So, going back and summarizing what you are telling me, I seem to come up with these main points.
Life is an ongoing process of creation.
A secret of all Masters is to stop changing one’s mind; keep choosing the same thing.
Don’t take no for an answer.
We “call forth” what we think, feel, and say.
Life can be a process of creation or reaction.
The soul creates, the mind reacts.
The soul understands what the mind cannot conceive.
Stop trying to figure out what is “best” for you (how you can win the most, lose the least, get what you want) and start going with what feels like Who You Are.
Your feelings are your truth. What is best for you is what is true for you.
Thoughts are not feelings; rather, they are ideas of how you “should” feel. When thoughts and feelings get confused, truth becomes clouded, lost.
To get back to your feelings, be out of your mind and get back to your senses.
Once you know your truth, live it.
Negative feelings are not true feelings at all; rather, they are your thoughts about something, based always on the pre-vious experience of yourself and others.
Previous experience is no indicator of truth, since Pure Truth is created here and now, not reenacted.
To change your response to anything, be in the present (that is, the “pre-sent”) moment—the moment that was sent to you and was what it was before you had a thought about it... In other words, Be Here Now, not in the past or the future.
The past and the future can exist only in thought. The Pre-sent Moment is the Only Reality. Stay there!
Seek and you shall find.
Do whatever it takes to stay connected with God/God-dess/Truth. Don’t stop the practices, the prayers, the rituals, the meditations, the readings, the writings, the “whatever works” for you to stay in touch with All That Is.
How’s that so far?
Great! So far, so good. You’ve got it. Now, can you live it?
I’m going to try.
Good.
Yes. Now, can we go to where we left off? Tell me about Time.
There is no Time like the pre-sent!
You’ve heard that before, I’m sure. But you didn’t understand it. Now you do.
There is no time but this time. There is no moment but this moment. “Now” is all there is.
What about “yesterday” and “tomorrow”?
Figments of your imagination. Constructions of your mind. Nonexistent in Ultimate Reality.
Everything that ever happened, is happening, and ever will happen, is happening right now.
I don’t understand.
And you can’t. Not completely. But you can begin to. And a beginning grasp is all that is needed here.
So . . . just listen.
“Time” is not a continuum, It is an element of relativity that exists vertically, not horizontally.
Don’t think of it as a “left to right” thing—a so-called time line that runs from birth to death for each individ-ual, and from some finite point to some finite point for the universe.
“Time” is an “up and down” thing! Think of it as a spindle, representing the Eternal Moment of Now.
Now picture leafs of paper on the spindle, one atop the other. These are the elements of time. Each element separate and distinct, yet each existing simultaneously with the other. All the paper on the spindle at once! As much as there will ever-be-as much as there ever was . . .
There is only One Moment—this moment—the Eternal Moment of Now.
It is right now that everything is happening —and I am glorified. There is no waiting for the glory of God. I made it this way because I just couldn’t wait! I was so happy to Be Who I Am that I just couldn’t wait to make that manifest in My reality. So BOOM, here it is—right here, right now—ALL OF IT!
There is no Beginning to this, and there is no End. It—the All of Everything—just IS.
Within the Isness is where your experience—and your greatest secret—lies. You can move in conscious-ness within the Isness to any “time” or “place” you choose.
You mean we can time travel?
Indeed—and many of you have. All of you have, in fact—and you do it routinely, usually in what you call your dream state. Most of you are not aware of it. You cannot retain the awareness. But the energy sticks to you like glue, and sometimes there’s enough residue that others—sensitive to this energy-can pick up things about your “past” or your “future.” They feel or “read” this residue, and you call them seers and psychics. Sometimes there is enough residue that even you, in your limited consciousness, are aware you’ve “been here before.” Your whole being is suddenly jarred by the realization that you’ve “done this all before”!
Déjá vu!
Yes. Or that wonderful feeling when you meet someone that you’ve known them all your life—known them for all eternity!
That’s a spectacular feeling. That’s a marvelous feel-ing. And that’s a true feeling. You have known that soul forever!
Forever is a right now thing!
