Thank You. Thank You for that call and for that challenge. Thank You for that placement of the goal before me. Thank You. For always keeping me heading in the direction You know I really want to take. That is why I come to You. That is why I have loved, and blessed, this dialogue. For it is in conversation with You that I find the Divine within me, and begin to see it within all others.
My dearly beloved, the heavens rejoice when you say that. That is the very reason I have come to you, and will come to everyone who calls to Me. Even as I have come now to those others who are reading these words. For this conversation was never intended to be with you alone. It was intended for millions around the world. And it has been placed in each person’s hands just ex-actly when they have needed it, sometimes in the most miraculous ways. It has brought them to the wisdom they, themselves, have called forth, perfectly suited for this moment in their lives.
This is the wonder of what has been happening here: that each of you is producing this result by your-self. It “looks as if” someone else gave you this book, brought you to this conversation, opened you to this dialogue, yet you brought your Self here.
So let us now explore together the remaining ques-tions which you have held in your heart.
May we, please, speak more of life after death? You were explaining what happens to the soul after death, and I so want to know as much about that as I can.
We will speak of it, then, until your yearning has been satisfied.
I said earlier that what happens is whatever you want to have happen. I meant that. You create your own reality not only when you are with the body, but when you are away from it.
At first you may not realize this, and so you may not be consciously creating your reality. Your experience will then be created by one of two other energies: your uncontrolled thoughts, or the collective consciousness.
To the degree that your uncontrolled thoughts are stronger than the collective consciousness, to that de-gree you will experience them as reality. To the degree that the collective consciousness is accepted, absorbed, and internalized, to that degree you will experience it as your reality.
This is no different from how you create what you call reality in your present life.
Always in life you have before you three choices:
1. You may allow your uncontrolled thoughts to cre-ate The Moment.
2. You may allow your creative consciousness to create The Moment.
3. You may allow the collective consciousness to create The Moment.
Here is an irony:
In your present life you find it difficult to create con-sciously from your individual awareness, and, indeed, often assume your individual understandings to be wrong, given all that you are seeing around you, and so, you surrender to the collective consciousness, whether it serves you to do so or not.
In the first moments of what you call the afterlife, on the other hand, you may find it difficult to surrender to the collective consciousness, given all that you are see-ing around you (which may be unbelievable to you), and so you will be tempted to hold to your own individ-ual understandings, whether they serve you or not.
I would tell you this: It is when you are surrounded by lower consciousness that you will benefit more from remaining with your individual understandings, and when you are surrounded by higher consciousness that you receive greater benefit from surrender.
It may, therefore, be wise to seek beings of high con-sciousness. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the company you keep.
In what you call the afterlife, there is nothing to worry about on this score, for you will instantly and automatically be surrounded by beings of high con-sciousness—and by high consciousness itself.
Still, you may not know that you are being so lov-ingly enveloped; you may not immediately understand. It may, therefore, seem to you as if you are having things “happen” to you; that you are at the whim of whatever fortunes are working at the moment. In truth, you expe-rience the consciousness in which you die.
Some of you have expectations without even know-ing it. All your life you’ve had thoughts about what oc-curs after death, and when you “die” those thoughts are made manifest, and you suddenly realize (make real) what you’ve been thinking about. And it is your strong-est thoughts, the ones you’ve held most fervently, that, as always in life, will prevail.
Then a person could go to hell. If people believed all during life that hell is a place which most certainly existed, that God will judge “the quick and the dead,” that He will separate the “wheat from the chaff” and the “goats from the sheep,” and that they are surely “going to hell,” given all that they have done to offend God, then they would go to hell! They would burn in the everlasting fires of damnation! How could they es-cape it? You’ve said repeatedly throughout this dialogue that hell does not exist. Yet You also say that we create our own real-ity, and have the power to create any reality at all, out of our thought about it. So hellfire and damnation could and does ex-ist for those who believe in it.
