God
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.)
I am reading WECCE, and I am in need of such help right now. I am full of anxiety, fear, and loneliness for the first time in my life. During the past 2 months, my best friend moved away, my boyfriend, who I loved dearly, broke things off. Then last week my dog was killed. I know in my heart and soul that I am supposed to be going through these changes, but I’m having such a hard time letting things go. I built my life for two 1/2 years around my boyfriend. I have lived alone in several cities with job transfers, etc. And I LOVE where I am living now, and I thought I had met someone with so many interests. I had some of the best times in my life with this person, but he could not give me the spiritual support and move on to build a future with me. I completely lost and disliked myself. I KNOW of all this, so why is my heart just clinging to everything? Why can’t I feel ANY joy in anything I do or see? I try and try to see the beauty in my home, in nature, in ALL things that brought me such great joy. I just want to let everything go..let go of the pain, let go of the wondering of how I manifested this all. I never imagined I would feel such loneliness – ever.
I know my pain will heal and I will feel (and eat) normally again. I will continue to pray and meditate to love myself more. Here it comes…BUT…loving yourself when you are BY yourself is pretty easy (I think), as I have lived alone quite a bit in my life. The big test comes when you are joined with someone else. I have been emotionally unavailable and feared intimacy ALL my life – hence why I have attracted men that are the same. I want to do everything in my power to change that. How do I know when I’m really ready? And to really know that my subconscious is going to attract someone that will be good for me? Do I trust my feeling? How do I lose the fear? I would appreciate any help….
C.D.
Dear C.D.,
WECCE is about how to embrace Change (another word for God/Evolution), and how to choose how we live in that change. Part of that process involves looking at our current Truth. What version of that truth are we living? Most of us are living in distorted truth. We can, however, move pretty easily to apparent Truth by simply reframing it with no judgment. For instance, “My boyfriend broke things off” could merely be “My boyfriend is not with me anymore. ” “I completely lost and disliked myself” could be “I was not being who I really am in the relationship.” Even “I can’t feel any joy” could be transformed with “I am experiencing a lack of joy right now,” which would easily allow you to experience the lack of joy with Gratitude, because you know it is only what you are feeling right now, not something that has to go on forever…unless you choose to let it go on forever.
For every negative thought, there is the opposite positive one. Look for these opposites, C.D., as you re-train yourself. It takes practice! If you are even reaching out, it means that you are beginning to do just that…practice being good to yourself! Negativity is definitely not good for you or anyone else.
Take a good look, and you will see your post is all about the past! This has nothing to do, ultimately, with now…unless you allow it to be. In reading WECCE, you will have read that this is all past data. This past data came from many sources, all of which thought that they were protecting you in some way…and all of which were subconscious, and controlled by the ego. The ego is the part of you that defines you as human, as an individual human, but, nonetheless, is also the part of us that operates out of fear. This fear is designed to keep us in the familiar and actually stop us from moving into what is truly our better selves. Fear holds us in place in the now, not in the manner of being present, but from the place of looking back and avoiding looking and moving forward.
Life, as they say, begins at the edge of your comfort zone…and your comfort zone is fear. Why do you wish to live your life in fear? It is serving you in some way? Since all we do serves us. Do you get to define yourself as the person who is emotionally unavailable? or the person who is fearful of intimacy? In some way, this has served you, but do you wish it to continue to serve you? Yes, we can choose to love what the past has shown us (in this case you know intimately what fear and unavailable feel like and how you are when you embrace them) and actually choose to be the opposite of that! This is a world of context, of opposites, and if you know one thing, you are now very well able to know the other…if you choose to remember.
I would take the “gut” test when you have a thought. Your tummy will tell you if you are coming from fear or love. Ask yourself why you even feel you have to have someone in your life right now. How does the answer feel? Look in the mirror and look into your eyes and very quietly tell yourself you love you…and keep doing it.
The first time I read in CWG the part about saying out loud, “I love sex or money or…” and then it asked me to say loudly, “I love me!” I found it amazing that I was unable to say that without hesitation. Wow! And I am a pretty self-confident person, so I knew if it was difficult for me, it must be almost impossible for others. I was okay with all of it, but not the unabashed loving of myself!
