridicule due to race, religion, orientation, nationality, political views or situations in which they may have found themselves embroiled. The shows (at least the comedy sketches on the Carol Burnett Show) were, for the most part, entirely staged just to make you laugh.
Several years after Laugh In and the Carol Burnett Show had been on the air, All in the Family first aired. This was, I believe, one of the first shows that intentionally used humor to illustrate the dangers and illuminate the hypocrisy of bigotry and intolerance. It was one of the first shows to use humor to increase the consciousness of the nation. M*A*S*H followed a year later and also used humor not only to raise our consciousness but also to make us aware of the horrors of war and show us how to use humor to cope with life’s daily ups and downs.
But M*A*S*H, along with two other shows that began that same year, Sanford and Son and Maude, also began to use humor to make fun of, embarrass, denigrate or mock individual characters in the show’s cast. Hawkeye’s relentless persecution of Frank Burns, Fred Sanford’s obvious dislike of his sister-in-law, Esther, and Maude’s disdain for anyone who was not a democratic women’s libber helped make laughing at someone one didn’t like or agree with acceptable. (I realize these shows were not the first: Don Rickles began his career in the 1950s and almost his entire act is centered around making fun of people. Not people in general but very specific people.)
Many years later, shows like Roseanne, while addressing social issues in much the same way as All in the Family, brought biting sarcasm and wilting diatribes against individuals, both real and fictional, into homes all around the world by the new technologies of cable and satellite TV broadcasts. Now, jokes or graphics making fun of celebrities, political parties, certain faiths, ethnicities, orientations, genders, weights— the list is literally endless— make their way around the world overnight via viral videos or graphics posted on the internet.
I don’t remember when I first began to question humanity’s use of humor. I do remember writing an article in the early 90s entitled “Prescription for Poison” in which I addressed the issue of humor and children. To a child who hears an “off-color” joke and sees Mom or Dad laugh at that joke, a seed is planted. After all, Mom and Dad don’t like lies, which make them angry, so if what they’re hearing is making them laugh, it must be the truth. And so stereotypes and prejudices and ignorance and hatred and intolerance are all planted in the minds of children without much thought by the adults around them.
I eventually decided that the only jokes I would tell would be those that involved any group to which I could claim membership. My reasoning was that I knew the pains and struggles of being a member of that group (overweight, gay, female, single mom, black sheep of the family, brainy, etc.) and I had no qualms poking fun of myself in good humor. I no longer find jokes about other groups funny if told by someone who does not belong to that group. (The only exception I make to this rule is that I will tell one very specific “dumb blonde” joke, but then the “dumb blonde” is not really a real group, although it is a stereotype.)
I hear people making fun of others while I’m standing in line at the grocery story or in the lounge at work or sitting in a waiting room at the doctor’s office or any place where strangers gather momentarily. And I hear people laugh not for the joy of laughing but at the expense of others. I have come to believe that many (most?) people nowadays use humor as a way in which to demonstrate to themselves that they are indeed not only different from but better than those they make fun of or laugh at.
Laughter really is one of the best medicines out there, but when laughing at others as opposed to laughing at oneself, I believe that laughter becomes more like a medication overdose, toxic to the human psyche. The level of toxicity in our humor is steadily increasing and has even reached lethal doses in some instances. Remember the international incident, involving violent protests in cities all around the world, after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad?
Being able to laugh at ourselves, at the situations we humans create for ourselves, at how things that seem so “right” at the time can go so “wrong”— that kind of laughter can be a very healing experience. In “When Everything Changes, Change Everything”, Neale Donald Walsch writes, “The opportunity that we have every day is to look straight at what’s going on right now and smile and have a good laugh on ourselves and say, ‘It’s all good.’” (p. 226)
But note something. He says to “have a good laugh on ourselves.” Not on others. Laughing at our own “mistakes” and our own “failings” can be very healing. It demonstrates that we recognize that, A, we survived our “mistake,” B, that our “failing” taught us something valuable and increased our understanding of Who We Really Are and, C, that we can still be happy even when things appear to be “going wrong.” In other words, being able to laugh at ourselves demonstrates that we have reached a state of acceptance and that we’re still okay with ourselves despite making a “mistake” or “failing” at our latest endeavor. This is when humor becomes holy. When it is healing and healthy and brings happiness to everyone who hears it.