So you have often looked up, or looked down, from your “piece of paper” on the spindle, and seen all the other pieces! And you’ve seen yourself there—because a part of You is on every piece!
How is that possible?
I tell you this: You have always been, are now, and always will be. There has never been a time when you were not—nor will there ever be such a time.
But wait! What about the concept of old souls! Aren’t some souls “older” than others?
Nothing is “older” than anything. I created it ALL AT ONCE, and All Of It exists right now.
The experience of “older” and “younger” to which you refer has to do with the levels of awareness of a particular soul, or Aspect of Being. You are all Aspects of Being, simply parts of What Is. Each part has the consciousness of the Whole imbedded within it. Every element carries the imprint.
“Awareness” is the experience of that consciousness being awakened. The individual aspect of the ALL becomes aware of Itself. It becomes, quite literally, self conscious.
Then, gradually, it becomes conscious of all others, and then, of the fact that there are no others—that All is One.
Then, ultimately, of Me. Magnificent Me!
Boy, You really like You, don’t You?
Don’t you—?
Yes, yes! I think You’re great!
I agree. And I think you’re great! That’s the only place where You and I disagree. You don’t think you’re great!
How can I see myself as great when I see all my foibles, all my mistakes—all my evil?
I tell you this: There is no evil!
I wish that could be true.
You are perfect, just as you are.
I wish that could be true, too.
It is true! A tree is no less perfect because it is a seedling. A tiny infant is no less perfect than a grown-up. It is perfection itself. Because it cannot do a thing, does not know a thing, that does not make it somehow less perfect.
A child makes mistakes. She stands. She toddles. She falls. She stands again, a bit wobbly, hanging on to her mommy’s leg. Does that make the child imperfect?
I tell you it is just the opposite! That child is perfec-tion itself, wholly and completely adorable.
So, too, are you.
But the child hasn’t done anything wrong! The child hasn’t consciously disobeyed, hurt another, damaged herself.
The child doesn’t know right from wrong.
Precisely.
Neither do you.
But I do. I know that it is wrong to kill people, and that it is right to love them. I know that it is wrong to hurt and right to heal, to make things better. I know that it is wrong to take what is not mine, to use another, to be dishonest.
I could show you instances where each of those “wrongs” would be right.
You’re playing with me now.
Not at all. Merely being factual.
If you are saying there are exceptions to every rule, then I agree.
If there are exceptions to a rule, then it is not a rule.
Are you telling me that it is not wrong to kill, to hurt, to take from another?
That depends on what you are trying to do.
Okay, okay, I get it. But that doesn’t make these things good. Sometimes one has to do bad things to achieve a good end.
Which doesn’t make them “bad things” at all, then, does it? They are just means to an end.
Are you saying the end justifies the means?
What do you think?
No. Absolutely not.
So be it.
Don’t you see what you’re doing here? You’re mak-ing up the rules as you go along!
And don’t you see something else? That’s perfectly okay.
It’s what you’re supposed to be doing!
All of life is a process of deciding Who You Are, and then experiencing that.
As you keep expanding your vision, you make up new rules to cover that! As you keep enlarging your idea about your Self, you create new do’s and don’ts, yeses and nos to encircle that. These are the boundaries that “hold in” something which cannot be held in.
You cannot hold in “you,” because you are as boundless as the Universe. Yet you can create a concept about your boundless self by imagining, and then ac-cepting, boundaries.
In a sense, this is the only way you can know yourself as anything in particular.
That which is boundless is boundless. That which is limitless is limitless. It cannot exist anywhere, because it is everywhere. If it is everywhere, it is nowhere in particular.
God is everywhere. Therefore, God is nowhere in particular, because to be somewhere in particular, God would have to not be somewhere else—which is not possible for God.
There is only one thing that is “not possible” for God, and that is for God to not be God. God cannot “not be.” Nor can God not be like Itself. God cannot “un-God” Itself.
I am everywhere, and that’s all there is to it. And since I am everywhere, I am nowhere. And if I am NOWHERE, where am I?
NOW HERE.
I love it! You made this point in the first book, but I love it, so I let You go on.
That’s very kind of you. And do you understand it better now? Do you see how you have created your ideas of “right” and “wrong” simply to define Who You Are?
