December, 2012
It is not unusual for our children to come home with their backpacks overflowing with homework assignments to complete and projects to create. But what would you think and how would you feel if you found this assignment in your young child’s school bag:
“You’ve just turned 18. You’ve decided to end your life. Your decision is definitive. In a final surge you decide to put in words the reason behind your decision. In the style of a self-portrait, you describe the disgust you have for yourself. Your text will retrace certain events in your life at the origin of these feelings.”
In the town of Montmoreau-Saint-Cybard, Southwestern France, an unamed teacher handed out this homework note to his 13- and 14-year-old students at the collège Antoine-Delafont.
The Telegraph reports the French teacher has been suspended after the local school authority found out about the assignment and after a group of outraged parents complained in an anonymous letter to the school, saying they were horrified their children were given the assignment.
It was further reported in The Telegraph that the president of the FCPE parents’ union in Montmoreau, Christophe Clément, said such a subject is “practically inciting (pupils) to commit suicide.”
“Jean-Marie Renault, the local education authority head, said the teacher had been officially notified of his suspension, adding: ‘Telling a pupil that he is about to end his life and that he must recount it appears troubling to us.’”
“Geneviève Fioraso, France’s higher education minister, waded in, saying: ‘If the topic was launched in this way, without accompaniment, without context, it’s dangerous.’”
However, in spite of the flurry of disapproval surrounding this unique and controversial story, a large group of parents, students, and fellow colleagues have come together in support of this teacher’s actions, asking for the reinstatement of this beloved teacher into the school system.
One parent asks, “What do you think they talk about in the playground? The images they see on TV are far more shocking.”
Another parent said, “Suicide is part of daily life. Perhaps the teacher wished to raise their awareness of the issue.”
The group consensus within the circle of supporters was that the media coverage had been “over the top and inappropriate,” noting that the subject had “not shocked” pupils and it had been “well presented” by the teacher.
Is it likely that an assignment like this could or would actually cause a young mind to contemplate suicide?
Or could an assignment like this provide a young mind an opportunity to explore and express a part of themselves that is not touched upon in the day-to-day experiences of their lives?
If someone truly were on the edge of ending life as we know it to be in this human experience, what insights and truth might that person feel more inclined to share in the absence of suffering the consequences of being judged or ridiculed or ignored?
Are we limiting the fullest expressions of our children, and ourselves, by restricting what we naturally feel drawn to do – express who we are? Even when that expression may not be what we expect or want to hear?
Where does an assignment like this invite us to go?
And why do we fear going there?
In the book When Everything Changes, Change Everything, we are taught how our minds draw upon and utilize the past data of our lives to help form the basis of our current reality. And the way we experience life – reality – will depend upon what type of data we are relying upon. Perhaps “retracing the events in a child’s life and the origins of their feelings,” as this teacher invited these students to do, will provide to these children at a very tender age an opportunity to understand more fully what source, or data, their thoughts and beliefs are foundationed upon…which would lead them to an understanding of why they might hold any feelings of “disgust” for themselves…which would then present an opportunity to change their thoughts, change their perspectives, and change their beliefs about who they are, thus altering the way in which they experience all of life.
This type of exploration would serve to remind us that speaking our truth about who we are is not something to be reserved for the end of our lives. Maybe a child’s limited idea about who they are or any harsh judgments they have placed upon themselves could be transformed into a remembrance and realization of their own significance and purpose in the world within the parameters of one simple yet profound exercise.
Why would we want to deny anyone that opportunity?
(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.)
Do you see anything contradictory in using the Death Penalty as a Society’s means of deterring people from killing people?
Well, the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul suggested on this Front Page a few days ago has already gotten underway. Many people who read about this spiritual project have already agreed to become part of the initiative. Those of you who have said “Yes!” to my invitation here will be hearing from me personally within the days ahead, with an invitation to become part of Humanity’s Team, the global spiritual activism organization that is sponsoring the project.
Many of you have joined the conversation about this initiative here, and the Comment String has been lively indeed. I should like to react to just a few of the posts that were made in that string now, and then, in future postings here, move into a description of what becoming involved in this outreach could entail for you.
First, let me interact with some of you, one Comment at a time…
Kristen wrote: “The thought of a worldwide change is great, but I feel it would be more successful without CWG attached to it to include Jews, Muslims, Christians, Athiests etc, and if there was a clear point to include stopping suffering….”
I agree with you Kristen, in part. I absolutely agree that the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul — may we use the acronym CRMS here? — I absolutely agree that the CRMS should “include Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, etc.”, and I am not sure if anything I have written or said anywhere would suggest or indicate that I do not. Nothing inherent in the CRMS eliminates participation by, or inclusion of, persons belonging to specific religious or cultural groupings.
Quite to the contrary, the movement specifically invites members of all religious, spiritual, political, economic, and cultural groups to join together, to dialogue together, to explore together, and to examine together, with sincerity and honesty, the question: Are our present beliefs about God and about Life working? That is, are they producing the outcomes for which we had hoped — and for which they were intended?