C.D., not only can you tell yourself you love yourself, I would like to tell you something else…you are love! Just by being here, you have demonstrated that you are love! By writing this note, you have shown you can overcome fear, which is a supreme act of self love. How wonderful is that?
Be gentle with yourself and be proactive…choose! You are choosing Change right now, actively, because passivity has not served you well. Way to go!
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.)
As someone who has been on a spiritual path, I see a great need in this world for the process of awakening to be recognized. Humanity will not be mature until we not only cease legal discrimination and protect ecosystems; but also until we recognize each person’s birthright to live his/her life to the absolute fullest, to be true to his/her path to maturity however conventional or unconventional it seems, to have an unmediated relationship with God, and to express his/her timeless inner wisdom whenever it comes through. Each of us belongs here. Each of us is here not because society or anyone approves of who we are or how we live, but because Spirit wants to experience this lifetime. Each of us, whether aware of it or not, is contributing to life becoming fully conscious of itself through the play of manifestation. Each of us has a role that no one else can take on in this great play of life.
In this article, I focus specifically on the situations of those of us who have had experiences of awakening, or glimpses of the depths of reality. These can come not only through prayer, formal meditation, or situations involving death and dying, but in virtually any circumstance. When we awaken, we experience ourselves as the timeless One Life or Spirit. Our reference point of “I” shifts from being an little individual temporary person to being God expressing Godself through a form, though we might have completely different ways of communicating this or have no clue how to talk about it. We come to know our nature as vast, whole, peaceful, wise, intelligent, open-hearted, unconditionally loving, eternal, infinite, pure, formless, spacious, fully alive, completely present, and/or one and the same as the Source and destiny of everything that ever was and ever will be. We see that life is truly beyond anything that even the most brilliant and most creative language or manifestation can capture.
This shift does not care who we are or where we come from as people. It can happen whether we are young or old; cool or uncool; rich or poor; liberal or conservative; indigenous, traditional, or modern; urban or rural; male or female or gender-non-conforming; straight or gay; monogamous or not; sexually active or not; religious or atheist; saints or sinners; or highly regarded or infamous. It does not regard successes or failures. It does not regard race, current values and beliefs, past personal history, cultural background, geographical location, language, roles, personality, relationships, physical appearance, health, stability of livelihood, abilities and talents, educational attainment, level of familiarity with spiritual materials, or the presence or absence of a spiritual teacher in human form. Indeed, awakening can be said to be the most democratic of all things in the universe.
In my case, I as a person am a 23-year-old woman from Indiana who dropped out of college after a major awakening at age 20, during my third year as a biology student. The event that triggered it was the death of a friend; at her funeral, I experienced a total acceptance of the temporary nature of all manifested forms and bodies. I was at peace with my own mortality and knew that life is meant to be lived to the absolute fullest. It is not meant to be taken for granted. After two days of experiencing this deep peace, I returned to school and felt as if I had been dropped there from another world. Nothing felt rigid or absolute anymore. Over the next two months, I experienced acute sensitivity to the energies of spaces and people and much disorientation. There was a period of intense self-examination during which I pulled apart every thought, perception, action, and reaction I could and saw it for what it was and where it came from.
What followed was a profound conscious glimpse of the Source that made it even clearer that there is no “I” apart from life and that life is everything and everyone. Indeed, life is literally infinite. In this hole created in the realm of time and experience, I saw that all possibilities and everything we commonly perceive as separate are One. I knew that life (God) creates the realm of differentiation, time, and experience in order to know and express itself through it. I knew that every struggle, tragedy, mistake, and shortcoming without exception is destined to be transformed into a greater strength as life evolves through form. We humans are a species through which life can fully come to know and see itself. What I have just described is absolutely beyond words.
