It is Easter Sunday, 1994, and I am here, pen in hand, as in-structed. I am waiting for God. He’s promised to show up, as She has the past two Easters, to begin another yearlong conver-sation. The third and last—for now.
This process—this extraordinary communication—began in 1992. It will be complete on Easter, 1995. Three years, three books. The first dealt with largely personal matters—romantic relationships, finding one’s right work, dealing with the pow-erful energies of money, love, sex, and God; and how to inte-grate them into our daily lives. The second expanded on those themes, moving outward to major geopolitical considera-tions—the nature of governments, creating a world without war, the basis for a unified, international society. This third and final part of the trilogy will focus, I am told, on the largest ques-tions facing man. Concepts dealing with other realms, other dimensions, and how the whole intricate weave fits together.
The progression has been
Individual Truths
Global Truths
Universal Truths
As with the first two manuscripts, I have no idea where this is going. The process is simple. I put pen to paper, ask a question—and see what thoughts come to my mind. If nothing is there, if no words are given to me, I put everything away until another day. The whole process took about a year for the first book, over a year for the second. (That book is still in process as this is begun.)
I expect this will be the most important book of all.
For the first time since starting this process, I am feeling very self-conscious about it. Two months have passed since I wrote those first four or five paragraphs. Two months since Easter, and nothing has come—nothing but self-consciousness.
I have spent weeks reviewing and correcting errors in the typeset manuscript of the first book in this trilogy-and just this week received the final, corrected version of Book 1, only to have to send it back to typesetting again, with 43 sepa-rate errors to correct. The second book, meanwhile, still in handwritten form, was completed only last week—two months behind “schedule.” (It was supposed to be done by Easter ‘94.) This book, begun on Easter Sunday in spite of the fact that Book 2 was unfinished, has languished in its folder ever since-and, now that Book 2 is complete-cries out for atten-tion.
Yet for the first time since 1992, when this all began, I seem to be resisting this process, if not almost resenting it. Jam feel-ing trapped by the assignment, and I’ve never liked to do any-thing I have to do. Further, having distributed to a few people uncorrected copies of the first manuscript and heard their re-actions to it, I am now convinced that all three of these books will be widely read, thoroughly examined, analyzed for theological relevance, and Passionately debated for dozens of years.
That has made it very difficult to come to this page; very dif-ficult to consider this pen my friend-for while I know this ma-terial must be brought through, I know that I am opening myself up to the most scurrilous attacks, the ridicule, and per-haps even the hatred of many people for daring to put forth this information-much less for daring to announce that it is com-ing to me directly from God.
I think my greatest fear is that l will prove to be an inade-quate, inappropriate “spokesperson” for God, given the seem-ingly endless series of mistakes and misdeeds which have marked my life and characterized my behavior.
Those who have known me from my Past—including former wives and my own children-would have every right to step for-ward and denounce these writings, based on my lackluster per-formance as a human being in the simple, rudimentary functions of husband and father. I have failed miserably at this, and at other aspects of life having to do with friendship and integrity, industry and responsibility.
I am, in short, keenly aware that I am not worthy to repre-sent myself as a man of God or a messenger of truth. I should be the last person to assume such a role, or to even presume to. I do an injustice to the truth by presuming to speak it, when my whole life has been a testimony to my weaknesses.
For these reasons, God, I ask that You relieve me of my du-ties as Your scribe, and that You find someone whose life ren-ders them worthy of such an honor.
I should like to finish what we started here—though you are under no obligation to do so. You have no “duties,” to Me or to anyone else, though I see that your thought that you do has led you to much guilt.
I have let people down, including my own children.
Everything that has happened in your life has hap-pened perfectly in order for you and all the souls in-volved with you—to grow in exactly the way you’ve needed and wanted to grow.
“ ,,
That is the perfect out constructed by everyone in the New Age who wishes to escape responsibility for their actions and avoid any unpleasant outcomes.
I feel that I’ve been selfish—incredibly selfish—most of my life, doing what pleases me regardless of its impact on others.
There is nothing wrong in doing what pleases you...
But, so many people have been hurt, let down—
There is only the question of what pleases you most. You seem to be saying that what now pleases you most
are behaviors which do little or no damage to others.
That’s putting it mildly.
On purpose. You must learn to be gentle with your-self. And stop judging yourself.
That’s hard—particularly when others are so ready to judge. I feel I am going to be an embarrassment to You, to the truth; that if I insist on completing and publishing this trilogy, I will be such a poor ambassador for Your message as to discredit it.
You cannot discredit truth. Truth is truth, and it can neither be proven nor disproven. It simply is.
The wonder and the beauty of My message cannot and will not be affected by what people think of you.
Indeed, you are one of the best ambassadors, be-cause you have lived your life in a way that you call less than perfect
People can relate to you—even as they judge you. And if they see that you are truly sincere, they can even forgive you your “sordid past.”
Yet I tell you this: So long as you are still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them.
Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself.
My concern was more for the message than for me. I was concerned that the message would get besmirched.
If you are concerned about the message, then get the message out. Do not worry about besmirching it. The message will speak for itself.
Remember what 1 have taught you. It is not nearly so important how well a message is received as how well it is sent.
Remember this also: You teach what you have to learn.
It is not necessary to have achieved perfection to speak of perfection.
It is not necessary to have achieved mastery to speak of mastery.
It is not necessary to have achieved the highest level of evolution to speak of the highest level of evolution.
Seek only to be genuine. Strive to be sincere. If you wish to undo all the “damage” you imagine yourself to have done, demonstrate that in your actions. Do what you can do. Then let it rest.
That’s easier said than done. Sometimes I feel so guilty. Guilt and fear are the only enemies of man.
Guilt is important. It tells us when we’ve done wrong.
There is no such thing as “wrong.” There is only that which does not serve you; does not speak the truth about Who You Are, and Who You Choose to Be.
Guilt is the feeling that keeps you stuck in who you are not.
But guilt is the feeling that at least lets us notice we’ve gone astray.
Awareness is what you are talking about, not guilt.
I tell you this: Guilt is a blight upon the land—the poison that kills the plant.