I also agree, Kirsten, that within this global project there must be “a clear point to include stopping suffering….” That is why I wrote, and just released, The Only Thing That Matters, which offers a detailed description of how suffering can be vastly reduced, and ultimately removed, from one’s individual experience.
The passages and chapters in that new book about how to end one’s suffering as one moves through day-to-day encounters can change your life. They were intended to, so I hope that everyone here reads them. (The book, by the way, has been published, line by line, for free on my Facebook page, so that everyone can access it without needing to buy it. And Kirsten, if you want to avoid being “in debt” to me by reading it for free, you are welcome to “trade” me your dollars for my book, and then we will have what you feel is a fair exchange, with no subjugation intended or produced.)
Now…going forward…I do not agree, Kirsten, that the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul would be “more successful without CWG attached to it.” CWG is offering humanity a whole New Theology, based on new principles, new understandings, new beliefs, new choices, new ideas, new clarity, new definitions, and the new behaviors that would emerge from all of this. Chief among these new ideas, Kirsten, is the firm CWG statement that CWG, in itself, is not the answer.
Indeed, in Friendship with God the world was given A New Gospel. You have indicated that you have only looked at the CWG material in a cursory fashion. That could explain why you feel the CRMS would be better off without it. It is dangerous to criticize something of which we have deliberately caused ourselves to have limited knowledge. If one doesn’t choose to know about something in detail, that is one’s choice. But to then suggest that a spiritual/social movement would be better off without it seems ill-advised at best, since one admittedly doesn’t know what one is talking about.
In fact, in Friendship with God we are given a brand New Gospel to spread and share with the world. This gospel was referred to again in The New Revelations. Let me quote that second book from the CWG cosmology here, Kirsten, in case, in your cursory look at the CWG material, you missed it.
EXCERPT…
NEALE: It is possible that the Word of God as put down by humans in their holy books has some errors in it? Is it possible that there is something we don’t know about God and about Life, the knowing of which could change everything?
If only there could be a New Gospel.
GOD: There can be. It was proposed before, in the book Friendship with God. Fifteen words that could change the world. A two-sentence gospel that would turn your planet on its ear.
NEALE: Yes, I remember now. Two sentences that would alter everything.
GOD: They are sentences that could not be uttered from many pulpits or lecterns, by many religious or political leaders. You can dare them to say it, but they will not. You can beg them to repeat it, but they must not. You can cry out for them to declare it, but they cannot.
NEALE: Why? Why can’t they say it?
GOD: Because to utter this New Gospel would be to invalidate everything they have taught you, everything of which they have sought to convince you, everything on which they base their actions.
NEALE: You’re right. It’s a New Gospel that could save the world, but the world cannot preach these two sentences. The world cannot proclaim them. They are too powerful. They are too disruptive.
Still, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there are some brave religious and political leaders who might take up this proposed New Gospel and repeat it. Let’s proclaim it here!
“We Are All One.”
“Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.”
What a message that would be coming from the pulpits of the world! What a declaration that would be from the podiums of all nations!
How powerful those words would be uttered by the Pope, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the leading cleric in the Baptist Church, or the world’s Islamic voices, or the president of the Mormon Church, or the head of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod!
I invite them now—right here, right now—to say them, to declare this their truth, to include it in their next public sermon.
Imagine the Pope saying, “God loves all God’s children, and we are all one. There are many paths to God, and God denies no one who takes a path with humility and sincerity. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.”
The world would shake. The foundations of all the world’s major religions—separation and betterness—would crumble!
I challenge every political party spokesman, every international chief of state, to place this in their party platforms and to announce this in their speeches.
Imagine the candidates in the next U.S. presidential election saying, “This is a complex time, and there are many approaches to the challenges we face us. I have my thoughts and my opponent has hers. My opponent is not a villain. She is not a bad person. She simply has ideas that are different from mine. Listen to our ideas carefully, and then see which one of us it is with whom you agree. But in the end, I want you all to know this: These are the United States, and we are all one. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.”
The political process would never be the same. Gone would be the demonizing. Gone would be the character assassinations and the impugning of motives and the “make-wrongs” and the belittling. Standing in every election would be two candidates presumed to be good people whose aspirations are to serve the public interest, who admittedly are seeking power because there are things they would like to get done, and who simply disagree on how to do them.
GOD: That is a wonderful picture you paint. That is the picture of a transformed world.
NEALE: But no major political party leader could ever say that. No major religious leader could ever declare it. Their whole message, their very credibility, is based upon just the opposite premise. The whole structure of humanity is built upon the idea of separation and betterness.
GOD: That is the situation in your world, precisely. That is the point being made in this conversation.
There are many humans who cannot abide the thought of living with such new ideas, and so they die instead, clinging to the Fifth Fallacy About Life as their truth. They declare:
It is appropriate for human beings to resolve severe differences created by all their other fallacies by killing each other.