After this, I entered a long period of adjustment. I left school. I traveled and explored many forms of spirituality and other resources. The disorientation and sensitivity continued and frequently prevented me from functioning. I often felt like I became everyone and everything I encountered and lost myself in a pattern that wanted to identify with and grasp something—anything—lest it be annihilated. There have been many hardships and challenges as well as insights that deepened the initial realizations.
We are living in a time when more and more of us are having spiritual awakenings. There is a greater need than ever for widespread awareness of this phenomenon and the adjustment process that usually follows. It is easy for these to be misunderstood and for the experiencers to be subject to much unneeded struggle, rejection, mistreatment, and pain. The following points highlight some common changes experienced in daily life and areas where mindfulness is especially needed:
The experiencer becomes less preoccupied with past and future and lives for the present moment. External circumstances become preferences, not absolute needs.
The ego of the experiencer dissolves as it is seen to be based in falsehood, sometimes not without major struggles for its survival or control in the process. Understanding naturally replaces fear in all areas where fear exists.
Nothing internal or external is seen as a problem to be feared, despised, and fought. Rather, everything is as it is and has its nature. Nothing manifest is absolute. Effects arise out of causes, and all identifications, thoughts, emotions, and experiences have a fleeting nature.
Identification with the body also diminishes, and the body comes to be seen as a vehicle instead of a self. Fear of death is lost as death is seen for what it is.
Many mistakes are made. The experience of awakening and adjustment process are often not immediately understood for what they are. Old patterns can disguise themselves in new forms.
Experiencers often become highly sensitive to energies and dynamics. Positive energy is felt as alive and nourishing, while negative energy is felt as toxic and degrading. The “how” of things becomes more important than the “what.” The thinking mind ceases to dominate, and the heart opens.
The experiencers come to value honesty, ethics, humility, gratitude, openness, awareness, responsibility, diversity, equality, harmony, health, balance, cooperation, compassion, unconditional love, wisdom, genuineness, integrity, joy, peace, creativity, and respect for all life.
Experiencers frequently manifest much more curiosity, creativity, and/or divergent, non-linear thinking than before. The nature of art, poetry, music, and scripture is understood. The nature of true intelligence is seen and valued. Profound creative insights and other forms of ingenuity can come in.
Experiencers commonly express heightened intuition and/or various abilities we tend to call psychic. Synchronistic coincidences become common, and intentions and wishes are made manifest more quickly. If fully seen for what they are, these are regarded as completely natural to life and not personal.
Those who have had awakenings often need to release energy, experience phases of disorientation or lowered ability to function, spend long periods of time alone doing “nothing”, meditate and read a lot, communicate from their place of perception, and/or not focus much on those things regarded as important in a “normal” human life.
While it is essential for experiencers to learn to recognize all dysfunction so that they cease to identify with it altogether and are not affected by it, there are some phases in which they can be very vulnerable to becoming overwhelmed by others’ projected negativity. It is not always easy for the experiencers to remove themselves from negative people and spaces.
Many people are so completely identified with their conditioning and sense of self that they miss the light wherever it appears. They are skeptical of the possibility living in peace, seeing human nature as pure and free, or seeing all problems as temporary by their very nature. They scoff and project negativity at anything they do not feel they understand with their minds, and they regard anything they fear as if it should not exist. If anything is Satan, it is this—a limited and temporary form pretending to be God, everything, absolute, or at the very least superior. It is unconscious, present to some degree in almost all of us, and not who anyone really is.
It is easy, in some stages, for those who have had spiritual awakenings to think other people are more aware than they actually are. People are sometimes trusted when they cannot be.
Relationships with partners, family, friends, roommates, classmates, coworkers, supervisors, and others in everyday life can be challenging. Those based on personal neediness and dysfunctional patterns can fall apart quickly if mutual honesty, respect, and genuineness are not brought in.
Experiencers tend to become more and more oriented toward unconditional love. This love is not personal; it transcends the personal and is far stronger and deeper than anything personal. It is the love of God.