And now I have a confession to make. I laughed when I wrote the title of this article because I can’t help but hear it in Burt Ward’s voice, although he adds the word “Batman” at the end.
(Shelly Strauss is a civil rights activist and speaker. In addition to becoming an ordained minister, she has written 20-plus novels and is the “resident visionary” at One Spirit Project. Shelly is also a spiritual helper on the ChangingChange website, offering support and guidance to people faced with unexpected and unwelcome change .)
I’ve seen too much suffering in the world and tried to commit suicide twice when I was young. Today, I’m lost. I’ve tried every church denomination I could find so I’m finally seeking help from a psychiatrist. I take too many meds just to keep me calm and sane. I am trying to find out how to find the peace that I lost along the way. I was never encouraged to do much with my life from my parents. Mediocre was okay. And teachers thought I was just another run of the mill student. Nothing special. So I’m nothing special. And that’s the way I feel. Just another cog, on meds to keep me working… Dan
Dear Dan… Yours is a very common spiritual problem. You simply don’t understand some things about Life, the understanding of which would change everything. And the things you don’t understand are fundamental questions about how life works the way it does.
All suffering comes from thought—the thought that things shouldn’t be happening the way they are. We all think this way until we come to larger understandings of the processes of Life. When we realize that our souls call forth the perfect people, places, and events to give us opportunities for growth and expression, we can more easily accept the cruelties of the physical world.
Do you know who you are, Dan? You are an angel on this Earth, in physical form. Nothing special? I don’t think so, Dan, not for one second. You are an individuated aspect of God, as are we all, and you are capable of embracing the same “Five Attitudes of God”, which according to CWG are these: God is always Joyful, Loving, Accepting, Blessing and Grateful. Since you are part of God, these qualities are are your natural states of being, as well. It is just a matter of choosing thoughts that embody these attitudes no matter what is happening—choosing to consciously marry your mind with your soul’s highest knowing of Who You Really Are and What’s Really Going On Here.
The way to do this is to be still and go within, often. Yes, I know the mind wants to jump all over the place when we meditate… at first. Learning to be still so we can commune with God/our Soul/our Higher Knowing takes practice, but in my experience, it is the only way to find lasting inner peace and happiness. When we go within we open ourselves to hearing what God is trying to communicate to us so that we can create our life in the happiest, most fulfilling way.
Do you know that life is meant to be happy, Dan? It is, and it can be, I assure you. Please read Neale’s wonderful book, Happier Than God, for some clear ways to move toward the joy that you naturally are.
And last, but not least, please begin to take your mind’s emphasis off yourself, and look to see how you can be a blessing to everyone you come into contact with. The world needs the very special uniqueness that is you, Dan. You will find that as you do what you can to uplift others, you also uplift yourself in the process.
(Annie Sims is the Global Director of CWG Advanced Programs, is a Conversations With God Coach and author/instructor of the CWG Online School. To connect with Annie, please email her at Annie@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: The CWG Helping Outreach 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.
Hello Global Conversation Community. It is wonderful to be back into writing. Through all the chaos of the transition into college, my body, mind, and spirit certainly have not been in all the same state of Oneness. But now, there is more harmony in my life. There is more peace, there is more wellness, and there is more wholeness. And I am grateful for every moment I have of it.
But my story is not unique. It may be personal, but it’s incredibly far from original. Every second of every minute of every hour, people around the world are forgetting the path and finding it back again. In retrospect, it is impossible to lose the path, because every step of your journey is a part of it. But yet somehow we seem to lose our consciousness of that journey, and awareness of why we are on the journey at all. So, for me in the past month and for the rest of the world, I only ask, “Why do we lose the path?”
In the past, I would have said that the reason why is because society has told us to run away from the truth, to hide under the covers, to bury our heads in the sand. Yet now, being on my own, I’ve realized there’s far more to it than that.
It’s been easy to ‘pull the blame card on society’ all these years. We’ve been in a state where we have seemingly very little control over our lives. So when things are wrong, and we don’t like them, we point to our family, our friends, our state, country and government as the source of our problem. They said it wasn’t allowed, they said it was the wrong thing to do, they said that it would be a disappointment. With an accumulation of these thoughts, it has become a stigma of control loss. And yet, once we finally do get into that state of freedom, we realize that the choice is completely ours. Society may tell attempt to tell us what to do, but at the end of the day, we know that are the ones making the final decision. On love, on life, on everything. It’s our internal choice.