You will not grow through guilt, but only shrivel and die.
Awareness is what you seek. But awareness is not guilt, and love is not fear.
Fear and guilt, I say again, are your only enemies. Love and awareness are your true friends. Yet do not confuse the one with the other, for one will kill you, while the other gives you life.
Then I should not feel “guilty” about anything?
Never, ever. What good is there in that? It only al-lows you to not love yourself—and that kills any chance that you could love another.
And I should fear nothing?
Fear and caution are two different things. Be cau-tious—be conscious—but do not be fearful. For fear only paralyzes, while consciousness mobilizes.
Be mobilized, not paralyzed.
I was always taught to fear God.
I know. And you have been paralyzed in your rela-tionships with Me ever since.
It was only when you stopped fearing Me that you could create any kind of meaningful relationship with Me.
If I could give you any gift, any special grace, that would allow you to find Me, it would be fearlessness.
Blessed are the fearless, for they shall know God.
That means you must be fearless enough to drop what you think you know about God.
You must be fearless enough to step away from what others have told you about God.
You must be so fearless that you can dare to enter into your own experience of God.
And then you must not feel guilty about it. When your own experience is violating what you thought you knew, and what everyone else has told you, about God, you must not feel guilty.
Fear and guilt are the only enemies of man.
Yet there are those who say that to do as You suggest is traf-ficking with the devil; that only the devil would suggest such a thing.
There is no devil.
That’s something else the devil would say.
The devil would say everything that God says, is that it?
Only more cleverly.
The devil is more clever than God?
Let’s say, more cunning.
And so the devil “connives” by saying what God
would say?
With just a little “twist”—just enough to get one off the path; to lead one astray.
I think we have to have a little talk about the “devil.”
Well, we talked a lot about this in Book 1.
Not enough, apparently. Besides, there may be those who haven’t read Book 1. Or Book 2, for that mat-ter. So I think a good place for us to begin would be to summarize some of the truths found in those books. That will set the stage for the larger, universal truths in this third book. And we’ll get to the devil again, too, early on. I want you to know how, and why, such an en-tity was “invented.”
Okay. All right. You win. I’m already into the dialogue, so apparently it’s going to continue. But there’s one thing people should know as I enter this third conversation: Half a year has passed since I wrote the first words presented here. It’s now November 25, 1994—the day after Thanksgiving. It’s taken 25 weeks to get this far; 25 weeks since your last words above, to my words in this paragraph. A lot has happened in those 25 weeks. But one thing that has not happened is that this book has not moved one inch forward. Why is this taking so long?
Do you see how you can block yourself? Do you see how you can sabotage yourself? Do you see how you can stop yourself in your tracks just when you are on to something good? You’ve been doing this all your life.
Hey, wait a minute! I’m not the one who has been stalling on this project. I can’t do anything—can’t write a single word—unless I feel moved to, unless I feel... I hate to use the word, but I guess I have to. . . inspired to come to this yellow le-gal pad and continue. And inspiration is Your department, not mine!
I see. So you think I’ve been stalling, not you. Something like that, yes.
My wonderful friend, this is so much like you—and other humans. You sit on your hands for half a year, do-ing nothing about your highest good, actually pushing it from you, then blaming someone or something outside of yourself for you not getting anywhere. Do you not see a pattern here?
Well. . . .
I tell you this: There is never a time when I am not with you; never a moment when I am not “ready.”
Have I not told you this before?
Well, yes, but. . . .
I am always with you, even unto the end of time.
Yet I will not impose My will on you—ever.
I choose your highest good for you, but above that, I choose your will for you. And this is the surest measure of love.
When I want for you what you want for you, then I truly love you. When I want for you what I want for you, then I am loving Me, through you.
So, too, by the same measure, can you determine whether others love you, and whether you truly love others. For love chooses naught for itself, but only seeks to make possible the choices of the beloved other.
That seems to directly contradict what You put in Book 1 about love being not at all concerned with what the other is be-ing, doing, and having, but only with what the Self is being, do-ing, and having.
It brings up other questions as well, like . . .... what of the par-ent who shouts at the child, “Get out of the street!” Or, better yet, risks his own life to run out into swirling traffic and snatch the child up? What of that parent? Is she not loving her child? Yet she has imposed her own will. Remember, the child was in the street because it wanted to be.
How do You explain these contradictions?
There is no contradiction. Yet you cannot see the harmony. And you will not understand this divine doc-trine about love until you understand that My highest choice for Me is the same as your highest choice for you. And that is because you and I are one.
You see, the Divine Doctrine is also a Divine Dichotomy, and that is because life itself is a dichot-omy—an experience within which two apparently con-tradictory truths can exist in the same space at the same time.
In this case, the apparently contradictory truths are that you and I are separate, and you and I are one. The same apparent contradiction appears in the relation-ship between you and everyone else.
I stand by what I said in Book 1: The biggest mistake people make in human relationships is to be concerned for what the other is wanting, being, doing, or having. Be concerned only for the Self. What is the Self being, doing, or having? What is the Self wanting, needing, choosing? What is the highest choice for the Self?
I also stand by another statement I made in that book:
The highest choice for the Self becomes the highest choice for another when the Self realizes that there is no one else.
The mistake, therefore, is not in choosing what is best for you, but rather, in not knowing what is best. This stems from now knowing Who You Really Are, much less who you are seeking to be.
I don’t understand.
Well, let me give you an illustration. If you are seek-ing to win the Indianapolis 500, driving 1 50 miles per hour might be what is best for you. If you are seeking to get to the grocery store safely, it might not.
You’re saying it’s all contextual.
Yes. All of life is. What is “best” depends on who you are, and who you seek to be. You cannot intelligently choose what is best for you until you intelligently decide who and what you are.
Now I, as God, know what I am seeking to be. I therefore know what is “best” for Me.
And what is that? Tell me, what is “best” for God? This ought to be interesting...
What is best for Me is giving you what you decide is best for you. Because what I am trying to be is My Self,
expressed. And I am being this through you.
Are you following this?
Yes, believe it or not, I actually am.
Good. Now I will tell you something you may find
difficult to believe.