Nothing exists in Ultimate Reality save that Which Is. You are correct in pointing out that you may create any subreality you choose—including the experience of hell as you describe it. I have never said at any point in this entire dialogue that you could not experience hell; I said that hell does not exist. Most of what you ex-perience does not exist, yet you experience it nonetheless.
This is unbelievable. A friend of mine named Barnet Bain just produced a movie about this. I mean, about this exactly. It is August 7, 1998, as I write this sentence. Lam inserting this in the dialogue, in between lines of a discussion of two years ago, and I have never done this before. But just before sending this to the publisher, I was re-reading the manuscript one last time, and I realized: Hold it! Robin Williams has just made a movie about exactly what we’re talking about here. It’s called What Dreams May Come, and it’s a startling depiction on film of what You’ve just said.
I am familiar with it.
You are? God goes to the movies?
God makes movies.
Whoa.
Yes. You never saw Oh, God?
Well, sure, but...
What, you think God only writes books?
So, is the Robin Williams movie literally true? I mean, is that how it is?
No. No movie or book or other human explanation of the Divine is literally true.
Not even the Bible? The Bible is not literally true?
No. And I think you know that.
Well, what about this book? Surely this book is literally true!
No. I hate to tell you this, but you are bringing this through your personal filter. Now I will agree that the mesh on your filter is thinner, finer. You have become a very good filter. But you are a filter nonetheless.
I know that. I just wanted it stated again, here, because some people take books like this, and movies like What Dreams May Come, as literal truth. And I want to stop them from doing that.
The writers and producers of that film brought some enormous truth through an imperfect filter. The point they sought to make is that you will experience after death exactly what you expect, and choose, to experi-ence. They made that point very effectively.
Now, shall we get back to where we were?
Yes. I’d like to know just what I wanted to know when I was watching that movie. If there is no hell, yet I am experiencing hell, what the hell is the difference?
There wouldn’t be any, as long as you remain in your created reality. Yet you will not create such a real-ity forever. Some of you won’t experience it for more than what you would call a “nanosecond.” And there-fore you will not experience, even in the private do-mains of your own imagination, a place of sadness or suffering.
What would stop me from creating such a place for all eter-nity if I believed all my life that there was such a place, and that something I’d done had caused me to deserve such a place?
Your knowledge and understanding.
Just as in this life your next moment is created out of the new understandings you’ve gained from your last moment, so, too, in what you call the afterlife, will you create a new moment from what you’ve come to know 9 and understand in the old.
And one thing you will come to know and under-stand very quickly is that you are at choice, always, about what you wish to experience. That is because in the af-terlife results are instantaneous, and you will not be able to miss the connection between your thoughts about a thing, and the experience those thoughts create.
You will understand yourself to be creating your own reality.
This would explain why some people’s experience is happy, and some people’s experience is frightening; why some peo-ple’s experience is profound, while other people’s experience is virtually nonexistent. And why so many different stories exist about what happens in the moments after death.
So me people come back from near-death experiences filled with peace and love, and with no fear, ever again, of death, while others return very frightened, certain that they have just encountered dark and evil forces.
The soul responds to, re-creates, the mind’s most powerful suggestion, producing that in its experience.
Some souls remain in that experience for a time, making it very real—even as they remained in their experiences while with the body, though they were equally as unreal and impermanent. Other souls quickly adjust, see the experience for what it is, begin to think new thoughts, and move immediately to new ex-periences.
Do You mean that there is no one particular way things are in the afterlife? Are there no eternal truths that exist outside of our own mind? Do we continue to go on creating myths and legends and make-believe experiences right past our death and into the next reality? When do we get released from the bond-age? When do we come to know the truth?
When you choose to. That was the point of the Robin Williams movie. That is the point being made here. Those whose only desire is to know the eternal truth of All That Is, to understand the great mysteries, to experience the grandest reality, do so.
Yes, there is a One Great Truth; there is a Final Real-ity. But you will always get what you choose, regardless of that reality—precisely because the reality is that you are a divine creature, divinely creating your reality even as you are experiencing It.