Whatever we have decided has manifested our reality. IF we have decided fear, then we have CREATED fear. If we have decided guilt, then we have CREATED guilt. This is nothing new, nothing that is groundbreaking. However, it’s about being aware of those decisions. For the majority of the planet, the answer to the “why” question above is the external societal distractions. But now, look for that answer to the “why” internally.
At the very least, ask yourself daily:
Why did I choose to manifest this in my life?
IF you do this, you WILL learn A LOT about yourself. You will find things you don’t like. You will find things that you have attempted to hide or dissociate from. But being aware of these mental blocks, being conscious of these ego pitfalls, is what makes the difference. It’s what makes us remember the path that we are on. And knowing why, we can choose to bring back love, peace, and joy into those spots of chaos, confusion, and turmoil. And who doesn’t want that?
So, in retrospect, always understand your reason, and always understand your choice. When we stop asking, we lose ourselves, and we stumble in the dark. To walk so blindly is to live the ‘society’ way, and what has that led to but more loss of self? But to ask why is to always look at our purpose, at our meaning, at our very reason for life itself. And that is what I’ve discovered, and that is why I’m back for good.
(Lauren Rourk is a Feature Editor at The Global Conversation and attends Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. She can be contacted at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com)
According to UNICEF, only 58% of secondary-aged children world-wide regularly attend school. In highly industrialized areas, like North America and Europe, that percentage rises to 92%. But in areas like Africa, those numbers fall to less than 30%. Two thirds of the world’s illiterate are woman. In some countries, it is even illegal for young girls to receive an education.
The lack of education has a cascading effect on the level of poverty. Consider these facts:
– Women in impoverished nations who have a secondary education have an average of 3 children. Those with less education have an average of 7.
– In developing countries, an additional year of education has the potential to increase yearly earnings by 10%.
– Women with a primary education level are 13% more likely to understand that condom use can help prevent the spread of HIV.
The level of poverty has a domino effect on the health and well being of the world’s population.
– More than 6 million children a year die from completely preventable causes like diarrhea and malaria. Most of these children are in impoverished nations with limited access to health care and clean drinking water.
– Another 6 million children under the age of five die every year from malnutrition.
– Almost 39% of the world’s population survives on less than $2 a day. More than 1 billion of those survive on less than $1 a day. To put that in perspective, someone in the US who is paying $589/month for a car loan for their gas-guzzling Hummer is paying every month almost twice what some people earn in an entire year.
In this day and age, numbers like this are almost unfathomable. Perhaps a better word would be unconscionable. Yet this is the very real situation for more than a third of the world’s population. And the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is getting larger, even in industrialized and prosperous nations like the US. A 2013 report by the ALF-CIO places the average salary of a CEO in a US company at 364 times that of the average worker. Even in Poland, a CEO makes 28 times what the average worker earns in one year.
How we got to this point would—and does—fill volumes. Countless theses have been written on the causes of poverty and an untold number of studies have been done on how to eradicate it. Unfortunately, none of those efforts will succeed no matter how many times we try, no matter what variations we enact into policy, no matter how strict we make our laws, no matter how many social organizations we form to combat poverty because none of them address the root cause of the problem: the steadfast belief in the absolute truth of the Five Fallacies about Life.
1. Humans are separate from each other.
2. There is not enough of what human beings need to be happy.
3. To get enough of the stuff there is not enough of, human beings must compete with each other.
4. Some human beings are better than other human beings.
5. It is appropriate for human beings to resolve severe differences created by all the other fallacies by killing each other.
Fortunately, the masters down through the ages have given us a very simple way to overcome our beliefs, since we seem so unwilling to change them. It is most commonly called “The Golden Rule” and it was first found in the Vedic tradition of India almost 5000 years ago. Virtually every faith and religion, every philosophical and spiritual practice that man has created has some version of this truly insightful statement. Simply put, “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”
The reason that following this simple rule would change life as we know it overnight is due to the fact that, at the very root of the matter, every one of us wants to be treated exactly the same way! Every one of us wants to live our life as we see fit, according to the beliefs that we hold dear, without undue interference from others.
If every one of us followed the Golden Rule, there would be no need for laws, no need for governments, no need for armies, no need for nations. There would be no poverty, no killing, no abuse, no wars, no rape, no discrimination, no wanton destruction of the environment.