Do you see that without these definitions—bounda-ries—you are nothing?
And do you see that, like Me, you keep changing the boundaries as you change your Ideas of Who You Are?
Well, I get what You are saying, but it does not seem that I have changed the boundaries—my own personal bounda-ries—very much. To me it has always been wrong to kill. It has always been wrong to steal. It has always been wrong to hurt another. The largest concepts by which we govern ourselves have been in place since the beginning of time, and most human beings agree on them.
Then why do you have war?
Because there will always be some who break the rules. There’s a rotten apple in every barrel.
What I’m going to tell you now, and in the passages which follow, may be very difficult for some people to understand and accept. It is going to violate much of what is held as truth in your present thought system. Yet I cannot let you go on living with these constructions if this dialogue is to serve you. So we must, now, in this second book, meet some of these concepts head on. But it’s going to be bumpy going here for a while. Are you ready?
I think so, yes. Thanks for the warning. What is it that’s so dramatic or difficult to understand or accept that You’re going to tell me?
I am going to tell you this: there are no “rotten apples.” There are only people who disagree with your point of view on things, people who construct a different model of the world. I am going to tell you this: No persons do anything inappropriate, given their model of the world.
Then their “model” is all messed up. I know what’s right and wrong, and because some other people don’t, that doesn’t make me crazy because I do. They’re the ones who are crazy!
I’m sorry to say that’s exactly the attitude which starts wars. -
I know, I know. I was doing that on purpose. I was just repeating here what I’ve heard many other people say. But how can I answer people like that? What could I say?
You could tell them that people’s ideas of “right” and “wrong” change-and have changed—over and over again from culture to culture, time period to time period, religion to religion, place to place... even from family to family and person to person. You could point out to them that what many people considered “right” at one time-burning people at the stake for what was considered witchcraft, as an example—is considered “wrong” today.
You could tell them that a definition of “right” and “wrong” is a definition established not only by time, but also by simple geography. You could allow them to notice that some activities on your planet (prostitution, for instance) are illegal in one place, and, just a few miles down the road, legal in another. And so, whether a person is judged as having done something “wrong” is not a matter of what that person has actually done, but of where he has done it.
Now I am going to repeat something I said in Book 1, and I know that it was very, very difficult for some to grasp, to understand.
Hitler went to heaven.
I’m not sure people are ready for this.
The purpose of this book, and of all the books in the trilogy we are creating, is to create readiness—readiness for a new paradigm, a new understanding; a larger view, a grander idea.
Well, I’m going to have to ask the questions here that I know so many people are thinking and wanting to ask. How could a man like Hitler have gone to heaven? Every religion in the world . . . I would think every one, has declared him con-demned and sent straight to hell.
First, he could not have gone to hell because hell does not exist. Therefore, there is only one place left to which he could have gone. But that begs the question. The real issue is whether Hitler’s actions where “wrong.” Yet I have said over and over again that there is no “right” or “wrong” in the universe. A thing is not intrinsically right or wrong. A thing simply is.
Now your thought that Hitler was a monster is based on the fact that he ordered the killing of millions of people, correct?
Obviously, yes.
Yet what if I told you that what you call “death” is the greatest thing that could happen to anyone—what then?
I’d find that hard to accept.
You think that life on Earth is better than life in heaven? I tell you this, at the moment of your death you will realize the greatest freedom, the greatest peace, the greatest joy, and the greatest love you have ever known. Shall we therefore punish Bre’r Fox for throwing Bre’r Rabbit into the briar patch?
You are ignoring the fact that, however wonderful life after death may be, our lives here should not be ended against our will. We came here to achieve something, to experience some-thing, to learn something, and it is not right that our lives be cut short by some maniacal hoodlum with insane ideas.
First of all, you are not here to learn anything. (Reread Book 1!) Life is not a school, and your purpose here is not to learn; it is to re-member. And on your larger point, life is often “cut short” by many things. . .
a hurricane, an earthquake...
That’s different. You’re talking about an Act of God.
Every event is an Act of God.
Do you imagine that an event could take place if I did not want it to? Do you think that you could so much as lift your little finger if I chose for you not to? You can do nothing if I am against it.