I am always giving you what is best for you . though I admit that you may not always know it.
This mystery clears up a bit now that you have begun to understand what I am up to.
I am God.
I am the Goddess.
I am the Supreme Being. The All of Everything. The Beginning and The End. The Alpha and Omega.
I am the Sum and the Substance. The Question and the Answer. The Up and the Down of it. The Left and the Right, the Here and the Now, the Before and the Af-ter.
I am the Light, and I am the Darkness that creates the Light, and makes it possible. I am the Goodness Without End, and the “Badness” which makes the “Goodness” good. I am all of these things—the All of Everything—and I cannot experience any part of My Self without experiencing All of My Self.
And this is what you do not understand about Me. You want to make Me the one, and not the other. The high and not the low. The good, and not the bad. Yet in denying half of Me, you deny half of your Self. And in so doing, you can never be Who You Really Are.
I am the Magnificent Everything—and what I am seeking is to know Myself experientially. I am doing this through you, and through everything else that exists. And I am experiencing My Self as magnificent through the choices I make. For each choice is self creative. Each choice is definitive. Each choice represents Me—that is, re-presents Me—as Who I Choose to Be Right Now.
Yet I cannot choose to be magnificent unless there is something to choose from. Some part of Me must be less than magnificent for Me to choose the part of Me which is magnificent.
So, too, is it with you.
I am God, in the act of creating My Self.
And so, too, are you.
This is what your soul longs to do. This is that for which your spirit hungers.
Were Ito stop you from having what you choose, I would stop My Self from having what I choose. For
My greatest desire is to experience My Self as What I Am. And, as I carefully and painstakingly explained in
Book 1, I can only do that in the space of What I Am Not.
And so, I have carefully created What I Am Not, in order that I might experience What I Am.
Yet I Am everything I create—therefore I Am, in a sense, What I Am Not.
How can someone be what they are not?
Easy. You do it all the time. Just watch your behav-iors.
Seek to understand this. There is nothing that I am not. Therefore, I Am what I Am, and I Am What I Am Not.
THIS IS THE DIVINE DICHOTOMY.
This is the Divine Mystery which, until now, only the most sublime minds could understand. I have revealed it for you here in a way that more can understand.
This was the message of Book 1, and this basic truth you must understand—you must deeply know—if you are to understand and know the even more sublime truths to come, here, in Book 3.
Yet let Me now get to one of those more sublime truths-for it is contained in the answer to the second part of your question.
I was hoping we were going to get back to that part of my question. How is the parent loving the child if he says or does what is best for the child, even if he has to thwart the child’s own will to do it? Or does the parent demonstrate the truest love by letting the child play in traffic?
This is a wonderful question. And it’s the question asked by every parent, in some form or another, since parenting began. The answer is the same for you as a parent as it is for Me as God.
So what is the answer?
Patience, My son, patience. “All good things come to those who wait.” Have you never heard of that?
Yeah, my father used to say it and I hated it.
I can understand that. But do have patience with your Self, especially if your choices are not bringing you what you think you want. The answer to the second part of your question, for example.
You say that you want the answer, but you are not choosing it. You know you are not choosing it, because you do not experience having it. In truth, you have the answer, and have had it all along. You simply are not choosing it. You are choosing to believe you do not know the answer—and so you do not.
Yes, You went over this, too, in Book 1. I have everything I choose to have right now—including a complete understand-ing of God—yet I will not experience that I have it until I know that I do.
Precisely! You’ve put it perfectly.
But how can I know that I do until I experience that I do? How can I know something I haven’t experienced? Wasn’t there a great mind who said, “All knowing is experience”?
He was wrong.
Knowing does not follow experience-it precedes it.
In this, half the world has it backwards.
So You mean that I have the answer to the second part of my question, I just don’t know that I do?
Exactly.
Yet if I don’t know that I do, then I don’t.
That’s the paradox, yes.
I don’t get it... except I do.
Indeed.
So how can I get to this place of “knowing that I know” something if I don’t “know that I know”?
To “know that you know, act as if you do.”
You mentioned something about that in Book 1 also.
Yes. A good place to start here would be to recap
what’s gone before in the previous teaching. And you “just happen” to be asking the right questions, allowing Me to summarize in short form at the beginning of this book the information we discussed in prior material in some detail.
Now in Book 1, we talked about the Be-Do-Have paradigm, and how most people have it reversed.
Most people believe if they “have” a thing (more time, money, love—whatever), then they can finally “do” a thing (write a book, take up a hobby, go on vaca-tion, buy a home, undertake a relationship), which will allow them to “be” a thing (happy, peaceful, content, or in love).
In actuality, they are reversing the Be-Do-Have paradigm. In the universe as it really is (as opposed to how you think it is), “havingness” does not produce “beingness,” but the other way around.
First you “be” the thing called “happy” (or “know-ing,” or “wise,” or “compassionate,” or whatever); then you start “doing” things from this place of being-ness—and soon you discover that what you are doing winds up bringing you the things you’ve always wanted to “have.”
The way to set this creative process (and that’s what this is. . . the process of creation) into motion is to look at what it is you want to “have,” ask yourself what you think you would “be” if you “had” that, then go right straight to being.
In this way you reverse the way you’ve been using the Be-Do-Have paradigm—in actuality, set it right—and work with, rather than against, the creative power of the universe.
Here is a short way of stating this principle:
In life, you do not have to do anything.
It is all a question of what you are being.
This is one of the three messages I will touch on again at the end of our dialogue. I will close the book with it.
For now, and to illustrate this, think of a person who just knows that if he could only have a little more time, a little more money, or a little more love, he’d be truly happy.
He does not get the connection between his “not being very happy” right now and his not having the time, money, or love he wants.
That’s right. On the other hand, the person who is “being” happy seems to have time to do everything that’s really important, all the money that’s needed, and enough love to last a lifetime.
He finds he has everything he needs to “be happy”.. . by “being happy” to begin with!
Exactly. Deciding ahead of time what you choose to be produces that in your experience.
“To be, or not to be. That is the question.”