I would not kill you because I would not want to be killed.
I would not pollute your water supply because I would not want my water supply polluted.
I would not let you go hungry because I would not want to go hungry.
I would not interfere with your choice of who to marry because I would not want someone to interfere with my choice.
I would make sure you had access to all the knowledge you needed to live your life as you saw fit because I want access to all the knowledge I need to live my life as I see fit.
“But that will never happen!” I can hear the naysayers cry already. “You’ll never get everyone to follow the Golden Rule!”
You don’t have to.
The Golden Rule is a unilateral, unconditional command. It does not say “Treat others the way you want to be treated only if they treat you that way first” or “only if they treat you that way in return” or “only if they’re the same color/religion/orientation/socioeconomic level/etc. as you”. It says simply “Treat other people the way you want to be treated.” Period. End of discussion.
You are to follow the Golden Rule in spite of how other people treat you. You are not to sit around and wait for someone else to follow the Golden Rule before you begin to follow it.
When you do this, small miracles happen. People start to like the way you are treating them and they begin to take notice and they begin to imitate how you treat others and they begin to treat others the way you treated them. With Love. Unconditional Love.
When unconditional Love is given out, it multiplies. It is contagious. It spreads. Because it is healing to be Loved unconditionally. Just as when one cell of your body begins to heal, the cells around it begin to heal, so too will the human race heal when Loved unconditionally.
Are you willing to be the first cell in your world to heal?
(Shelly Strauss is a civil rights activist and speaker. In addition to becoming an ordained minister, she has written 20+ novels and is the “resident visionary” at One Spirit Project. Shelly is also a spiritual helper on the ChangingChange website, offering support and guidance to people faced with unexpected and unwelcome change .)
Dear Nova,
My biggest fear is to hurt another, and it is also my biggest block. I am an artist and I often use nudity in my drawings, but have a hard time displaying them because I am afraid some people might be shocked or offended. I do display them but struggle with the fear of making people uncomfortable. In fact, I often hold back in a lot of ways for fear of how it will impact others, and it leaves me feeling stuck and unfulfilled.
If you feel you can help me out of there, I would welcome a contact.
Warmly,
Angeline, Ontario
Hi Angeline,
I can relate very much to what you’re saying. I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of work in that area on myself, as it was very common for me to hold back in expressing myself authentically for fear of offending anyone (not so long ago, either!). In other words, I took care of the emotions of others first and made them more important than my own.
What I realized along the way, and what I now remind myself of nearly every day, is that not only am I betraying myself when doing this, I am denying others the opportunity to decide and experience who THEY are in the context our interaction is providing them. While I think I am protecting and even helping them by making all sorts of assumptions to make sure they are not offended or uncomfortable, I’m actually robbing them of perhaps a very valuable experience. And nobody wins that way.
So I have come to the conclusion that my only job is to be as authentically me as possible, to express myself from a place of alignment (and when I’m not in alignment perhaps go within until I can get back there and/or be more gentle and “forgiving” of myself) and ALLOW others the opportunity to do the same. Not always easy, mind you, but it’s always in the highest interest of all involved, and really, anything else is just way too much work, isn’t it?
A great quote to remember about this, and I’m not sure who said it first, “What other people think of me is none of my business.” And of course, CWG says, “Betrayal of yourself in order not to betray another is betrayal nonetheless. It is the highest betrayal.”
Be you, Angeline. Give the world that gift, and do your best to not take the reaction/response of others’ personally, as you don’t know what their soul is trying to accomplish in this lifetime. And by giving yourself permission to be Who You Really Are, well, there is such immense joy (not to mention relief!) in that. Give it a go.
(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: The CWG Helping Outreach (www.cwghelpingoutreach.com) 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.
Divine inspiration is the birthright of every human being. You are all very special. You simply do not know that. You do not believe it. Your religions have told you that you are not. They have told you that you are sinners, that you are unworthy, that only a very few among you have achieved a level of worthiness to be inspired directly by God — and that all of those people are dead. They have convinced you that no one living today could possibly achieve that level of worthiness, and, hence, no book written today could possibly contain sacred truths or the Word of God.
To tell you otherwise would be to leave open the possibility that another master, another prophet, another messenger of God could come along, bringing new revelations and opening you to new understandings – and that is something that already established organized religions could not abide.