Yet let us continue to explore this idea of “wrongful” death together. Is it “wrong” for a life to be cut short by disease?
“Wrong” isn’t a word that applies here. Those are natural causes. That’s not the same as a human being like Hitler murdering people.
What about an accident? A stupid accident—?
Same thing. It’s unfortunate, tragic, but that’s the Will of God. We can’t peer into God’s mind and find out why these things happen. We ought not try, because God’s Will is immu-table and incomprehensible. To seek to unravel Divine Mystery is to lust for knowledge beyond our ken. It is sinful.
How do you know?
Because if God wanted us to understand all of this, we would. The fact that we don’t—can’t—is evidence that it is
God’s will that we don’t.
I see. The fact that you don’t understand it is evi-dence of God’s Will. The fact that it happens is not evidence of God’s Will. Hmmmm . . .
I guess I’m not very good at explaining some of this, but I know what I believe.
Do you believe in God’s Will, that God is All Powerful?
Yes.
Except where Hitler was concerned. What hap-pened there was not God’s Will.
No.
How can that be?
Hitler violated the Will of God.
Now how do you think he could do that if My Will is all powerful?
You allowed him to.
If I allowed him to, then it was My Will that he should.
It would seem that way.... but what possible reason could You have? No. It was Your Will that he have Free Choice. It was his will that he do what he did.
You’re so close on this. So close.
You’re right, of course. It was My Will that Hitler—that all of you—have Free Choice. But it is not My Will that you be punished unceasingly, unendingly, if you do not make the choice I want you to make. If that were the case, how “free” have I made your choice? Are you really free to do what you want if you know you’ll be made to suffer unspeakably if you do not do what I want? What kind of choice is that?
It isn’t a question of punishment. It’s just Natural Law. It’s simply a question of consequences.
I see you’ve been schooled well in all the theological constructions that allow you to hold Me as a vengeful God—without making Me responsible for it.
But who made these Natural Laws? And if we can agree that I must have put them into place, why would I put into place such laws—then give you the power to overcome them?
If I didn’t want you affected by them—if it was My Will that My wonderful beings never should suf-fer—why would I create the possibility that you could?
And then, why would I continue to tempt you, day and night, to break the laws I’ve set down?
You don’t tempt us. The devil does.
There you go again, making Me not responsible.
Don’t you see that the only way you can rationalize your theology is to render Me powerless? Do you understand that the only way your constructions make sense is if Mine don’t?
Are you really comfortable with the idea of a God who creates a being whose actions it cannot control?
I didn’t say You can’t control the devil. You can control everything. You’re God! It’s just that You choose not to. You allow the devil to tempt us, to try to win our souls.
But why? Why would I do that if I don’t want to have you not return to Me?
Because You want us to come to You out of choice, not because there is no choice. You set up Heaven and Hell so there could be a choice. So we could act out of choosing, and not out of simply following a path because there is no other.
I can see how you’ve come to this idea. That’s how I’ve set it up in your world, and so you think that’s how it must be in Mine.
In your reality, Good cannot exist without Bad. So you believe it must be the same in Mine.
Yet I tell you this: There is no “bad” where I Am. And there is no Evil. There is only the All of Everything. The Oneness. And the Awareness, the Experience, of that.
Mine is the Realm of the Absolute, where One Thing does not exist in relationship to Another, but quite independent of anything.
Mine is the place where All There Is is Love.
And there are no consequences to anything we think, say or do on Earth?
Oh, but there are consequences. Look around you. I mean after death.
There is no “death.” Life goes on forever and ever. Life Is. You simply change form.
All right, have it Your way—after we “change form.”
After you change form, consequences cease to exist. There is just Knowing.
Consequences are an element of relativity. They have no place in the Absolute because they depend on linear “time” and sequential events. These do not exist in the Realm of the Absolute.
In that realm there is naught but peace and joy and love.
In that realm you will know at last the Good News:
that your “devil” does not exist, that you are who you always thought you were—goodness and love. Your idea that you might be something else has come from an insane outer world, causing you to act insanely. An outer world of judgment and condemnation. Others have judged you, and from their judgments you have judged yourself.