— END OF EXCERPT —
And so we see, Kirsten, that the very underpinning of the Conversations with God message is that the material itself is simply a starting point for larger discussion, for deeper exploration, for ongoing expansion of our ancient views about God, about Life, and about who we are in relationship to each other. And yes, CWG offers some ideas about that, some thoughts about that, some pretty firm recommendations about that. Yet it makes it clear that its ideas, thoughts, and recommendations are not to be embraced as “truth”…but merely as a beginning commentary, allowing each of us to find our own truth.
Throughout the CWG Commentaries the point is made that we should not, should never, allow CWG to become our “new bible,” our new inviolable dogma, but rather, should always and evermore self-reference, using our inner wisdom and inner guidance to lead us to our own inner truth. How can such a point of view be deleterious to a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, Kirsten?
Your commentaries, ladies and gentlemen, are invited below…
Something very disturbing is happening to America’s education system. Something so disturbing that most people don’t even know that it’s going on.
I personally just happened to see the small, stub-like article in The Telegraph that was entitled “Classic Literature to be Dropped from High Schools in Favor for More ‘Informational Texts.’” Bothered, I further read that in 46 out of 50 states, Common Core State Standards (otherwise known as state curriculum) in 2014 will require that 70% of books used in English classes will be be purely “informational” texts to prepare students to enter the workplace. This means that classic texts, poetry, and short stories will be virtually eliminated and replaced with government manuals, plant inventories, and dated dispatches. As Shakespeare’s plays, Emerson’s prose, and Frost’s poems will be removed for titles such as “FedViews from the San Francisco Federal Reserve” and “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management,” we can’t help but to feel that something very, very wrong is happening here. But what?
On the most basic level, this new curriculum shows that we have become too focused on our workplace “success” than on our humanistic “understanding.” These new Common Core Standards aren’t thinking of the people, they are thinking for the people, as our society is now determining our “success” in the workplace is THE singular definition of our personal “success.” From this viewpoint, we are being reinforced, both directly and indirectly, at young ages that if we don’t become the mighty CEO or the empowered politician, then we are considered failures. Achievement has become a truly artificial term, as it now only describes what we did with our growth, instead of what we have done to be able to grow.
This, unfortunately, is not the only step back for Our New Cultural Story. As a result of the new Common Core Standards, future teens are losing exposure to understanding their core. As literature throughout the ages and the pages have inspired brilliant insights on the Human Experience, we cannot help but feel our soul be moved by the first word of William Blake or the last verse of Emily Dickinson. The reason why these works are considered classics in the first place is that their message has spoken to generation after generation, sparking imagination and illumination in teens of all ages. Future teens might be more prepared for the workplace, but will they truly be more prepared for life? Some of our greatest insights on what our New Cultural Story should look like will be lost to a government pamphlet or investment guidebook. Is that really what we want for ourselves?
We need to revise this book, and write our New Cultural Story. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge once wrote,
“What if you slept?
And what if,
In your sleep,
You dreamed?
And what if,
In your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked
A strange and
Beautiful flower?
And what if,
When you awoke,
You had the flower
In your hand?”
The classics challenge us to use our imagination, to think beyond traditional logic, and become even more of Who We Are. Continue to question your description of truth, to analyze you life’s deeper meaning, to interpret your motivations, and to create your ever-changing perspective of life. Let’s not lose this valuable piece of humanity.
There are literally volumes that could be written about this subject. If you have ever felt moved by any book, any poem, or anything period, continue to rewrite this rough draft of Our New Cultural Story. We are only our next greatest revision.
(Lauren is a Feature Editor of The Global Conversation. She lives in Wood Dale, IL, and can be reached at Lauren@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
Ohio is trying to figure out how to kill Ronald Post.
Mr. Post killed the desk clerk at a motel during a robbery in 1983. He has been on death row at a state prison in Ohio since 1985 and is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on January 16. There is only one problem: executioners may not be able to find a vein into which to place the injection.
Mr. Post weighs 450 pounds and doctors who examined him say his arms, legs, and hands are too fat to find an accessible vein.
The state could use a backup procedure, Mr. Post’s lawyers say, but it would involve injecting the life-snuffing drugs directly into muscle, and that process could be neither easy nor rapid. It could, in fact, require several doses over several hours, or even days, Mr. Post’s lawyers say in court papers recently filed asking for a stay of execution. That could only result, they say, in a grueling and painful end to Mr. Post’s life—far surpassing the legal standards prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.
In fact, they say, records show that it took Ohio executioners something like two hours to insert IVs into the veins of Christopher Newton in 2007, and that condemned man weighed only 265 pounds — 200 pounds less than Mr. Post.
Nevertheless, the State of Ohio says it feels certain that Mr. Post can be humanely executed, either using its regular procedure or the backup process, which has never been used before — meaning executioners do not know through experience how it will work.
Still, Ohio Assistant Attorney General Charles Wille said in court papers that Mr. Post has not presented the court “sufficient evidence demonstrating that his obesity or other physical conditions will present a substantial risk that his execution cannot be conducted in a humane and dignified manner.” A hearing will be held in Columbus later this month, at which a federal judge will decide whether Ohio should kill Mr. Post on January 16.