Yet should you choose to stop creating your own in-dividual reality and begin to understand and experi-ence the larger, unified reality, you will have an immediate opportunity to do that.
Those who “die” in a state of such choosing, of such desiring, of such willingness and such knowing, move into the experience of the Oneness at once. Others move into the experience only if, as, and when they so desire.
It is precisely the same when the soul is with the body.
It is all a matter of desire, of your choosing, of your creating, and, ultimately, of your creating the uncreate-able; that is, of your experiencing that which has al-ready been created.
This is The Created Creator. The Unmoved Mover. It is the alpha and the omega, the before and the after, the now-then-always aspect of everything, which you call God.
I will not forsake you, yet I will not force My Self upon you. I have never done so and I never will. You may return to Me whenever you wish. Now, while you are with the body, or after you have left it. You may re-turn to the One and experience the loss of your individ-ual Self whenever it pleases you. You may also re-create the experience of your individual Self whenever you choose.
You may experience any aspect of the All That Is
that you wish, in its tiniest proportion, or its grandest. You may experience the microcosm or the macrocosm.
I may experience the particle or the rock.
Yes. Good. You are getting this.
When you reside with the human body, you are ex-periencing a smaller portion than the whole; that is, a portion of the microcosm (although by no means the smallest portion thereof). When you reside away from the body (in what some would call the “spirit world”), you have enlarged by quantum leaps your perspective. You will suddenly seem to know everything; be able to be everything. You will have a macrocosmic view of things, allowing you to understand that which you do not now understand.
One of the things you will then understand is that there is a larger macrocosm still. That is, you will suddenly become clear that All That Is is even greater than the real-ity you are then experiencing. This will fill you at once with awe and anticipation, wonder and excitement, joy and exhilaration, for you will then know and understand what I know and understand: that the game never ends.
Will I ever get to a place of true wisdom?
In the time after your “death” you may choose to have every question you ever had answered—and open yourself to new questions you never dreamed ex-isted. You may choose to experience Oneness with All That Is. And you will have a chance to decide what you wish to be, do, and have next.
Do you choose to return to your most recent body? Do you choose to experience life again in human form, but of another kind?
Do you choose to remain where you are in the “spirit world,” at the level you are then experiencing? Do you choose to go on, go further, in your knowing and experiencing? Do you choose to “lose your iden-tity” altogether and now become part of the Oneness?
What do you choose? What do you choose? What do you choose?
Always, that is the question I will be asking you. Al-ways, that is the inquiry of the universe. For the universe knows nothing except how to grant your fondest wish, your greatest desire. Indeed, it is doing that every mo-ment, every day. The difference between you and Me is that you are not consciously aware of this.
I am.
Tell me... will my relatives, my loved ones, meet me after I die, and help me understand what is going on, as some people say they will? Will I be reunited with “those who have gone be-fore”? Will we be able to spend eternity together?
What do you choose? Do you choose for these things to happen? Then they will.
Okay, I’m confused. Are You saying that all of us have free will, and that this free will extends even past our death?
Yes, that is what I am saying.
If that is true, then the free will of my loved ones would have to coincide with mine—they must have the same thought and desire that I have, when I’m having it—or they wouldn’t be there for me when I die. Further, what if I wanted to spend the rest of eternity with them, and one or two of them wanted to move on? Maybe one of them wanted to move higher and higher, into this experience of Reunification with the Oneness, as You put it. Then what?
There is no contradiction in the universe. There are things that look like contradictions, but there are none in fact. Should a situation arise such as the one you de-scribe (it is a very good question, by the way), what will happen is that you will both be able to have what you choose.
Both?
Both.
May I ask how?
You may.
Okay. How...
What is your thought about God? Do you think that
I exist in one place, and one place only?
No. I think You exist everywhere at once. I believe God is omnipresent.
Well, you are right about that. There is nowhere that I Am Not. Do you understand this?
I think so.
Good. So what makes you think it’s any different with you?
Because You’re God, and I am a mere mortal.
I see. We’re still hung up on this “mere mortal” thing....