Precisely. Happiness is a state of mind. And like all states of mind, it reproduces itself in physical form.
There’s a statement for a refrigerator magnet:
“All states of mind reproduce themselves.”
But how can you “be” happy to begin with, or “be” anything you are seeking to be—more prosperous, for instance, or more loved—if you are not having what you think you need in order to “be” that?
Act as if you are, and you will draw it to you.
What you act as if you are, you become.
In other words, “Fake it until you make it.”
Something like that, yes. Only you can’t really be
“faking.” Your actions have to be sincere.
Everything you do, do out of sincerity, or the benefit
of the action is lost.
This is not because I won’t “reward you.” God does not “reward” and “punish,” as you know. But Natural Law requires the body, mind, and spirit to be united in thought, word, and action for the process of creation to work.
You cannot fool your mind. If you are insincere, your mind knows it, and that’s that. You’ve just ended any chance that your mind can help you in the creative process.
You can, of course, create without your mind—it’s just a great deal more difficult. You can ask your body to do something your mind doesn’t believe, and if your body does it long enough, your mind will begin to let go of its former thought about that, and create a New Thought. Once you have a New Thought about a thing, you’re well on your way to creating it as a permanent aspect of your being, rather than something you’re just acting out.
This is doing things the hard way, and even in such instances, the action must be sincere. Unlike what you can do with people, you cannot manipulate the universe.
So here we have a very delicate balance. The body does something in which the mind does not believe, yet the mind must add the ingredient of sincerity to the body’s action for it to work.
How can the mind add sincerity when it does not “believe in what the body is doing?
By taking out the selfish element of personal gain.
How?
The mind may not be able to sincerely agree that the actions of the body can bring you that which you choose, but the mind seems very clear that God will bring good things through you to another.
Therefore, whatever you choose for yourself, give to another.
Would You say that again, please?
Of course.
Whatever you choose for yourself, give to another.
If you choose to be happy, cause another to be happy.
If you choose to be prosperous, cause another to prosper.
If you choose more love in your life, cause another to have more love in theirs.
Do this sincerely—not because you seek personal gain, but because you really want the other person to have that—and all the things you give away will come to you.
Why is that so? How does that work?
The very act of your giving something away causes you to experience that you have it to give away. Since you cannot give to another something you do not now have, your mind comes to a new conclusion, a New Thought, about you—namely, that you must have this, or you could not be giving it away.
This New Thought then becomes your experience. You start “being” that. And once you start “being” a thing, you’ve engaged the gears of the most powerful creation machine in the universe—your Divine Self.
Whatever you are being, you are creating.
The circle is complete, and you will create more and more of that in your life. It will be made manifest in your physical experience.
This is the greatest secret of life. It is what Book 1and Book 2 were written to tell you. It was all there, in far greater detail.
Explain to me, please, why sincerity is so important in giv-ing to another what you choose for yourself.
If you give to another as a contrivance, a manipula-tion meant to get something to come to you, your mind knows this. You’ve just given it a signal that you do not now have this. And since the universe is nothing but a big copying machine, reproducing your thoughts in physical form, that will be your experience. That is, you will continue to experience “not having it”—no matter what you do!
Furthermore, that will be the experience of the per-son to whom you’re trying to give it. They will see that you are merely seeking to get something, that you have nothing, really, to offer, and your giving will be an empty gesture, seen for all the self-serving shallowness from which it springs.
The very thing you sought to attract, you will thus push away.
Yet when you give something to another with purity of heart—because you see that they want it, need it, and should have it—then you will discover that you have it to give. And that is a grand discovery.
This is true! It really works this way! I can remember once, when things were not going so well in my life, holding my head and thinking that I had no more money, and very little food, and that I didn’t know when I was going to eat my next square meal, or how I could pay my rent. That very evening I met a young couple at the bus station. I’d gone down to pick up a package, and there these kids were, huddled on a bench, using their coats for a blanket.
I saw them and my heart went out to them. I remembered when I was young, how it was when we were kids, just skim-ming by, and on the move like that. I walked over to them and asked them if they’d like to come over to my place and sit by a hot fire, have a little hot chocolate, maybe open up the day bed and get a good night’s rest. They looked up at me with eyes wide, like children on Christmas morning.
Well, we got to the house, and I made ‘em a meal. We all ate better that night than any of us had for quite a while. The food had always been there. The refrigerator was loaded. I just had to reach back, and grab all the stuff I’d shoved back there. I made an “everything-in-the-fridge” stir fry, and it was terrific! I remember thinking, where did all this food come from?
The next morning I even gave the kids breakfast, and sent them on their way. I reached into my pocket as I dropped them of f back at the bus station and gave them a twenty-dollar bill. “Maybe this will help,” I said, gave ‘em a hug and sent them on their way. I felt better about my own situation all day. Heck, all week. And that experience, which I have never forgotten, pro-duced a profound change in my outlook and my understand-ings about life.
Things got better from there, and as I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, I noticed something very important. I’m still here.
That’s a beautiful story. And you’re right. That’s ex-actly how it works. So when you want something, give it away. You will then no longer be “wanting” it. You will immediately experience “having” it. From there on, it is only a question of degree. Psychologically, you will find it much easier to “add onto,” than to create out of thin air.
I feel I have just heard something very profound here. Can You relate this now to the second part of my question? Is there a connection?
What I’m proposing, you see, is that you already have the answer to that question. Right now you are liv-ing the thought that you do not have the answer; that if you had the answer, you would have wisdom. So you come to Me for wisdom. Yet I say to you, be wisdom, and you will have it.
And what is the fastest way to “be” wisdom? Cause another to be wise.
Do you choose to have the answer to this question? Give the answer to another.
So, now, I’ll ask you the question. I’ll pretend that I “don’t know,” and you give Me the answer.
How can the parent who pulls a child out of traffic be truly loving the child, if love means that you want for the other what they want for themselves?
I don’t know.
I know you don’t. But if you thought you did, what would your answer be?
Well, I’d say that the parent did want for the child what the child wanted—which was to stay alive. I’d say that the child did not want to die, but simply did not know that wandering around in traffic could cause that. So that in running out there to get the child, the parent wasn’t depriving the child of the op-portunity to exercise its will at all—but simply getting in touch with the child’s true choice, its deepest desire.