And so, while your world’s religions may not be able to agree on which book contains the highest truth and deepest wisdom and the True Word of God, there is one thing on which they are able to agree. And that is whatever book it is, it’s an old one. It could not be a new book written today.
God’s direct revelations ended long ago, your religions agree. Only old sacred books can contain divine revelation. Most people can accept that God’s great truths have come to humans through humans. They simply cannot accept that this could be true of humans living today.
This is how you think. This is how you have it constructed. If it’s old, it’s worthy; if it’s new, it’s unworthy. If it’s old, it’s true; if it’s new, it’s wrong. If it’s old, it’s right; if it’s new, it’s wrong. If it’s old, it’s good; if it’s new, it’s bad. This peculiar mindset is what makes progress on your planet so difficult, and evolution so time-consuming.
What complicates all this is that, as you have constructed it, this mindset applies only to things – that is, inanimate objects – and to ideas. Ironically, when it comes to people you have it constructed the other way around. If it’s new, it’s worthy; if it’s old, it’s unworthy. Thus, your society dismisses out of hand some of the brightest new ideas and some of the wisest older people.
The stubborn tendency of human beings to cling to their past, to refuse innovation or new thinking until they are forced to do so by an ultimately embarrassing weight of evidence, has been slowing your evolutionary process for millennia. You are facing now a new and startling danger – a danger posed to your entire species. A threat to your very survival posed by the combination of a split in ideology and an advance in technology, which makes it possible for you to seek to resolve your differences with tools of human destruction unlike anything you may have heretofore dreamed of in your worst nightmare.
There are five things you can choose now if changing your world, and the self-destructive direction in which it is moving, is what you wish to achieve.
- You can choose to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
- You can choose to acknowledge that there is something you do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.
- You can choose to be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be brought forth, an understanding that could produce a new way of life on your planet.
- You can choose to be courageous enough to explore and examine this new understanding, and, if it aligns with your inner truth and knowing, to enlarge your belief system to include it.
- You can choose to live your life as demonstrations of your highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as denials of them.
These are the Five Steps to Peace, and if you take them, you can shift everything on your planet.
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Excerpt from God’s portions of the dialogue in The New Revelations
As nearly everyone in the world now surely knows, the government of the United States has been shut down by the U.S. Congress after its House of Representatives and Senate failed to come to an agreement on a budget that would have kept it open for business.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have said they will not approve an annual budget for the government unless and until the controversial Affordable Care Act (known more widely in some circles as Obamacare) is completely defunded, or its implementation is delayed for a year.
Democrats have said that, as U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren put it: “It’s time to end the debate about whether the Affordable Care Act should exist and whether it should be funded. Congress voted for this law. President Obama signed this law. The Supreme Court upheld this law. The President ran for reelection on this law. His opponent said he would repeal it — and his opponent lost by five million votes.”
Given the above, many Americans are left wondering, Is this fair? The law was passed, the Supreme Court approved, the American people voted against the candidate who said he would repeal it on his first day in office — what more is needed to end this debate?
Having lost in the previous Obamacare debate when the health law was originally passed by Congress, having lost before the Supreme Court where it unsuccessfully challenged the law’s constitutionality, and having lost at the polls in the last presidential election, the far right wing of the GOP has now decided to stop the entire government from operating if the Tea Party and its followers don’t get what they want anyway and see the new health law, which took affect today, repealed or delayed for a another year.
For their part, Democrats have said there will be no repeal of Obamacare and no delay in its implementation — but that they would be ready and willing to negotiate improvements in the law, including some of the ideas suggested by the GOP regarding certain taxes that are slated to be instituted to fund it. Yet Democrats have insisted that they will not negotiate “with a gun to our heads.” They have called the GOP’s forced government shutdown not negotiation, but “extortion.”
The spiritual opportunity here is for both sides in this debate to move toward the highest good for all people (it is questionable that shutting down the government would be that), and for both sides to see their particular approach as not the only way, but simply another way to resolve the Obamacare disagreement.
Then they might take a pure, clean, and honest look to see if they can find a method of resolution that is distinctly different from the ones both sides are now employing as they position themselves around the health care issue. Yet the larger question remains: Is it fair for a minority of those both in Congress and in the United States at large to push their country into fiscal chaos in order to advance their agenda even though they’ve lost the argument three times already in every other forum available?