In a society that emphasizes material success, values competition, judges people, neglects and stigmatizes the vulnerable, fears that which it does not understand, and is not very open to examining itself, it is not difficult to imagine the struggles faced by people who have had spiritual awakenings. There is still much that needs to be addressed before we truly express justice. It is still very easy for those who experience loss or change (as well as others who do not identify with common ways of thinking or conform to a status quo) to fall into poverty, debt, discrimination, victimization, illness, alienation, and rejection from opportunities to make a living. Humanity will not be mature until the least of us, the most extreme outsiders, and the most alienated are respected as full human beings with equal dignity to those who have the highest status. Justice, freedom, peace, and democracy will not come into this world until all embrace mindfulness and take responsibility for what they create and project. It serves animals to be controlled by self-centered survival instincts, but it does not serve humans.
All of us, regardless of who or where we are, have the right to face our own challenges, know for ourselves how life works, mature on the human level, and grow spiritually however we feel genuinely moved to do these. Making mistakes and facing appropriate consequences for our actions must not be stigmatized if our lives are to be lived to their fullest potential. We must embrace struggle and at the same time stop creating needless hardship and suffering. Evolution accelerates greatly when it is conscious.
We will be truly wise when we do not regard any individual, collective, or other form as infallible or absolute, and when we are able to approach everyone from Adolf Hitler to Jesus Christ with understanding, empathy, honesty, and compassion. Everyone and everything—no exception—is us, including and especially God. Both hatred and blind following are aspects of unconsciousness. They divide us internally and externally and prevent us from living our lives to the fullest. They are not of love, but of the ego. It is a sign of dysfunction when openness, unconditional love, and transcendence are not allowed. When these are present, the infinite unconditional love of Christ, God, and Buddha is brought out much more fully.
Although awakening is not personal, each individual experiences it in a unique way. There is no right or wrong way to awaken or right or wrong experiences to have after awakening. Not everyone is ready to awaken in this lifetime. No experience is superior or inferior to its alternatives—each of us is given exactly what we need in our situation. No emerging pattern or experience after awakening, however unconscious or sinful, negates what has been seen or changes the fact that the God/life/Spirit is everyone and everything, contains everyone and everything, and is the Source and destiny of everyone and everything.
(Phoebe Lackawanna is a gifted artist whose work is divinely inspired. Her art gallery can be viewed at Phoebe’s Art Gallery. Phoebe currently resides in Indianapolis, Indiana. To contact her, please e-mail Peaceloveandart89@gmail.com.)
As we once again find ourselves on the threshold of the Thanksgiving holiday, the season of gratitude, I want to thank God for everything in my life that is wrong, for all the things in my life that I have either lost or never received, and for all the outcomes that did not turn out right.
…I want to thank God for the relationships that are no longer a part of my reality in the way they once comfortably were, for the friendships and lovers who transitioned out of my life and moved in new directions, and for the encounters with my Brothers and Sisters on Planet Earth that were less than pleasant and far from an experience of Oneness.
…I want to thank God for the money that is not in my bank account. I feel especially grateful for having to give up some of the things in my life I truly enjoyed because I could no longer afford to pay for them.
…I want to thank God for the moments in my life when I felt alone, as though nobody understood me or even cared, the moments where the silence in the room echoed loudly, the colors of life were drained of their vibrance, and time stood dreadfully still.
…I want to thank God for the professional promotions I did not receive, the career opportunities I was overlooked for, and the jobs I was matter-of-factly asked not to return to.
…I want to thank God for the aches and pains in my physical being, the nights where I am plagued with insomnia, the extra body weight I have had a difficult time shedding, and the way my mirror stares mockingly back at me some days.
…I want to thank God for the rattle in my car, the leaky faucet in my bathroom, the slowest line at the bank, the disproportionate number of red lights during my morning commute, last night’s quarrel with my spouse, the empty orange juice container, the paper cut, the stubbed toe, the neighbor who mows his yard at 6:00 a.m., and the one red shirt that mysteriously found its way into my washing machine along with a load of what is now formerly white clothes.
Yes, God, thank you.