Okay, okay. . . suppose I assume for the sake of discussion that I, too, am God—or at least made up of the same stuff as God. Then are You saying that I, too, can be everywhere, all the time?
It is merely a matter of what the consciousness chooses to hold in its reality. In what you would call the “spirit world,” what you can imagine, you can experi-ence. Now, if you want to experience yourself being one soul, in one place, at one “time,” you may do that. Yet if you wish to experience your spirit being larger than that, being in more than one place at one “time,” you may do that as well. Indeed, you may experience your spirit as being anywhere you wish, any “time.” That is because, in truth, there is only one “time” and one “place,” and you are in all of it, always. You may thus experience any part, or parts, of it you wish, when-ever you choose.
What if I want my relatives to be with me, but one of them wants to be a “part of the All” that is somewhere else? What then?
It is not possible for you and your relatives not to want the same thing. You and I, and your relatives and I—all of us—are one and the same.
The very act of your desiring something is the act of Me desiring something, since you are simply Me, acting out the experience called desire. Therefore, what you desire, I desire.
Your relatives and I are also one and the same. Therefore, what I am desiring, they are desiring. So it follows, then, that what you desire, your relatives are also desiring.
On Earth it is also true that all of you desire the same thing. You desire peace. You desire prosperity. You de-sire joy. You desire fulfillment. You desire satisfaction and self-expression in your work, love in your life, health in your body. You all desire the same thing.
You think this is a coincidence? It is not. It is the way life works. I am explaining that to you right now.
Now the only thing that’s different on Earth from the way it is in what you call the spirit world is that on Earth, while you all desire the same thing, you all have differ-ent ideas about how to go about having it. So you’re all going in different directions, seeking the same thing!
It is these differing ideas you have that produce your differing results. These ideas might be called your Spon-soring Thoughts. I have spoken to you of this before.
Yes, in Book 1.
One such thought which many of you share in com-mon is your idea of insufficiency. Many of you believe
at the core of your being that there is simply not enough. Not enough of anything.
There’s not enough love, not enough money, not enough food, not enough clothing, not enough shelter, not enough time, not enough good ideas to go around, and certainly not enough of you to go around.
This Sponsoring Thought causes you to employ all sorts of strategies and tactics in seeking to acquire what you think there is “not enough” of. These are ap-proaches you would abandon at once were you clear that there is enough for everybody.. . of whatever it is that you desire.
In what you call “heaven,” your ideas of “not enough-ness” disappear, because you become aware that there is no separation between you and anything you desire.
You are aware that there is even more than enough of you. You are aware that you can be in more than one place at any given “time,” so there is no reason not to want what your brother wants, not to choose what your sister chooses. If they want you in their space at the mo-ment of their death, the very thought of you calls you to them—and you have no reason not to race to them, since your going there takes away nothing from what-ever else you may be doing.
This state of having no reason to say No is the state in which I reside at all times.
You have heard it said before, and it is true: God never says No.
I will give you all exactly what you desire, always. Even as I have done from the beginning of time.
Are You really always giving everyone exactly what they de-sire at any given time?
Yes, My beloved, I am.
Your life is a reflection of what you desire, and what you believe you may have of what you desire. I cannot give you what you do not believe you may have—no matter how much you desire it—because I will not vio-late your own thought about it. I cannot. That is the law.
Believing that you cannot have something is the same thing as not desiring to have it, for it produces the same result.
But on Earth we cannot have whatever we desire. We can-not be in two places at once, for instance. And there are many other things we may desire, but cannot have, because on Earth we are all so limited.
I know that you see it that way, and so that is the way it is for you, for one thing that remains eternally true is that you will always be given the experience you be-lieve you will be given.
Thus, if you say that you cannot be in two places at once, then you cannot be. But if you say that you can be anywhere you wish with the speed of your thought, and can even make yourself manifest in physical form in more than one place at any given time, then you may do that.
Now, You see, that’s where this dialogue leaves me. I want to believe that this information is coming straight from God—but when You say things like that, I get all crazy inside, because I just can’t believe that. I mean, I just don’t think what You’ve said there is true. Nothing in the human experience has demonstrated that.