That would be a very good answer.
If that’s true, then You, as God, should be doing nothing but stopping us from hurting ourselves, for it can’t be our deepest desire to do damage to ourselves. Yet we do damage to our-selves all the time, and You just sit around and watch us.
I am always in touch with your deepest desire, and always I give you that.
Even when you do something that would cause you to die—if that is your deepest desire, that is what you get: the experience of “dying.”
I never, ever interfere with your deepest desire.
Do You mean that when we do damage to ourselves, that is what we wanted to do? That is our deepest desire?
You cannot “do damage” to yourselves. You are in-capable of being damaged. “Damage” is a subjective reaction, not an objective phenomenon. You can choose to experience “damage” to yourself out of any encoun-ter or phenomenon, but that is entirely your decision.
Given that truth, the answer to your question is, Yes—when you have “damaged” yourself, it is because you wanted to. But I’m speaking on a very high, esoteric level, and that is not really where your question is coming from.”
In the sense that you mean it, as a matter of conscious
choice, I would say that no, every time you do something that damages yourself, it is not because you “wanted to.”
The child who gets hit by a car because he wan-dered into the street did not “want” (desire, seek, con-sciously choose) to get hit by a car.
The man who keeps marrying the same kind of woman—one who is all wrong for him—packaged in different forms, does not “want” (desire, seek, con-sciously choose) to keep creating bad marriages.
The person who hits a thumb with a hammer could not be said to have “wanted” the experience. It was not desired, sought, consciously chosen.
Yet all objective phenomena is drawn to you sub-consciously; all events are created by you uncon-sciously; every person, place, or thing in your life was drawn to you by you—was Self-created, if you will—to provide you with the exact and perfect conditions, the perfect opportunity, to experience what you next wish to experience as you go about the business of evolving.
Nothing can happen—I say to you, nothing can oc-cur—in your life which is not a precisely perfect oppor-tunity for you to heal something, create something, or experience something that you wish to heal, create, or experience in order to be Who You Really Are.
And who, really, am I?
Whomever you choose to be. Whatever aspect of Divinity you wish to be—that’s Who You Are. That can change at any given moment. Indeed, it often does, from moment to moment. Yet if you want your life to settle down, to stop bringing you such a wide variety of experiences, there’s a way to do that. Simply stop changing your mind so often about Who You Are, and Who You Choose to Be.
That may be easier said than done!
What I see is that you are making these decisions at many different levels. The child who decides to go out into the street to play in traffic is not making a choice to die. She may be making a number of other choices, but dying is not one of them. The mother knows that.
The problem here is not that the child has chosen to die, but that the child has made choices that could lead to more than one outcome, including her dying. That fact is not clear to her; it is unknown to her. It is the miss-ing data—which stops the child from making a clear choice, a better choice.
So you see, you have analyzed it perfectly.
Now, I, as God, will never interfere with your choices—but I will always know what they are.
Therefore, you may assume that if a thing happens to you, it is perfect that it did so—for nothing escapes perfection in God’s world.
The design of your life-the people, places, and events in it—have all been perfectly created by the per-fect creator of perfection itself: you. And Me... in, as, and through you.
Now We can work together in this co-creative pro-cess consciously or unconsciously. You can move through life aware, or unaware. You can walk your path asleep, or awake.
You choose.
Wait, go back to that comment about making decisions at many different levels. You said that if I wanted life to settle down, I should stop changing my mind about who I am and who I wish to be. When I said that may not be easy, You made the observation that all of us are making our choices at many different levels. Can You elaborate on that? What does that mean? What are the implications?
If all you desired is what your soul desired, every-thing would be very simple. If you listened to the part of you which is pure spirit, all of your decisions would be easy, and all the outcomes joyous. That is because...
. . . the choices of spirit are always the highest choices.
They don’t need to be second-guessed. They don’t need to be analyzed or evaluated. They simply need to be followed, acted on.
Yet you are not only a spirit. You are a Triune Being made up of body, mind, and spirit. That is both the glory and the wonder of you. For you often make deci-sions and choices at all three levels simultane-ously—and they by no means always coincide.
It is not uncommon for your body to want one thing, while your mind seeks another, and your spirit desires yet a third. This can be especially true of chil-dren, who are often not yet mature enough to make dis-tinctions between what sounds like “fun” to the body, and what makes sense to the mind—much less what resonates with the soul. So the child waddles into the street.
Now, as God, I am aware of all your choices—even those you make subconsciously. I will never interfere with them, but rather, just the opposite. It is My job to ensure that your choices are granted. (In truth, you grant them to your Self. What I have done is put a system into place that allows you to do that. This system is called the process of creation, and is explained in detail in Book 1.)
When your choices conflict—when body, mind, and spirit are not acting as one-the process of creation works at all levels, producing mixed results. If, on the other hand, your being is in harmony, and your choices are unified, astonishing things can occur.
Your young people have a phrase—”having it all to-gether”—which could be used to describe this unified state of being.
There are also levels within levels in your decision making. This is particularly true at the level of the mind.
Your mind can, and does, make decisions and choices from one of at least three interior levels: logic, intuition, emotion—and sometimes from all three— producing the potential for even more inner conflict.
And within one of those levels—emotion—there are five more levels. These are the five natural emo-tions: grief, anger, envy, fear, and love.
And within these, also, there are two final levels: love and fear.
The five natural emotions include love and fear, yet love and fear are the basis of all emotions. The other three
of the five natural emotions are outgrowths of these two.
Ultimately, all thoughts are sponsored by love or fear. This is the great polarity. This is the primal duality. Everything, ultimately, breaks down to one of these. All thoughts, ideas, concepts, understandings, deci-sions, choices, and actions are based in one of these.
And, in the end, there is really only one.
Love.
In truth, love is all there is. Even fear is an outgrowth of love, and when used effectively, expresses love.
Fear expresses love?
In its highest form, yes. Everything expresses love, when the expression is in its highest form.