The wonderful and lovely occurrences in life present us an obvious opportunity to experience and express gratitude. Appreciation flows generously in moments of ease and abundance. But how can we experience thankfulness in the midst of strife and turmoil? How can we feel abundant when we feel as though we have nothing? Is it possible that the events in life that reveal themselves to us under the guise of calamity hold within them the same opportunity for self-realization as those which seem to appear peacefully and effortlessly?
The people, places, and things which show up as “wrong” serve to illuminate that which is “right,” remembering that it is only within the human understanding of “wrong” or “right” that anything can be judged as so. There is not a single occurrence which does not lead you to a higher experience of Who You Really Are, whether you are being invited to that remembrance through an experience of having or not having, losing or finding, propelling forward or retracting back, feeling frustrated or feeling overjoyed.
I will be expressing my deepest gratitude to God for the “nothings” in my life this Thanksgiving and thanking Her for the expanding awareness that continues to allow me to see the possibilities within what might otherwise appear to be “wrong.”
How about you?
(Lisa McCormack is the Managing Editor & Administrator of The Global Conversation. She is also a member of the Spiritual Helper team atwww.ChangingChange.net, a website offering emotional and spiritual support. To connect with Lisa, please e-mail her at Lisa@TheGlobalConversation.com.)
I am scared and confused, and I wish someone would tell me what is the REAL DEAL about how God feels about sexual intimacy between people who love each other but aren’t married yet. I am caught between the Bible and what CWG has to say. From what I have read of CWG, God seems very easy going about sex. The Bible implies (and sometimes firmly states) that sexual purity is a must and that God won’t hear the prayers of someone who is sexually immoral. But, I’m not trying to be immoral. I just want to love and be loved by the person of my choice. Why is that bad? My friendship with God means everything to me. He is my best friend and He has walked with me my whole life. I don’t want to feel like I am betraying him by being disobedient. All I want is to do the right thing. Can you give me your perspective? Thank you, Annie, for listening… Frances
Dear Frances…Thank you for reaching out. You asked for the “REAL DEAL about how God feels about sexual intimacy between people who love each other but aren’t married yet.”
Okay, here it is: God = Love. God is all there is, everywhere present, in all things seen and unseen. Love is all there is, everywhere present, in all things seen and unseen (even though it’s hard to recognize sometimes, when it’s been distorted by fear).
Since God is all there is, and Love is all there is, how can any expression of Love between two people possibly be bad? It cannot, dear Frances. Love wants to be expressed, and that’s what we came here to physicality for. YOU get to decide what feels right for you, and no matter what decision you make, please know that God loves you and is perfectly okay with it. God will never abandon you. It is impossible for the reason stated above: You are part of God, because God is all there is.
Please allow yourself to feel pure joy. Allow yourself to live your own truth. And always, allow yourself to feel love, in whatever way feels joyous and true to you!
(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.)
I keep hearing that I am “creating my own reality.” Yet things happen in my life right and left that I do not want, have never wished for, and certainly am not actively choosing to create. Why is this occurring, and how can I get it to stop?
— Elizabeth S., Davenport, Iowa
Dear Elizabeth,
Creating our own reality. Yup, that’s being thrown around a lot these days, isn’t it? Neale Donald Walsh has said that he believes this notion is one of the most dangerous things being put out there by the New Thought community these days, in fact. Why? Because no one really explains what this means.
Do you create your own reality? Yes, and kind of! I will begin with “kind of”. Life, as we live it, and experience it, in form and function, is never completely our creation. Life is a co-creation. All who have any connection to an event, great or small, co-created that event to give each the opportunity to experience something for Divinity. Of course, this is on a soul level. It is also assuming that you believe that we are all here, in this reality, so that Divinity may experience what Divinity knows.
It’s like we are all building a sky scraper together. Each of us is in charge of one piece of the whole, and we are doing our very best to do our part as well as we are trained to do it. Then there is an earthquake, and the skyscraper falls down. Perhaps one of the builders was lax in their job and can take some responsibility for the skyscraper being vulnerable, but no one created the earthquake that revealed that/those vulnerabilities, and no one person can take responsibility for everything.