The United States is one of an ever-decreasing number of countries where the death penalty still exists. Most of the world’s civilized nations have decided that killing someone in order to send a signal to their society that it is not okay to kill someone is probably sending a reverse signal. Futhermore, it has been proven factually and statistically that the death penalty does not work to lower the capital crime rate. Removing guns from the streets by not making them so easily available does lower capital crime, but in a startling and striking contraction, U.S. voters don’t seem to care. So it is not reducing crimes involving death that American voters seem to be concerned with, it would appear to be revenge.
In the State of California just last month, citizens rejected a ballot measure to repeal the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without parole. A majority of voters indicated that spending life in prison was not sufficient punishment for a capital crime, and that they want people killed by the state for such crimes — whether those state-sponsored killings actually deter capital crime or not.
An impressive list of people from within the law enforcement community in that state supported repealing the death penalty, but that did not seem to matter to most voters, who apparently see simple revenge as an appropriate reason to kill someone.
Typical of the statements supporting repeal of the death penalty was this observation offered by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, a former police chief: “Given my experience, I believe there are three compelling reasons why the death penalty should be replaced. (1) The criminal justice system makes mistakes and the possibility of executing innocent people is both inherently wrong and morally reprehensible; (2) My personal experience and crime data show the death penalty does not reduce crime; and (3) The death penalty wastes precious resources that could be best used to fight crime and solve thousands of unsolved homicides languishing in filing cabinets in understaffed police departments across the state.”
Meanwhile, Cathy Lynn Henderson — who at one point had been two days away from execution after being convicted of the murder of a baby — was granted a new trial on December 5 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, based on recent scientific developments and the alteration of testimony presented at trial by the prosecution’s star witness, who has since change his initial diagnosis as to what might have caused the baby’s death.
Ms. Henderson insisted at her trial that the baby, who had been in her care, had squirmed and slipped from her arms, falling onto a concrete floor. But the star witness for the prosecution, former medical examiner Robert Bayardo, testified that the findings during an autopsy of the child indicated that death could not have been caused by such a fall.
Since that 1994 autopsy, however, advancements in the understanding of pediatric head injuries now indicate that relatively short falls onto a hard surface could produce injuries similar to those he discovered, Dr. Bayardo has said. This caused a district judge to rule earlier this year that no reasonable juror would have convicted Ms. Henderson if presented with this evidence. The Texas appeals court agreed, and days ago ordered a new trial for the woman, who has been in jail for over ten years and was once just 48 hours away from being killed by the State of Texas, all for a crime she may never have committed.
Yes, the district attorney of San Francisco is correct. Mistakes can be made by law enforcement that leads to the unwarranted and unjustified death of an innocent defendant. But American voters seem to be willing to take that risk, insisting that government should kill a person for killing a person — even if the government cannot be sure of the defendant’s guilt.
I believe that this is another reason, a strong case, for supporting the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, which seeks to end, at last, the oppression of our beliefs in a violent, angry, and vindictive God. For it is our belief in an “eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth” kind of God that we employ consistently and obstinately as our moral authority for our own “take that!” revenge mentality.
And your thoughts?
(EDITOR’S NOTE: The conversation about the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul continues on this newspaper’s front page in the space titled Interpreting Conversations with God. If you were following that conversation, please look for it there.)
Dear Therese,
I am about to visit my family for the holidays, and I am very nervous about this trip. We have a difficult history, that’s mostly okay now, but we haven’t seen each other for a long time. How do I get through this with no drama?
KC in NC
Dear KC,
This is a difficult and stressful time of year for a lot of people, so don’t think that your situation is unique!
The first thing I would offer you is resist projecting past data onto the present. When you do this, you set yourself up to be the one who repeats past behavior, and triggers others to repeat past drama. The way that works best for me is to remember we are all doing best we can. The only thing you have control of is you, so be your best, and don’t worry about them.
Another suggestion would be to declare who you wish to be before you leave on the trip, and each day as you awaken while you are there. If, for instance, you declare yourself to be peaceful, your doing would come from that space…you would ask yourself, consciously or not, “What would peace do here?” This works for any state of being. I often choose understanding.
If you do these things, the possibility of drama diminishes. And if it does occur, you are not the cause of the drama. You can sit calmly in the middle of the chaos, and let others have the path they choose to take, knowing it no longer has to be yours.
Therese
(Therese Wilson is a published poet, and is the administrator of the global website at www.ChangingChange.net, which offers spiritual assistance from a team of Spiritual Helpers responding to every post from readers within 24 hours or less, and offers insight, suggestions, and companionship during moments of unbidden, unexpected, unwelcome change on the journey of life. She may be contacted at Therese@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.)
(This article was contributed by Guest Author Herby Bell, DC)
After watching the militant Muslim reaction around the world — the purely insane response to a substandard film created by another fanatic about God knows what — I got to thinking about a startling analogy.