Does the parent who saves the child from being killed in traffic express fear, or love?
Well, both, I suppose. Fear for the child’s life, and love—enough to risk one’s own life to save the child.
Precisely. And so here we see that fear in its highest form becomes love. . . is love. . . expressed as fear.
Similarly, moving up the scale of natural emotions, grief, anger, and envy are all some form of fear, which,
in turn, is some form of love.
One things leads to another. Do you see?
The problem comes in when any of the five natural emotions become distorted. Then they become gro-tesque, and not recognizable at all as outgrowths of love, much less as God, which is what Absolute Love is.
I’ve heard of the five natural emotions before—from my wonderful association with Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. She taught me about them.
Indeed. And it was I who inspired her to teach about this.
So I see that when I make choices, much depends on “where I’m coming from,” and that where I’m “coming from” could be several layers deep.
Yes, that is what is so.
Please tell me—I would like to hear it again, because I’ve forgotten much of what Elisabeth taught me—all about the five natural emotions.
Grief is a natural emotion. It’s that part of you which allows you to say goodbye when you don’t want to say goodbye; to express—push out, propel—the sadness within you at the experience of any kind of loss. It could be the loss of a loved one, or the loss of a contact lens.
When you are allowed to express your grief, you get rid of it. Children who are allowed to be sad when they are sad feel very healthy about sadness when they are adults, and therefore usually move through their sad-ness very quickly.
Children who are told, “There, there, don’t cry,” have a hard time crying as adults. After all, they’ve been told all their life not to do that. So they repress their grief.
Grief that is continually repressed becomes chronic depression, a very unnatural emotion.
People have killed because of chronic depression. Wars have started, nations have fallen.
Anger is a natural emotion. It is the tool you have which allows you to say, “No, thank you.” It does not have to be abusive, and it never has to be damaging to another.
When children are allowed to express their anger, they bring a very healthy attitude about it to their adult years, and therefore usually move through their anger very quickly.
Children who are made to feel that their anger is not okay—that it is wrong to express it, and, in fact, that they shouldn’t even experience it—will have a difficult time appropriately dealing with their anger as adults.
Anger that is continually repressed becomes rage, a very unnatural emotion.
People have killed because of rage. Wars have started, nations have fallen.
Envy is a natural emotion. It is the emotion that makes a five-year-old wish he could reach the door-knob the way his sister can—or ride that bike. Envy is the natural emotion that makes you want to do it again; to try harder; to continue striving until you suc-ceed. It is very healthy to be envious, very natural. When children are allowed to express their envy, they bring a very healthy attitude about it to their adult years, and therefore usually move through their envy very quickly.
Children who are made to feel that envy is not okay—that it is wrong to express it, and, in fact, that they shouldn’t even experience it—will have a difficult time appropriately dealing with their envy as adults.
Envy that is continually repressed becomes jeal-ousy, a very unnatural emotion.
People have killed because of jealousy. Wars have started, nations have fallen.
Fear is a natural emotion. All babies are born with only two fears: the fear of falling, and the fear of loud noises. All other fears are learned responses, brought to the child by its environment, taught to the child by its parents. The purpose of natural fear is to build in a bit of caution. Caution is a tool that helps keep the body alive. It is an outgrowth of love. Love of Self.
Children who are made to feel that fear is not okay—that it is wrong to express it, and, in fact, that they shouldn’t even experience it—will have a difficult time appropriately dealing with their fear as adults.
Fear that is continually repressed becomes panic, a very unnatural emotion.
People have killed because of panic. Wars have started, nations have fallen.
Love is a natural emotion. When it is allowed to be expressed, and received, by a child, normally and natu-rally, without limitation or condition, inhibition or em-barrassment, it does not require anything more. For the joy of love expressed and received in this way is suffi-cient unto itself. Yet love which has been conditioned, limited, warped by rules and regulations, rituals and re-strictions, controlled, manipulated, and withheld, be-comes unnatural.
Children who are made to feel that their natural love is not okay—that it is wrong to express it, and, in fact, that they shouldn’t even experience it—will have a difficult time appropriately dealing with love as adults.
Love that is continually repressed becomes posses-siveness, a very unnatural emotion.
People have killed because of possessiveness. Wars have started, nations have fallen.
And so it is that the natural emotions, when re-pressed, produce unnatural reactions and responses. And most natural emotions are repressed in most peo-ple. Yet these are your friends. These are your gifts. These are your divine tools, with which to craft your ex-perience.
You are given these tools at birth. They are to help you negotiate life.
Why are these emotions repressed in most people?
They have been taught to repress them. They have been told to.
By whom?
Their parents. Those who have raised them.
Why? Why would they do that?
Because they were taught by their parents, and their
parents were told by theirs.
Yes, yes. But why? What is going on?
What is going on is that you have the wrong people doing the parenting.
What do you mean? Who are the “wrong people”?
The mother and the father.
The mother and the father are the wrong people to raise the children?
When the parents are young, yes. In most cases, yes. In fact, it’s a miracle that so many of them do as good a
job as they do.
No one is more ill-equipped to raise children than young parents. And no one knows this, by the way, bet-ter than young parents.
Most parents come to the job of parenting with very little life experience. They’re hardly finished being par-ented themselves. They’re still looking for answers, still searching for clues.
They haven’t even discovered themselves yet, and they’re trying to guide and nurture discovery in others even more vulnerable than they. They haven’t even defined themselves, and they’re thrust into the act of defining others. They are still trying to get over how badly they have been mis-defined by their par-ents.
They haven’t even discovered yet Who They Are, and they’re trying to tell you who you are. And the pres-sure is so great for them to get it right—yet they can’t even get their own lives “right.” So they get the whole thing wrong—their lives, and the lives of their children.
If they’re lucky, the damage to their children won’t be too great. The offspring will overcome it—but not, probably, before passing some on to their offspring.
Most of you gain the wisdom, the patience, the un-derstanding, and the love to be wonderful parents after your parenting years are over.
Why is this? I don’t understand this. I see that Your observa-tion is in many cases correct, but why is this?
Because young child-makers were never intended to be child-raisers. Your child-raising years should really begin when they are now over.