The events of the building and the collapsing of the skyscraper did, however, create the situation in which you ARE responsible for creating your own reality. How did you feel about and during each situation? Did you get up eagerly to go to work and do your job? Did you drag out of bed and curse each moment on the job? Were you sad when the building fell? If your job might have created the weakness, did you take responsibility? Did you fall into fear and depression? And on and on.
Everyone who had anything to do with that skyscraper, from beginning to end, including observers and reporters, and cleanup crews and people who read about the accident 10 years later, has co-created the skyscraper and its events so that each can experience what THEY choose, on a soul level, to experience through that event.
CWG says that everything is presenting us with the opportunity to decide, declare and do who we really are.
Elizabeth, I am really sorry that you are experiencing so much in your life that you do not desire. You ask how you can get it to stop. I have a suggestion.
Change your mind about these events.
Don’t look at them as things that oppose you and your desires. Consider looking at them as opportunities to be who you really are. Then do something else that, in our culture today, seems very counterintuitive. Be grateful for it all.
I have found that by moving into gratitude, I move away from being stuck in the emotions that hold my feet to the ground, and prevent me from moving forward. I acknowledge that I had every right to be sad, or mad or whatever, but that now it is time to see these things as signals that something isn’t really working, and thank them for being in my life.
I can now look at my life and see that things I thought were perfectly awful at the time, were placed in my life so that some time in the future I could use the experience to help myself or others from a higher knowing. Mostly the worse I perceived the incident to be, the more I found I was able to use my knowing from that incident to help others that much more powerfully.
You can not, and do not create your world all by yourself, Elizabeth, but you do create your own experience of the event…and you are capable of changing how you do that. The book, “When Everything Changes, Change Everything”, by Neale Donald Walsch, explains how to do this and gives some very powerful tools to use as well. If you haven’t read the book, and can’t afford to buy it, it is available to read on the site for free! And there are volunteer Spiritual Helpers there to be with you as you integrate the process.
I hope this has helped,
Therese
Conversations with God was given to humanity to bring us answers to Life’s Great Questions. And the greatest of all our Great Questions has been, and continues to be: “Who and what is God?”
Most of us clearly understand that God is not a very large and handsome man in the sky, with a long white beard and a flowing robe, sitting on a golden throne in a bejeweled room, surrounded by wing flapping angels.
Yet while we are pretty clear about what God is not, we are not nearly as clear about what God is.
So let’s see what God has to say on the subject.
In Conversations with God, God made it clear that God is without form, gender, or substance in the way that we know it. God is, rather, that of which all things are made. The Essential Essence of which everything in existence is comprised. That essence contains Supreme Intelligence. And Total Awareness. And Absolute Power.
It is omnipresent and omniscient. It is everywhere because it is everything that exists in any place at all. It knows everything because without that which it knows, nothing that exists could come into being. It is the Source and the Substance at once; it is the Creator and Created.
It always was, is now, and always will be. It knows no beginning and no end. There is nothing that exists outside of it and there is nothing that exists inside of it without it. That is, simply put, there is nothing that is not God.
This Essential Essence uses Itself to recreate Itself, and calls upon Itself to empower Itself, to be Itself, all by Itself.
It needs nothing, requires nothing, demands nothing, punishes nothing. For what could It possibly need? What could It in any case require? Why would It demand anything? And who—pray tell, who in the world—would it command or punish?
That which has everything and is everything and wants and needs nothing holds only one desire: to express and to know Itself through the glorious experiencing of Itself…and to create this possibility.
That is the reason that life as we know it was created.
Every human being who has stepped into the living of this possibility has achieved all the things we as a sentient species say we want to achieve. And they have done so without hurting, without damaging, without killing. We say they have lived the lives of “saints.” Yet they have merely lived life as it was intended to be lived ‑‑ a way in which most human beings have adamantly refused to live, for the most ironic reason of all: We think it is too good to be true.
Several years ago, I read a wonderful book by William P. Young titled “The Shack.” The debut of this fictional book created quite a buzz and received mixed reviews for its unconventional theological depictions. A book that originally was written solely as a Christmas gift for his children soon found itself on the New York Times Bestseller List and creating quite the stir.