I’m in the healthcare business. My biggest competitor is the sick care business, and here’s how it works (and stay with me–I’ll connect the dots):
We have an innate genetic intelligence that responds in a healthy way to whatever is in the environment. Our environment has become increasingly deficient and toxic in terms of the water we drink to the air we breathe, along with countless other modern living stressors. Accordingly, our body’s healthy, genetic response is to place us in a state of “fight or flight” in order to survive.
The problem arises when this fight-or-flight state of being becomes the rule, rather than the exception, due to the ever-present and increasing environmental stressors. Dis-ease and ultimately disease ensue. Maybe you’ve heard mention lately of addiction, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, fibromyalgia, depression, fatigue, decreased sex drive, anxiety, obesity, indigestion, lack of sleep…etc., etc.
All of us are in some state of fight or flight, more often than not, when living in this culture–in this world. Instead of decreasing the stress and improving adaptability by being taught to eat well, move well, and think well — the health care business — we are carpet bombed by literally dozens of sound bytes and video images per day about “taking” something to “kill” the pain or to trick our bodies out of their pristine, invariably reliable intelligence — the sick care business.
Recently I gave lectures about this well-documented stress response to a local high school human biology department. I asked the students to close their eyes as I played the audio only, including the side effects disclaimer of one of the drug commercials we hear on television, day in and day out. The students reported that they did not even listen to or hear the words anymore, that it had become just background noise. The pretty images on television stick and the devastating side effects get reduced to white noise. Good news for the sick care business, a subliminal auto suggestion marketing vehicle that pays off handsomely. Repetition is the mother of all invention…
All right, now back to the militant Muslims. If the human ecosystem is barraged with stress and its correct and healthy response is to develop chronic lifestyle diseases, doesn’t it stand to reason that the collective ecosystems or the culture –any culture — is susceptible to the same reaction after being inundated with sick propaganda–here, there, everywhere!–and certain factions of that culture, like a neoplastic growth in cancer, will react in that deadly, perhaps unpredictable, but inevitable way? It’s happening.
We have to stop kidding ourselves. The world is in a chronic state of fight or flight. THE SICK CARE INDUSTRY IS NOT HELPING. Let’s teach our kids to eat well, to move well, and to think well and decrease our stress while bolstering our immune systems instead of waiting for some magic pill or potion to come along to save us.
Let’s be honest that the preventable, man-made atrocities and insanity all around the world are directly related to how well a culture’s individuals are caring for themselves, how well they are eating, moving, and thinking.
Let’s get out of the sick care business and into the health care business. The well-being of the world may just depend upon it. Let’s move from fight or flight to love and light.
(Dr. Herby Bell is owner and director of Recovery Health Care, an integrated approach to addiction treatment in Redwood City, California. For more information please call 650 474 2121 or email: herbybell@me.com.)
Around this time of year the old “naughty and nice” list and the “Elf on the Shelf” get pulled out. Parents, at their wits’ end the other eleven months of the year, rely on Santa’s powers of persuasion to gain a few weeks of peace.
Have you ever questioned if Santa is being used as a human substitute for a judgmental God, as the arbiter of “right and wrong” on earth?
Do you ever wonder why parents buy in wholeheartedly?
Since the New Spirituality frees us from judgment by God, does this utilization of Santa as a mechanism of control continue to work to help our children attain their Highest Selves?
My own childhood experience of Santa was one of distant trepidation. My parents didn’t really use Santa to elicit “good” behavior from us to the extent that others did, so I wasn’t really afraid of him in the light of day. But every Christmas Eve, as I tried (and failed) to sleep, I shivered and shook in my bed in anticipation that this strange guy in a red suit would visit my house while we slept…and what if he looked at me in my bed? Wasn’t that a violation of my privacy?
These impressions and fears of him, as a sort of boogey man, were all my own interpretation from things I heard outside of my home. I wanted to be excited about Santa…but it just never worked for me. With such a love-fear dynamic between me and the jolly ole’ fella, I was determined to prevent my daughter from having such an experience of fear. Don’t get me wrong, I love the spirit of giving that Santa personifies and I wish for my daughter to see magic all around her in the world. I just hope she can experience magic without manipulation and fear…and without me having to lie to her.
Neale Donald Walsch has a beautiful children’s book called Santa’s God which describes Santa with magic and love, but no fear. And we share the messages of that sweet book with our daughter often. But early on we also decided to allow her to guide and create her own concept of Santa based on her own feeling. We have never spoken of Santa as fact, and certainly not as a judge and/or jury to determine her worthiness for gifts. We have always told her that if Santa is to have a role in our life, he has to follow the rules of our house…even if they are different from what her friends think he is or does.
In our house, Santa cannot predicate gifts on behavior, he cannot visit any room other than the family room, and he is not allowed to “check up on her” because, well, even as an adult, that concept still creeps me out! One of the difficult aspects of this has been working to teach her that Santa is a very personal concept which many people view differently. We have tried to demonstrate respect for other people’s traditions by keeping our own ideas to ourselves because we do not wish to ruin other families’ ideas and customs regarding Santa.