I’m still a little lost here.
Human beings are biologically capable of creating children while they are children themselves—which, it may surprise most of you to know, they are for 40 or 50 years.
Human beings are “childrenthemselves”for4OorsOyears?
From a certain perspective, yes. I know this is diffi-cult to hold as your truth, but look around you. Perhaps the behaviors of your race might help prove My point.
The difficulty is that in your society, you are said to be “all grown up” and ready for the world at 21 . Add to this the fact that many of you were raised by mothers and fathers who were not much older than 21 them-selves when they began raising you, and you can begin to see the problem.
If child-bearers were meant to be child-raisers, child bearing would not have been made possible until you were fifty!
Child bearing was meant to be an activity of the young, whose bodies are well developed and strong. Child raising was meant to be an activity of the elders, whose minds are well developed and strong.
In your society you have insisted on making child-bearers responsible for child raising—with the result that you’ve made not only the process of parenting very difficult, but distorted many of the energies surrounding the sexual act as well as.
Uh... could You explain?
Yes.
Many humans have observed what I’ve observed here. Namely, that a good many humans-perhaps most —are not truly capable of raising children when they are capable of having them. However, having discovered this, humans have put in place exactly the wrong solution.
Rather than allow younger humans to enjoy sex, and if it produces children, have the elders raise them, you tell young humans not to engage in sex until they are ready to take on the responsibility of raising children. You have made it “wrong” for them to have sexual experiences before that time, and thus have created a taboo around what was intended to be one of life’s most joyful celebrations.
Of course, this is a taboo to which offspring will pay little attention—and for good reason: it is entirely un-natural to obey it.
Human beings desire to couple and copulate as soon as they feel the inner signal which says they are ready. This is human nature.
Yet their thought about their own nature will have more to do with what you, as parents, have told them than about what they are feeling inside. Your children look to you to tell them what life is all about.
So when they have their first urges to peek at each other, to play innocently with each other, to explore each other’s “differences,” they will look to you for sig-nals about this. Is this part of their human nature “good”? Is it “bad”? Is it approved of? Is it to be stifled? Held back? Discouraged?
It is observed that what many parents have told their offspring about this part of their human nature has had its origin in all manner of things: what they were told; what their religion says; what their society thinks—everything except the natural order of things.
In the natural order of your species, sexuality is bud-ding at anywhere from age 9 to age 14. From age 15 on-ward it is very much present and expressing in most human beings. Thus begins a race against time-with children stampeding toward the fullest release of their own joyful sexual energy, and parents stampeding to stop them.
Parents have needed all the assistance and all the al-liances they could find in this struggle, since, as has been noted, they are asking their offspring to not do something that is every bit a part of their nature.
So adults have invented all manner of familial, cul-tural, religious, social, and economic pressures, restric-tions, and limitations to justify their unnatural demands of their offspring. Children have thus grown to accept that their own sexuality is unnatural. How can anything that is “natural” be so shamed, so always-stopped, so con-trolled, held at bay, restrained, bridled, and denied?
Well, I think You’re exaggerating a bit here. Don’t You think You’re exaggerating?
Really? What do you think is the impact on a four- or five-year-old child when parents won’t even use the correct name for certain of their body parts? What are you telling the child about your level of comfort with that, and what you think theirs should be?
Uh...
Yes... “uh.. . . “ indeed.
Well, “we just don’t use those words,” as my grammy used to say. It’s just that “wee-wee” and “your bottom” sounds better.
Only because you have so much negative “baggage” attached to the actual names of these body parts that you
can barely use the words in ordinary conversation.
At the youngest ages, of course, children don’t know why parents feel this way, but merely are left with the impression, the often indelible impression, that certain body parts are “not okay,” and that anything having to do with them is embarrassing—if not “wrong.”
As children grow older and move into their teens, they may come to realize that this is not true, but then they are told in very clear terms about the connection between pregnancy and sexuality, and about how they will have to raise the children they create, and so they now have another reason for feeling that sexual expression is “wrong”—and the circle is complete.
What this has caused in your society is confusion and not a little havoc—which is always the result of fool-ing around with nature.
You have created sexual embarrassment, repres-sion, and shame-which has led to sexual inhibition,
dysfunction, and violence.
You will, as a society, always be inhibited about that over which you are embarrassed; always be dysfunc-tional with behaviors which have been repressed, and always act out violently in protest of being made to feel shame about that over which you know in your heart you should never have felt shame at all.
Then Freud was on to something when he said that a huge amount of the anger in the human species might be sexually related—deep-seated rage over having to repress basic and natural physical instincts, interests, and urges.
More than one of your psychiatrists has ventured as much. The human being is angry because it knows it should feel no shame over something that feels so good—and yet it does feel shame, and guilt.
First, the human becomes angry with the Self for feeling so good about something which is supposed to be so obviously “bad.”
Then, when they finally realize they’ve been duped—that sexuality is supposed to be a wonderful, hon-orable, glorious part of the human experience-they become angry with others: parents, for repressing them, religion for shaming them, members of the oppo-site sex for daring them, the whole society for control-ling them.
Finally, they become angry with themselves, for al-lowing all of this to inhibit them.
Much of this repressed anger has been channeled into the construction of distorted and misguided moral values in the society in which you now live-a society which glorifies and honors, with monuments, statues, and commemorative stamps, films, pictures, and TV programs, some of the world’s ugliest acts of violence, but hides-or worse yet, cheapens-some of the world’s most beautiful acts of love.
And all of this—all of this—has emerged from a sin-gle thought: that those who bear children, bear also the sole responsibility for raising them.
But if the people who have children aren’t responsible for raising them, who is?
The whole community. With special emphasis on the elders.
The elders?
In most advanced races and societies, elders raise the offspring, nurture the offspring, train the offspring, and pass on to the offspring the wisdom, teachings, and traditions of their kind. Later, when we talk about some of these advanced civilizations, I’ll touch on this again.
In any society where producing offspring at a young age is not considered “wrong”—because the tribal elders raise them and there is, therefore, no sense of overwhelming responsibility and burden—sexual re-pression is unheard of, and so is rape, deviance, and social-sexual dysfunction.