The story centers around Mack, a father who is mired in his great sadness, who asks the burning question: “Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” Four years earlier, Mack’s young daughter, Missy, was abducted during a family vacation. Though her body was never found, the police did find evidence in an abandoned shack to prove that she had been brutally murdered by a notorious serial killer who preyed on young girls.
When Mack receives a note in his mailbox from “Papa” to spend the weekend at the shack, he reluctantly accepts this peculiar and mysterious invitation and sets out to spend a weekend with someone who he suspects to be God. During his weekend, Mack encounters in bodily form the Holy Trinity in a way he never expected or imagined. Papa (God) is a large, matronly African-American woman. Jesus is a young to middle-aged man of Middle-Eastern descent. The Holy Spirit is played by Sarayu (Sanskrit for air or wind), a small, delicate and eclectic woman of Asian descent. And he also meets for a time with Sophia, who is the personification of God’s wisdom.
The story lightly dances across the lines of conventional Christianity and New Spirituality as Mack’s life-changing weekend with the Trinity unfolds. It explores and subtly questions traditional ideas held within religious theology — such as heaven, free will, the cross, and forgiveness — with a gentle application of an expanded perspective and an invitation to the reader to move beyond preconceived notions.
I enjoyed this book for the eclectic spiritual journey, for tackling some of the big and mostly unanswered questions surrounding religion and life, and for its ability to step tenderly outside the box in such a colorful and loving way. It is unusual to find books in the fiction section of the bookstore that inspire me. But I believe, whether you read “The Shack” from a background in Christianity or a background in New Spirituality, with an open mind, this book has a gift to offer everyone.
(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.)
(If there is a book, movie, music CD, etc. that you would like to recommend to our worldwide audience, 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: “Review”)
I am 38 years old, employed in a fairly secure job, but the debt I have is starting to cause me to become anxious and afraid. I have modified my spending, but I still can’t seem to get even, let alone ahead. I don’t go out with my friends much, and the thought of dating someone, and what that will cost, is overwhelming. I never intended to get to a point where I considered defaulting on what I owe; however, it is now causing a great deal of stress in my life. What would God say? What is the right thing to do in my situation? – Tom in Tacoma, Wa.
Hi, Tom… Your situation is all too common in these times. Many of us have found ourselves facing a similar situation, some have thrown their hands in the air and defaulted, others have found ways to keep their necks above water, and others have used the situation to motivate themselves into higher wealth and abundance.
Now, some of those in the latter category will take the experience of being overwhelmed with debt and decide they will not do that again; that is, they will be more conservative with their money moving forward. Others in that group will think they are invincible and live even riskier lives; of those, some will achieve greater success and some will continue to experience feeling broke and broken.
You see, Tom, I believe that God wants for us what we want for ourselves, nothing more, nothing less. If we want peace, God wants peace. If we want extravagance, God wants extravagance. To Her, it makes no difference. So I believe God would say to you the following: “Tom, what do you wish to experience? What do you want to feel? How may I help you to achieve that?”
So if I may turn the question around on you, Tom, is it possible for you, in the moment, to see that everything is perfect, everything is the way it should be? Can you believe that you are safe right where you are right now? If so, where would you like to go from here? Are you in the right job for you? Is there something you love doing and feel a strong sense of purpose in? Is there something that you feel you have a gift for, a gift that you are not using to your benefit or the world’s benefit right now?
What I am trying to get at here is that God does not care what you are doing, what your financial situation is, or how you go about handling that situation. What God does care about is that you do whatever you do consciously, knowingly, and lovingly. So, Tom, make a decision (for to not decide is a decision in itself) on who you will be in relation to whatever it is that you do. “Being” must always come first in the conscious person’s daily affairs.
(Kevin McCormack is a “Conversations with God” Life Coach, a Spiritual helper on www.changingchange.net, and an addictions & recovery advisor. To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@theglobalconversation.com.)
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