On the contrary. Saints and sages of all religions have been said to have done both of these things. Does it take a very high level of belief? An extraordinary level of belief? The level of belief attained by one being in a thousand years? Yes. Does that mean it is impossible? No.
How can I create that belief? How can I get to that level of belief?
You cannot get there. You can only be there. And I am not trying to play with words. I mean that. This kind of belief—what I would call Complete Knowing—is not something you try to acquire. In fact, if you are try-ing to acquire it, you cannot have it. It is something you simply are. You simply are this Knowing. You are this being.
Such beingness comes out of a state of total aware-ness. It can come out of only such a state. If you are seeking to become aware, then you cannot be.
It is like trying to “be” six feet tall when you are 4-foot-9. You cannot be six feet tall. You can only “be” what you are—4-foot-9. You will “be” six feet tall when you grow into that. When you are six feet tall, you will then be able to do all the things that six-foot-tall people can do. And when you are in a state of total awareness, then you will be able to do all the things that beings in a state of total awareness can do.
Do not, therefore, “try to believe” that you can do these things. Try, instead, to move to a state of total awareness. Then belief will no longer be necessary. Complete Knowing will work its wonders.
Once, when I was meditating, I had the experience of total oneness, total awareness. It was wonderful. It was ecstatic. Ever since then, I have been trying to have that experience again. I sit in meditation and try to have that total awareness again. And I have never been able to. This is the reason, right? You are say-ing to me that as long as I am seeking to have something, I can-not have it, because my very seeking is a statement that I do not now have it. The same wisdom You have been giving me throughout this dialogue.
Yes, yes. Now you understand it. It is becoming more clear to you now. That is why we keep going around in circles here. That is why we keep repeating things, revisiting things. You get it the third, the fourth, maybe the fifth time around.
Well, I’m glad I asked the question, because this could be dangerous stuff, this business about “you can be in two places at once,” or “you can do anything you want to do.” This is the kind of stuff that makes people run to jump off the Empire State Building shouting “I am God! Look at me! I can fly!”
You had better be in a state of total awareness be-fore you do that. If you have to prove yourself to be God by demonstrating it to others, then you do not know yourself to be, and this “not knowing” will demonstrate itself in your reality. In short, you will fall flat on your face.
God seeks to prove Itself to no one, for God has no need to do that. God Is, and that is what is so. Those who know themselves to be One with God, or have the experience of God within, have no need, nor do they seek, to prove that to anyone, least of all themselves.
And so it was, that when they taunted him, saying, “If you are the Son of God, come down from that cross!”—the man called Jesus did nothing.
Yet three days later, quietly and unobtrusively, when there were no witnesses and no crowds and no one to whom to prove anything, he did something a great deal more astonishing—and the world has been talking about it ever since.
And in this miracle is found your salvation, for you have been shown the truth, not only of Jesus, but of Who You Are, and may thus be saved from the lie about yourself, which you have been told, and which you have accepted as your truth.
God invites you always to your highest thought about yourself.
There are those on your planet right now who have manifested many of these higher thoughts; including causing physical objects to appear and disappear, mak-ing themselves appear and disappear, even “living for-ever” in the body, or coming back to the body and living again—and all of this, all of this, has been made possi-ble because of their faith. Because of their knowing.
Because of their immutable clarity about how things are, and how they are meant to be.
And while, in the past, whenever people in earthly form have done these things, you have called the events miracles and have made the people saints and saviors, yet they are no more saints and saviors than you. For you are all saints and saviors. Which is the very message they have been bringing you.
How can I believe that? I want to believe that with all my ; heart, but I can’t. I just can’t.
No, you cannot believe it. You can only know it.
How can I know it? How can I come to that?
Whatever you choose for yourself, give to another. If you cannot come to that, help someone else come to that. Tell someone else that they already have. Praise them for it. Honor them for it.