Are there such societies on our planet?
Yes, although they have been disappearing. You have sought to eradicate them, assimilate them, be-cause you have thought them to be barbarian. In what you have called your nonbarbarian societies, children (and wives, and husbands, for that matter) are thought of as property, as personal possessions, and child-bearers must therefore become child-raisers, because they must take care of what they “own.”
A root thought at the bottom of many of your socie-ty’s problems is this idea that spouses and children are
personal possessions, that they are “yours.”
We’ll examine this whole subject of “ownership” later, when we explore and discuss life among highly evolved beings. But for now, just think about this for a minute. Is anyone really emotionally ready to raise chil-dren at the time they’re physically ready to have them?
The truth is, most humans are not equipped to raise children even in their 30s and 40s—and shouldn’t be expected to be. They really haven’t lived enough as adults to pass deep wisdom to their children.
I’ve heard that thought before. Mark Twain had a take on this. He was said to have commented, “When I was 19, my fa-ther knew nothing. But when I was 35, I was amazed at how much the Old Man had learned.”
He captured it perfectly. Your younger years were never meant to be for truth-teaching, but for truth-gathering. How can you teach children a truth you haven’t yet gathered?
You can’t, of course. So you’ll wind up telling them the only truth you know—the truth of others. Your fa-ther’s, your mother’s, your culture’s, your religion’s.
Anything, everything, but your own truth. You are still searching for that.
And you will be searching, and experimenting, and finding, and failing, and forming and reforming your truth, your idea about yourself, until you are half a cen-tury on this planet, or near to it.
Then, you may begin at last to settle down, and set-tle in, with your truth. And probably the biggest truth on which you’ll agree is that there is no constant truth at all; that truth, like life itself, is a changing thing, a growing thing, an evolving thing—and that just when you think that process of evolution has stopped, it has not, but only really just begun.
Yes, I’ve already come to that. I’m past 50, and I’ve arrived at that.
Good. You are now a wiser man. An elder. Now you should raise children. Or better yet, ten years from now. It is the elders who should raise the offspring—and who were intended to.
It is the elders who know of truth, and life. Of what is important and what is not. Of what is really meant by such terms as integrity, honesty, loyalty, friendship, and love.
I see the point You have been making here. It is difficult to accept, but many of us have barely moved from “child” to “stu-dent” when we have children of our own, and feel we have to start teaching them. So we figure, well, I’ll teach them what my parents taught me.
Thus, the sins of the father are visited upon the son, even unto the seventh generation.
How can we change that? How can we end the cycle?
Place the raising of children in the hands of your re-spected Old Ones. Parents see the children whenever they wish, live with them if they choose, but are not solely responsible for their care and upbringing. The physical, social, and spiritual needs of the children are met by the entire community, with education and val-ues offered by the elders.
Later in our dialogue, when we talk about those other cultures in the universe, we’ll look at some new models for living. But these models won’t work the way you’ve currently structured your lives.
What do You mean?
I mean it’s not just parenting you’re doing with an ineffective model, but your whole way of living.
Again, what do You mean?
You’ve moved away from each other. You’ve torn apart your families, disassembled your smaller commu-nities in favor of huge cities. In these big cities there are more people, but fewer “tribes,” groups, or clans whose members see their responsibility as including responsi-bility for the whole. So, in effect, you have no elders. None at arm’s reach, in any event.
Worse than moving away from your elders, you’ve pushed them aside. Marginalized them. Taken their
power away. And even resented them.
Yes, some members of your society are even resent-ing the seniors among you, claiming that they are some-how leeching on the system, demanding benefits that the young have to pay for with ever-increasing propor-tions of their income.
It’s true. Some sociologists are now predicting a generation war, with older people being blamed for requiring more and more, while contributing less and less. There are so many more older citizens now, what with the “baby boomers” moving into their senior years, and people living longer in general.
Yet if your elders aren’t contributing, it is because you have not allowed them to contribute. You have required them to retire from their jobs just when they could really do the company some good, and to retire from most ac-tive, meaningful participation in life, just when their par-ticipation could bring some sense to the proceedings.
Not just in parenting, but in politics, economics, and even in religion, where elders at least had a toe-hold, you have become a youth-worshipping, elder-dismissing society.
Yours has also become a singular society, rather than a plural one. That is, a society made up of individu-als, rather than groups.
As you have both individualized and youthened your society, you have lost much of its richness and re-source. Now you are without both, with too many of you living in emotional and psychological poverty and depletion.
I’m going to ask you again, is there any way we can end this cycle?
First, recognize and acknowledge that it’s real. So many of you are living in denial. So many of you are pretending that what’s so is simply not so. You are lying to yourselves, and you do not want to hear the truth, much less tell it.
This, too, we’ll talk about again later, when we take that look at the civilizations of highly evolved beings, because this denial, this failure to observe and acknowl-edge what’s so, is not an insignificant thing. And if you truly want to change things, I hope you will just allow yourself to hear Me.
The time has come for truth telling, plain and sim-ple. Are you ready?
I am. That’s why I came to You. That’s how this whole con-versation began.
Truth is often uncomfortable. It is only comforting to those who do not wish to ignore it. Then, truth becomes
not only comforting, but inspiring.
For me, this whole three-part dialogue has been inspiring. Please, go on.
There is some good reason to be upbeat, to feel op-timistic. I observe that things have begun to change. There’s more emphasis among your species on creating community, and building extended families, than ever in recent years. And, more and more, you are honoring your elders, producing meaning and value in, and from, their lives. This is a big step in a wonderfully useful di-rection.
So things are “turning around.” Your culture seems to have taken that step. Now, it’s onward from there.
You cannot make these changes in one day. You cannot, for instance, change your whole way of parent-ing, which is how this current train of thought began, in one fell swoop. Yet you can change your future, step by step.
Reading this book is one of those steps. This dia-logue will circle back over many important points be-fore we are finished. That repetition will not be by accident. It is for emphasis.
Now, you have asked for ideas for the construction of your tomorrows. Let us begin by looking at your yes-terdays.