OUR WORLD MUST COME TO
AN END THIS MONTH

We have gone as far as we can go. We can’t go any further. I know that nobody wants to hear this (it’s been said over and over again now for 25 years), but the way we are living — what we are doing spiritually, politically, economically, environmentally, educationally, and socially — is totally and utterly unsustainable.

In every one of those areas, it is unsustainable. The world as we are running it must end. Now. That is what the whole “2012 Phenomenon” is all about. It is not about the end of the world, it is about the end of the world as we know it. It is about re-birthing ourselves. The question is not whether something needs to be done about the way humanity has been living, the question is: What?

The answer is not a mystery. We must change. But what must we change, specifically? And how do we change it? Those become the operational questions. Those become the functional inquiries. Those become the central issues of our time.

We have the answer here.

We must change our Cultural Story. We must rewrite it, from the very first chapter. We must launch a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a virulent, violent, and vindictive God.

Why? Why bring our beliefs about God into this? Because the beliefs held about God by billions of people — including the belief that there is no God — is what creates the belief of billions of people about themselves, about each other, and about the purpose and function of Life Itself. And that is what creates the world around us. The unsustainable world around us.

We can no longer survive as a species by holding the beliefs that we hold. This is not an answer that I just made up. This is the answer that has been given to us by God.

In the book The New Revelations (2002) the following dialogue with God appears. Have you ever read it? More important, what are you willing to do about it?

Tell you what. Decide, after you read this interaction with God. I dare you to do it. Read it all the way to the end. Right now. Dare you.

I understand that our world now lives in a 120-word sound-bite mentality, but I put this opening dialogue before you nonetheless. Is it worth ten minutes of your time to find out what’s really going on here? What appears below are the first few words in a dialogue with God that occurred at this time of year ten years ago…

God, please be here. We need help.

I am here.

We need help.

I know.

Right now.

I understand.

The world is on the brink of disaster. And I’m not talking about natural disaster; I’m talking about man-made calamity.

I know. And you’re right.

I mean, humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions and disagreements can lead not simply to wars—which are bad enough—but to the end of civilization as we know it.

That is correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.

You understand the severity of the problem, you simply do not understand the nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.

Which is?

The level of belief.

The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.

Your ideas about spirituality are killing you.

You keep trying to solve the world’s problem as if it was a political problem, or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It is a spiritual problem.  And that is the one problem human beings don’t seem to know how to solve.

Then help us.

I am.

How?

In many ways.

Name one.

This book.

This book will help us?

It can.

What do we have to do?

Read it.

And then what?

Heed it.

That’s what they all say. “It’s all in The Book,” they say. “Read it and heed it. That’s all you have to do.” The problem is, they all hold up a different book.

I know.

And every book says something else.

I know.

So now we should “read and heed” this book?

It’s not a question of what you should do.
It’s a question of what you may do if you choose to.
It is an invitation, not a requirement.

Why would I want to read this book when I’ve already been told by True Believers that all the answers are in the other books—the books that they are telling me to heed?

Because you have not heeded them.

Yes, we have. We believe that we have.

That’s why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.

You keep saying that your Holy Book (each of your cultures has a different one) is what has given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other, to do what you are doing.

You are able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.

But we have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!

No. You are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.

What does that mean?

It means that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is different is how human beings have been interpreting them.

There is nothing “wrong” with having different interpretations. What may not benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of these differences.

This is what you are now doing.

It is what you have been doing for quite some time.

You cannot agree even within a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications for slaughter.

You argue among yourselves about what the Qur’an says, and about what its words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its words mean.  You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-yü says, what the Pali Canon says, what the Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of Mormon says…

And what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi, the Kojiki?

Okay, we get the point.

No, actually, you don’t. And that’s the point. The point is, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures, and you act as if there is only one.

It is your sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.

Not only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is also only one way to interpret that Scripture: your way.

This spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a species. You have suffered more—and caused other people to suffer more—over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human experience.

You have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest pain.

That’s crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?

Because there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.

They will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health, harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their sanity, for this one thing.

What?

Being right.

You are willing to give up everything you’ve ever worked for, everything you’ve ever wanted, everything you’ve ever created, in order to be “right.”

Indeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.

(End of this excerpt. Next in this space: take a step with us. Help create a New Cultural Story for our species. 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.)