Now you want God to judge you, and I will not do it.
And because you cannot understand a God who will not act as humans would, you are lost.
Your theology is your attempt to find yourself again.
You call our theologies insane—but how can any theology work without a system of Reward and Punishment?
Everything depends on what you perceive to be the purpose of life—and therefore the basis of the theology.
If you believe life exists as a test, a trial, a period of putting you through your paces to see if you are “wor-thy,” your theologies begin to make sense.
If you believe that life exists as an opportunity, a process through which you discover—remember—that you are worthy (and have always been), then your theologies seem insane.
If you believe God is an ego-filled God who requires attention, adoration, appreciation, and affection—and will kill to get it—your theologies start to hold together. If you believe that God is without ego or need, but the source of all things, and the seat of all wisdom and love, then your theologies fall apart.
If you believe that God is a vengeful God, jealous in His love and wrathful in His anger, then your theologies
are perfect.
If you believe God is a peaceful God, joyous in Her love and passionate in Her ecstasy, then your theologies
are useless.
I tell you this: the purpose of life is not to please God. The purpose of life is to know, and to recreate, Who You Are.
In so doing you do please God, and glorify Her as well.
Why do you keep saying “Her”? Are you a She?
I am neither a “he” nor a “she.” I occasionally use the feminine pronoun to jar you out of your parochial thinking.
If you think God is one thing, then you will think God is not another. And that would be a large mistake.
Hitler went to heaven for these reasons:
There is no hell, so there is no place else for him to go.
His actions were what you would call mistakes—the actions of an unevolved being—and mistakes are not punishable by condemnation, but dealt with by provid-ing the chance for correction, for evolution.
The mistakes Hitler made did no harm or damage to those whose deaths he caused. Those souls were released from their earthly bondage, like butterflies emerging from a cocoon.
The people who were left behind mourn those deaths only because they do not know of the joy into which those souls entered. No one who has experi-enced death ever mourns the death of anyone.
Your statement that their deaths were nevertheless untimely, and therefore somehow “wrong,” suggests that something could happen in the universe when it is not supposed to. Yet given Who and What I Am, that is impossible.
Everything occurring in the universe is occurring per-fectly. God hasn’t made a mistake in a very long time.
When you see the utter perfection in every-thing—not just those things with which you agree, but (and perhaps especially) those things with which you disagree—you achieve mastery.
I know all of this, of course. We’ve been through all of this in Book 1. But for those who have not read Book 1, I thought it important to have a basis of understanding early in this book. That’s why I’ve led into this series of questions and answers. But now, before we go on, I’d like to talk just a bit more about some of the very complex theologies we human beings have created. For instance, I was taught as a child that I was a sinner, that all human beings are sinners, that we can’t help it; we’re born that way. We’re born into sin.
Quite an interesting concept. How did anyone get you to believe that?
They told us the story of Adam and Eve. They told us in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade catechism that, well, we may not have sinned, and certainly babies haven’t—but Adam and Eve did—and we are their descendants and have thus inherited their guilt, as well as their sinful natures.
You see, Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit—partook of the knowledge of Good and Evil—and thus sentenced all of their heirs and descendants to separation from God at birth. All of us are born with this “Original Sin” on our souls. Each of us shares in the guilt. So we are given Free Choice to see, I guess, if we will do the same stuff as Adam and Eve and disobey God, or if we can overcome our natural, inherited tendency to “do bad,” and do the right things instead, in spite of the world’s temptations.
And if you do “bad”?
Then You send us to hell.
I do?
Yes. Unless we repent.
I see.
If we say we’re sorry—make a Perfect Act of Contri-tion—You’ll save us from Hell—but not from all suffering. We’ll still have to go to Purgatory for a while, to cleanse us of our sins.
How long will you have to dwell in “Purgatory”?
Depends. We have to have our sins burned away. It’s not too pleasant, I can tell you. And the more sins we’ve got, the longer it takes to burn them out—the longer we stay. That’s what I’ve been told.
I understand.
But at least we won’t go to hell, which is forever. On the other hand, if we die in mortal sin, we go straight to hell.