When she asks about the more impossible aspects of Santa, like, “How can he make it to all the houses?” we say, “What do you think?”
When she asks, “How does he know we moved?” we say, “Well, Santa knows what Mommy and Daddy know.
“When she pointedly says, “Mom, this Santa guy’s job seems impossible; I just don’t think it can happen the way they say!” we encourage her to explore what that statement means to her. And on the occasions that she has persisted, we answer that, yes, we agree it seems impossible, always giving the reigns back to her so she can decide how far to go for herself.
We had many friends and family argue that by “stealing” his power we would also steal his magic, but the opposite has been the case. What has resulted is that she has chosen to embrace the wonder and magic of Santa without the fear – even during the times I can see in her eyes that she suspects we are Santa. At the end of last year, she all but told us she knew he wasn’t real, and now this year she seems to believe again. She is truly guiding her own experience – even year to year.
Is this a path you would choose? Or do you wish to embrace the magic story of Santa? It is really a very personal choice. There is no right or wrong approach; only what works for the individual family.
Are we doing it “right” for her? Who knows? She may grow up to write an article that says “I wish my mom and dad had encouraged me to believe in Santa.” But she may, on the other hand, say, “Wow, my parents never lied to me about anything…except Santa.” Each of our children’s interpretation of our parenting decisions will be about the child’s own perspective, faith in us, and their own understanding of how they create their individual realities.
You may be reading this article, thinking to yourself, “This woman really thinks too much about little things! Let the kid be a kid!” Maybe I do; I have been accused of overthinking things before. But I wonder if maybe… just maybe…by allowing her to choose her own behavior, for the intrinsic value of aligning with who she really is, rather than for material gain, we are actually allowing her to be herself.
Could it be that by giving her freedom to question, we are assisting the development of her critical thinking process? And probably most important to my own conscience as a parent, by not using Santa as a mechanism of control, could we be affording her a life free of fear, free of manipulation, and free of trembling, shivering, shaking moments waiting to hear some stranger casing our house in the middle of the night?
What do you think?
(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 25 Core Messages of Conversations with God are summarized in the One Thousand Word Statement of Eternal Truth found in the Top Of Page story now running on the Home Page. Please read them there, and accept our invitation to join the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.
The website you are currently visiting is an outgrow of the writing in the book The Storm Before the Calm, in which you have been invited to co-author a New Cultural Story for Humanity. That book is now being posted here, one chapter at a time. (See First Installment, below). It is important that you read this if you wish to become part of the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul.
THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM
Chapter One
My dear, dear friends…my wonderful companions on this human journey…
I’m so glad that you’re here, and I hope that your answer to the question just above is yes, because it’s very important that you hear this: We’re experiencing something quite extraordinary on the earth right now. I’m going to give it a name here.
We are experiencing The Overhaul of Humanity.
This is not an exaggeration. This is reality. It is observable at every turn.
Yet here is something that is not so observable: Things are not as they seem.
And I think, before the world and its people get too far along this road, we all need to be aware of that.
We also need to be aware that there’s nothing to be afraid of in our future if we will all but play our role in creating it. And that role—the role we are being invited to play by Life Itself—is going to be very easy to play.
I have more that I want to share with you around all this. Let me give you a summary of everything I have come here to say:
* A major shift is occurring on our planet
* There is nothing to be afraid of if we all play our role in this shift
* Our role is easy to play, and it can actually be fun
* It involves having fabulous conversations revolving around seven simple questions
* The asking and answering of these questions can result in the creating of solutions to humanity’s biggest problems
* It is time for us to place before humanity a New Cultural Story, sending us in brand new directions in politics, economics, culture, education, relationships, work, marriage, sexuality, parenting, and every area of human endeavor; a manifesto created by all of us, working as co-authors.
* There are some exciting opening thoughts about what that document could contain that I think you should hear.
Oh, and I don’t want to talk with you just about “world conditions” or “the global situation” or “our planetary crisis.” As important as those topics are, I’m clear that the Overhaul of Humanity is overhauling each of us. One look at how much has changed in your life in the past three years will tell you that.
So I’d like to have some exchanges with you as well about easing any struggle or negativity that may be present in your own personal life.
Okay, there you have it. The whole agenda. Can we talk?
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The Overhaul of Humanity is not a small thing. The words I’ve used to describe this phenomenon are dramatic because the event is dramatic.
It is going to involve (indeed, it is already involving) every aspect of our lives: our governance and politics, our economics and financial stability, our commerce and industry, our social conventions and constructions, our educational systems and approaches, our religions and beliefs, our customs and traditions—in fact, our entire Cultural Story.
We can participate in the Overhaul of Humanity or we can merely witness it—but we cannot stop it. Nor would we want to.