This is the value in having a guru. That is the whole point. There has been a lot of negative energy in the Weston the word “guru.” It has almost become pejora-tive. To be a “guru” is to somehow be a charlatan. To give your allegiance to a guru is to somehow give your power away.
Honoring your guru is not giving your power away. It is getting your power. For when you honor the guru, when you praise your master teacher, what you say is, “I see you.” And what you see in another, you can begin to see in yourself. It is outward evidence of your inner reality. It is outward proof in your inner truth. The truth of your being.
This is the truth which is being brought through you in the books you write.
I don’t see myself as writing these books. I see You, God, as the author, and me as merely the scribe.
God is the author... and so are you. There is no dif-ference between My writing them and you writing them. As long as you think there is, you will have missed the point of the writing itself. Yet most of humanity has missed this teaching. And so I send you new teachers, more teachers, all with the same message as the teach-ers of old.
I understand your reluctance to accept the teaching as your own personal truth. Were you to go around claiming to be One with God—or even a part of God—speaking or writing these words, the world would not know what to make of you.
People can make of me whatever they wish. This much I know: I do not deserve to be the recipient of the information I have been given here, and in all of these books. I do not feel worthy to be the messenger of this truth. I am working on this third book, yet I know even before its release that I, of all people, with all the mistakes I have made, all the selfish things I have done, am simply not worthy to be the bringer of this wonderful truth.
Yet that, perhaps, is the greatest message of this trilogy:
That God stays hidden from no man, but speaks to everyone, even the least worthy among us. For if God will speak to me, God will speak directly into the heart of every man, woman, and child who seeks the truth.
There is thus hope for all of us. None of us is so horrible that God would forsake us, nor so unforgivable that God would turn away.
Is that what you believe—all of that which you have just written?
Yes.
Then so be it, and so shall it be with you.
Yet I tell you this. You are worthy. As is everyone else. Unworthiness is the worst indictment ever visited upon the human race. You have based your sense of worthiness on the past, while I base your sense of wor-thiness on the future.
The future, the future, always the future! That is where your life is, not in the past. The future. That is where your truth is, not in the past.
What you have done is unimportant compared to what you are about to do. How you have erred is insig-nificant compared to how you are about to create.
I forgive your mistakes. All of them. I forgive your misplaced passions. All of them. I forgive your errone-ous notions, your misguided understandings, your hurt-ful actions, your selfish decisions. All of them.
Others may not forgive you, but I do. Others may not release you from your guilt, but I do. Others may not let you forget, allow you to go on, become some-thing new, but I do. For I know that you are not what you were, but are, and always will be, what you are now.
A sinner can become a saint in one minute. In one second. In one breath.
In truth, there is no such thing as a “sinner,” for no one can be sinned against—least of all Me. That is why I say that I “forgive” you. I use the phrase because it is one you seem to understand.
In truth, I do not forgive you, and will not forgive you ever, for anything. I do not have to. There is nothing to forgive. But I can release you. And I hereby do. Now. Once again. As I have done so often in the past, through the teachings of so many other teachers.
Why have we not heard them? Why have we not believed this, Your greatest promise?
Because you cannot believe in the goodness of God. Forget, then, about believing in My goodness. Be-lieve, instead, in simple logic.
The reason I have no need to forgive you is that you cannot offend Me, nor can I be damaged or destroyed. Yet you imagine yourself capable of offending, even damaging, Me. What an illusion! What a magnificent obsession!
You cannot hurt Me, nor can I be harmed in any way. For I am the Unharmable. And that which cannot be harmed cannot, and would not, harm another.
You understand now the logic behind the truth that I do not condemn, nor shall I punish, nor have I a need to seek retribution. I have no such need, for I have not been, and cannot be, offended or damaged or hurt in any way.
The same is true of you. And of all others—though all of you imagine that you can be, and have been, hurt and damaged and destroyed.
Because you imagine damage, you require revenge. Because you experience pain, you need another to ex-perience pain as retribution for your own. Yet what pos-sible justification can that be for inflicting pain upon another? Because (you imagine) someone has inflicted injury upon you, you feel it right and proper to inflict in-jury in return? That which you say is not okay for human beings to do to each other, is okay for you to do, so long as you are justified?