Mortal sin?
As opposed to venial sin. If we die with a venial sin on our soul, we only go to Purgatory. Mortal sin sends us right to hell.
Can you give me an example of these various cate-gories of sin you were told about?
Sure. Mortal sins are serious. Kind of like Major Crimes. Theological Felonies. Things like murder, rape, stealing. Venial sins are rather minor. Theological Misdemeanors. A venial sin would be like missing church on Sunday. Or, in the old days, eating meat on Friday.
Wait a minute! This God of yours sent you to Purgatory if you ate meat on Friday?
Yes. But not any more. Not since the early sixties. But if we ate meat on Fridays before the early sixties, woe be unto us.
Really?
Absolutely.
Well, what happened in the early sixties to make this “sin” no longer a sin?
The Pope said it was no longer a sin.
I see. And this God of yours—He forces you to worship Him, to go to church on Sundays? Under pain of punishment?
Failure to attend Mass is a sin, yes. And if not confessed—if you die with that sin on your soul—you’ll have to go to Purgatory.
But—what about a child? What about an innocent little child who doesn’t know all these “rules” by which Cod loves?
Well, if a child dies before it is baptized into the faith, that child goes to Limbo.
Goes to where?
Limbo. It’s not a place of punishment, but it’s not heaven, either. It’s... well... limbo. You can’t be with God, but at least you don’t have to “go to the devil.”
But why couldn’t that beautiful, innocent child be with God? The child did nothing wrong...
That’s true, but the child was not baptized. No matter how faultless or innocent babies are—or any persons, for that matter—they have to be baptized to get into heaven. Otherwise God can’t accept them. That’s why it’s important to have your children baptized quickly, soon after birth.
Who told you all this?
God. Through His church.
Which church?
The Holy Roman Catholic Church, of course. That is God’s church. In fact, if you are a Catholic and you should happen to attend another church, that’s also a sin.
I thought it was a sin not to go to church!
It is. It’s also a sin to go to the wrong church.
What’s a “wrong” church?
Any church that is not Roman Catholic. You can’t be baptized in the wrong church, you can’t get married in the wrong church—you can’t even attend a wrong church. I know this for a fact because as a young man I wanted to go with my parents to the wedding of a friend—I was actually asked to be in the wedding as an usher—but the nuns told me I should not accept the invitation because it was in the wrong church.
Did you obey them?
The nuns? No. I figured God—You—would show up at the other church just as willingly as You showed up at mine, so I went. I stood in the sanctuary in my tuxedo and I felt fine.
Good. Well, let’s see now, we have heaven, we have hell, we have purgatory, we have limbo, we have mortal sin, we have venial sin—is there anything else?
Well, there’s confirmation and communion and confes-sion—there’s exorcism and Extreme Unction. There s—
Hold it—
—there’s Patron Saints and Holy Days of Obligation—
Every day is sanctified. Every minute is holy. This, now, is the Holy Instant.
Well, yes, but some days are really holy—the Holy Days of Obligation—and on those days we also have to go to church.
Here we go with the “have tos” again. And what happens if you don’t?
It’s a sin.
So you go to hell.
Well, you go to Purgatory if you die with that sin on your soul. That’s why it’s good to go to Confession. Really, as often as you can. Some people go every week. Some people every day. That way they can wipe the slate clean—keep it clean so if they should happen to die . . ..
Wow—talk about living in constant fear.
Yes, you see, that’s the purpose of religion—to put the fear of God into us. Then we do right and resist temptation.
Uh-huh. But now, what if you do commit a “sin” between confessions, and then get into an accident or something, and die?
It’s okay. No panic. Just make a Perfect Act of Contri-tion. “Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee . . .“
Okay, okay—enough.
But wait. That’s just one of the world’s religions. Don’t You want to look at some others?
No, I get the picture.
Well, I hope that people don’t think I’m simply ridiculing their beliefs.
You’re really ridiculing no one, just saying it like it is. It’s as your American President Harry Truman used to say. “Give ‘em hell, Harry!” people would shout, and Harry’d say, “I don’t give ‘em hell. I just quote ‘em directly, and it feels like hell.”