This can be the greatest thing that has happened to our species since our appearance on this planet. The years just ahead, and some of the trials and tribulations we’re going to see, can bring our planet to a new and wonderful place when the process is complete. And the process will be complete in a relatively short period of time.
And you can help bring about that completion if you choose to.
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You don’t have to simply read this
Life is inviting you to not have this be a book that you simply read. Life is inviting you to have this be an experience in which you participate. This is your opportunity to join me and others from around the world in the conversation that is being initiated here. You may do so at any time by simply stopping your reading, marking your place, then getting on the Internet and navigating to…
There, click on the icon labeled The Storm Before The Calm. Find and post any comment you wish at the numbered “Conversation” you’re currently reading. (You’ll notice that this book is not broken down into “Chapters,” but rather, into “Conversations.”)
At this special website there’s also a separate icon inviting you to post your ideas, your thoughts, your concepts, and your inspirations regarding the contents of Humanity’s New Cultural Story. It is for this purpose that you have come to this material.
If you are like many others, you have long been asking, “What can I do? How can I help to make things better?” This is an answer to that question.
The New Cultural Story co-created here by adding your insights and inspirations and heartfelt hopes and dreams for our world will be placed before humanity in a separate book: Our Collective Dream: A New Cultural Story for Humanity. This will be a book read around the world, and a book that you co-author.
So what you are reading now is not an ordinary text. This is your gateway to participation in what I am clear could very well be The Conversation of the Century. Your voice is valuable and needed in this exchange, in order that the exchange itself may sparkle with the vitality of a wide variety of ideas, insights, and visions. So do, please, consider interacting with this book, as well as reading it, yes?
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POINTS I HOPE YOU WILL REMEMBER…
* A major shift is occurring on our planet.
* There is nothing to be afraid of if we all play our role in this shift.
* Our role is easy to play, and can actually be fun.
* What Life is inviting us to change is our Old Cultural Story.
ACTION I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE…
* Check out the website that has been specially created to allow the conversation that has been started here to continue. Go to www.TheGlobalConversation.com and see what you think.
* Return to that website any time during your reading of this book that you see something you want to discuss further. Create your own Topic Board if you don’t find the subject you wish to discuss already being explored there.
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End of Chapter. Now, a Note from Neale…Portions of this website referred to in the above opening chapter of The Storm Before the Calm have been temporarily moved to the background of this site. These icons will be brought forward again in the near future. In the meantime, you are invited to continue reading the book here day-by-day, and offer any input you wish to make in the Comments Section under this posting. Thank you for your interest in helping us all to create a New Cultural Story for Humanity.
A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a violent, angry, and vindictive God, has been re-energized by The Global Conversation, with nearly 100 people saying ‘yes’ to the invitation placed in this space just four days ago.
The purpose of the movement, which is the prime mission of a global community known as Humanity’s Team, is to release our species from a dogma that creates separation and competition, replacing it with unity and compassion, and to put Spiritual Activists on the ground in cities, towns, and villages around the world, challenging us to examine our old spiritual beliefs and ask, honestly: Are these doctrines working?
The end of our Old Cultural Story and the writing of a new one based on the spiritual truth of who we are and what is really so about Life has, of course, been spoken of, and yearned for, for thousands of years. But now humanity has the tools with which to finally make this dream come true.
First, it has answers now to life’s most critical question. And second, it has a way to get those answers to millions of people rapidly.
Life’s most critical question is: How is it possible for 6.9 billion people to all want the same thing—survival, safety, security, peace, prosperity, opportunity, happiness, and love—and to be unable to produce it, even after thousands of years of trying?
The answer is that we have been going after the wrong thing. This idea is fully explained in the book The Storm Before the Calm.
In addition, the true coming of age of global instant communication is now making it possible to send that information to multi-millions virtually overnight. And that is what the Civil Rights Movement for the Soul is all about.
Within days of it being discussed here December 5th, nearly 100 people signed on to join the Movement, and one of them — a man named Eric Silver — said “Yes, with a condition: A simple, practical blueprint for achieving this. For example, a distillation of the principles and premises of ‘Conversations with God’ and other enlightened materials into a one or two page, incorruptible, guide to life and living that even a child could understand and apply intuitively. (And don’t say it can’t be condensed down to that, because it can.) When heeded, its truth will be indisputably evident through the lifestyles of those who follow it.”
Well, Eric, it just so happens that just such a statement has been given. I, too, have been asking for such a summary — a quick read that could say all that needs to be said and open the door for further exploration and discussion by people around the world. And I was given, a while ago, a simple statement that fills your request perfectly, reducing 3,000 pages of CWG dialogue to 1,000 words.
Eric also wrote about the changes in human behavior that such a single summary could produce. In the Comments section below he asked: “Can such change occur without a massive ‘environmental’ (physical, mental, and spiritual) calamity to motivate it? At no point in human history have people gotten together and said, ‘Gee, we are doing this Life/Living thing wrong; let’s all fix it,’ unless some severe external/internal pressure forced them to do so. Perhaps this will be the first instance?”