This is insanity. And what you do not see in this in-sanity is that all people who inflict pain on others as-sume themselves to be justified. Every action a person takes is understood by that person to be the right action, given what it is they seek and desire.
By your definition, what they seek and desire is wrong. But by their definition, it is not. You may not agree with their model of the world, with their moral and ethical constructions, with their theological under-standings, nor with their decisions, choices, and actions . . . but they agree with them, based on their values.
You call their values “wrong.” But who is to say your values are “right”? Only you. Your values are “right” be-cause you say they are. Even this might make some sense if you kept your word about it, but you, yourself, change your mind constantly about what you consider “right” and “wrong.” You do this as individuals, and you do this as societies.
What your society considered “right” just a few decades ago, you consider “wrong” today. What you considered “wrong” in the not-too-distant past, you now call “right.” Who can tell what is what? How do you know the players without a scorecard?
And yet we dare to sit in judgment of one another. We dare to condemn, because some other person has failed to keep up with our own changing ideas about what is permitted and what is not. Whew. We’re really something. We can’t even keep our own minds made up about what’s “okay” and what’s not.
That isn’t the problem. Changing your ideas of what’s “right” and “wrong” isn’t the problem. You have to change those ideas, or you would never grow. Changing is a product of evolution.
No, the problem is not that you have changed, or that your values have changed. The problem is that so many of you insist on thinking that the values you now have are the right and perfect ones, and that everyone else should adhere to them. Some of you have become self-justified and self-righteous.
Stick to your beliefs, if that serves you. Hold tight. Do not waiver. For your ideas about “right” and “wrong” are your definitions of Who You Are. Yet do not require that others define themselves according to your terms. And do not stay so “stuck” in your present beliefs and customs that you halt the process of evolu-tion itself.
Actually, you could not do that if you wanted to, for life goes on, with you or without you. Nothing stays the same, nor can anything remain unchanged. To be un-changed is to not move. And to not move is to die.
All of life is motion. Even rocks are filled with mo-tion. Everything moves. Everything. There is nothing that is not in motion. Therefore, by the very fact of mo-tion, nothing is the same from one moment to the next. Nothing.
Remaining the same, or seeking to, moves against the laws of life. This is foolish, because in this struggle, life will always win.
So change! Yes, change! Change your ideas of “right” and “wrong.” Change your notions of this and that. Change your structures, your constructions, your models, your theories.
Allow your deepest truths to be altered. Alter them yourself, for goodness’ sake. I mean that quite literally. Alter them yourself, for goodness’ sake. Because your new idea of Who You Are is where the growth is. Your new idea of What Is So is where evolution accelerates. Your new idea of the Who, What, Where, When, How, and Why of it is where the mystery gets solved, the plot unravels, the story ends. Then you can begin a new story, and a grander one.
Your new idea about all of it is where the excitement is, where the creation is, where God-in-you is made manifest and becomes fully realized.
No matter how “good” you think things have been, they can be better. No matter how wonderful you think your theologies, your ideologies, your cosmologies, they can be full of even more wonder. For there are “more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Be open, therefore. Be OPEN. Don’t close off the possibility of new truth because you have been com-fortable with an old one. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
Yet be not quick to judge another. Rather, seek to avoid judgment, for another person’s “wrongs” were your “rights” of yestermorn; another person’s mistakes are your own past actions, now corrected; another per-son’s choices and decisions are as “hurtful” and “harm-ful,” as “selfish” and “unforgivable,” as many of your own have been.
It is when you “just can’t imagine” how another per-son could “do such a thing” that you have forgotten where you came from, and where both you and the other person are going.
And to those of you who think yourselves to be the evil ones, who think yourselves to be unworthy and irredeemable, I tell you this: There is not a one among you who is lost forever, nor will there ever be. For you are all, all, in the process of becoming. You are all, all, moving though the experience of evolution.
That is what I am up to.
Through you.