Yes, I believe so, Eric. This Civil Rights Movement for the Soul can be the first time. So here is that summary statement you were looking for Eric…
Here, in 1,000 words, is all that the human race needs to know in order to live the life for which it has yearned and which, despite trying for thousands of years, it has yet to produce. Carry these messages to your world:
God talks to everyone, all the time. The question is not: To whom does God talk? The question is: Who listens?
We are all One. All things are One Thing. There is only One Thing, and all things are part of the One Thing There Is.
There’s enough. It is not necessary to compete for, much less fight over, the resources you have been given. Simply learn to share.
There’s nothing you have to do. There is much you will do, but nothing you are required to do. God wants nothing, needs nothing, demands nothing, and commands nothing.
There are Three Basic Principles of Life: Functionality, Adaptability, and Sustainability. Thus, there is no such thing as Right and Wrong, there is only What Works and What Does Not Work, given what it is you are trying to do. What you are trying to do and what you will do shall determine who you are and how you evolve as a species in the cosmic community of sentient beings.
Love is all there is.
You are the creator of your own reality, using the Three Tools of Creation: Thought, Word, and Action.
Your life has nothing to do with you. It is about everyone whose life you touch, and how you touch it.
You are not your body, you are not your mind, and you are not your soul. You are the unique combination of all three, which comprises the Totality Of You. You are an individuation of Divinity; an expression of God on earth.
The purpose of your life is to recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.
There’s no such thing as Right and Wrong. There is only What Works and What Does Not Work, given what it is you are trying to do.
There is also no such place as hell, and eternal damnation does not exist. There is no such thing as Space and Time, there is only Here and Now. Death does not exist. What you call “death” is merely a process of Re-Identification. There are no victims and no villains, and no one does anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.
The moment you declare anything, everything unlike it will come into the space. This is The Law of Opposites, which produces a Contextual Field within which that which you wish to express may be experienced.
There is no such thing as Absolute Truth. All truth is subjective. Within this framework there are five levels of truth telling: Tell your truth to yourself about yourself; Tell your truth to yourself about another; Tell your truth about yourself to another; Tell your truth about another to another; Tell your truth to everyone about everything.
The human race has created a precise set of illusions. The Ten Illusions of Humans are: Need Exists, Failure Exists, Disunity Exists, Insufficiency Exists, Requirement Exists, Judgment Exists, Condemnation Exists, Conditionality Exists, Superiority Exists, Ignorance Exists. These illusions are meant to serve humanity, but it must learn how to use them.
The Three Core Concepts of Holistic Living are Honesty, Awareness, and Responsibility. Live according to these precepts and self-anger will disappear from your life.
Life functions within a Be-Do-Have paradigm. Most people have this backward, imagining that first one must “have” things in order to “do” things, thus to “be” what they wish to be. Reversing this process is the fastest way to experience mastery in living.
There are Three Levels of Awareness: Hope, Faith, and Knowing. Spiritual mastery is about living from the third level.
There are Five Fallacies about God that create crisis, violence, killing and war. First, the idea that God needs something. Second, the idea that God can fail to get what He needs. Third, the idea that God has separated you from Him because you have not given Him what He needs. Fourth, the idea that God still needs what He needs so badly that God now requires you, from your separated position, to give it to Him. Fifth, the idea that God will destroy you if you do not meet His requirements.
There are also Five Fallacies About Life that likewise create crisis, violence, killing and war. First, the idea that human beings are separate from each other. Second, the idea that there is not enough of what human beings need to be happy. Third, the idea that in order to get the stuff of which there is not enough, human beings must compete with each other. Fourth, the idea that some human beings are better than other human beings. Fifth, the idea that it is appropriate for human beings to resolve severe differences created by all the other fallacies by killing each other.
You think you are being terrorized by other people, but in truth you are being terrorized by your beliefs. Your experience of yourself and your world will shift dramatically if you adopt, collectively, the Five Steps to Peace:
Permit yourself to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
Explore the possibility that there is something you do not fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything.
Announce that you are willing for new understandings of God and Life to now be brought forth, understandings that could produce a new way of life on this planet.
Courageously examine these new understandings and, if they align with your personal inner truth and knowing, enlarge your belief system to include them.
Express your life as a demonstration of your highest beliefs, rather than as a denial of them.
These 1,000 words, embraced and acted on, could change the world in a single generation.
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(From the forthcoming book WHAT GOD SAID: The Words of a Spiritual Revolution. Now, you are invited to take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species, based on the message above. Answer the following question: Who will join Humanity’s Team? Place your answer in the Comment section below. But be careful. Because if your answer is yes, you’re going to be asked to take part in the biggest civil rights movement in the history of humanity. A Civil Rights Movement for the Soul. That is, Neale Donald Walsch and Humanity’s Team will get in touch with you personally and invite you to become involved in what could produce a spiritual renewal on this planet the likes of which we could only have dreamt of until now. The Moment of Our Tomorrow has arrived. And nothing, not all the armies of the world, can stop an idea whose time has come.)
