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ReCreating Yourself:
The Annual Holiday Retreat
~All New Program~
~All New Price~
~All New Year~
Dec. 28, 2007
to
Jan. 1, 2008
in
Ashland, OR
What others
are saying
"This retreat has been the most marvellous experience of my 72 years of life and for certain the best investment I have ever made."
~Mary Mumford
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| Life Education |
Are you seeking to BE the change?
Learn about our transformative teaching programs here at the ReCreation Foundation
Life Skills
Life Change
Life Mission
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Letter from Neale
My Dear Friends...
 I write this from Amsterdam as I prepare to do another event over the next several days as part of a speaking tour that began September 17 and will not bring me home until Nov.19. Over the past five days we have facilitated an amazing (truly, an amazing) spiritual renewal retreat in London. What made it amazing was the number of people who had major breakthroughs as a result of our work together.
I am always so inspired by the courage of people everywhere. Last week, some absolutely wonderful men and women who have experienced very difficult and challenging times in their lives came to deal with their "stories" and walked out having left them behind. These were stories of rape and physical abuse, of bullying and deep loss, and all manner of human tragedy and trauma. The format of our retreat allows for a space within which personal stories can be heard and healed. It is extremely rewarding -- as you can imagine -- to be involved in such work, and to co-create with participants the end of the negativity of very sad yesterdays and the beginning of a bright now tomorrow.
Fully 16 of the participants signed up on the spot for next year's October retreat in the UK! This is very exciting and it tell us in large letters that most people felt very positive about their experience, and want more of the same!
YOU can have the same experience in just a few weeks when we create our annual CwG Christmas Retreat -- and you can give yourself an unspeakably wonderful gift this year. For more information, please check out the front page of the Foundation's website. The holiday retreat runs from Dec. 28 to Jan 1. It is a highlight of the Foundation's year.
Check out the information about this very special program at our website....www.cwg.org.
hugs...Neale
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A Fond Farewell
It is with our deepest regret and love that we must announce our beloved Joanna Gabriel is leaving the Foundation.
From the President of the Board To all our readers:
There comes a time in all lives, I believe, when we come to a fork in the road and different paths appeal to different souls. One soul is led to go left, another to the right.
Neither of these paths is 'Right' or 'Wrong'. They are just different. Each serves the soul in its growth.
This is what has happened with the Foundation and Joanna Gabriel. For over 8 years they have trod the same path over bumps, hills, valleys and streams, and seen many rainbows together. Now the time has come to follow our bliss and take separate paths.
Joanna will be missed. She is already appreciated for Who She Is and for all she has been and done for the Foundation, and for all the lives she has touched. The Foundation and all of us associated with it, will miss her and her 'angelness'.
Thank you Joanna, for all you Are. I know the world will thrive with your new path, as will you.
God Bless,
Will Richardson
President, Board of Trustees
ReCreation Foundation, Inc
From the StaffJoanna~
You're such a treasure to all of us, and you'll be missed so very much. No words or gesture can adequately express our love and gratitude for all you've done and been to each of us. You've taught us all how to share and live the messages of CwG in amazing ways.
Love and Godspeed,
Marion Black & Staff
Passing of the LEP TorchLetters from Joanna and J.R.
Hello Dear Ones,
 This is a bittersweet time for me as I both lament not walking through the more of the CwG - LEP experience with you, and at the same time feel so excited for you, because JR Westen is going to step into the facilitator role.
I have known JR for many years and you won't find a more compassionate being on the planet! He is also a very wise and articulate facilitator, drawing on both an amazing life experience and a deep love for the messages of CwG. You will see very quickly how this man expresses from a very powerful and deeply authentic place.
JR is a great listener and will walk with everyone in such a way that you will feel fully supported through the Life Education Programs.
To be quite honest with you, I could not walk away if the person stepping in wasn't going to be as appropriate and as wonderful as JR. I secretly hoped it would be him and I am very grateful for you that it is!
Love and blessings to you,
Joanna
...and here is JR
Hello Angels,
I feel so very blessed to have this opportunity to be with you during this incredible experience called Life Education! We will have the chance to meet each other, and I am looking forward to sharing in the creation of the next grandest version of you. The material we will cover together over the times ahead has and continues to transform my life in ways that I could have never imagined. If you are like me, you have answered the call from deep within and I know you will find great benefit in participating in this process.
Finally, I wish to thank and honor Joanna for her many years of incredible service to the CwG foundation, I for one have been deeply touched by her friendship and facilitation. She will be greatly missed.
I send you my love and blessings,
J.R. |
New Spirituality and the Struggles in Myanmar - Last of a three-part series
If you follow the news, no one needs to tell you what has been happening in Myanmar, in Darfur, and in other trouble spots around the world. What is sad -and what we have been taking a look at over the past several weeks in a three-part series in this space, is the political consideration that has allowed most of the despotism that has ever occurred in the world to have taken place -- whether it is in Myanmar and Darfur today, or right in the place from which I began this series of articles...Germany, in 1943.
In the present instance China, which borders Myanmar and is one of its few allies and trading partners, has argued that the crisis there does not constitute the kind of threat to international peace and security that calls for involvement or intervention by the United Nations. The Chinese say that the events in Myanmar are an internal matter.
The international legal argument behind all of this is the dogma of "national sovereignty." This doctrine has it that what goes on inside the borders of a nation is no one's business except that nation's, itself. For many years the global community has pretty much honored that dogma, except in the most severe instances. Apparently the events inside of Myanmar have not been severe enough.
Only a Separation Cosmology -- that is, an idea of the world that says that everything is separate from everything else -- could support or justify such a doctrine. And such a Separation Cosmology would be impossible to construct if the human race abandoned its Separation Theology.
Separation Theology is a theology that insists that God is "over there" and that we are "over here," and that there is no intrinsic connection or unity. Humanity has embraced such a theology for thousands of years. Yet if we rejected, at last, such separation thinking, we could construct a New World, a New Humanity, and a new way of living on this planet.
What is true is that God and we are One. There is no separation of any kind. The idea that a nation's governing powers can treat a nation's people any way they want to and that no one in the rest of the world has any standing in the matter, is an idea rooted in the ancient politics of our Separation Cosmology. All of the world would change if we just decided that We Are All One -- not only one with God, but one with each other.
What it would take to produce such an outcome is the embracing by humanity of a New Spirituality. And that is what Conversations with God has been proposing for a dozen years. You can play a role in this outcome. I hope that you will.
Choose now to be a Provider of the messages of CwG in your community. Next week, we will give you some suggestions on how you can do that.
~Neale Donald Walsch
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From M. Claire Our Beloved Poet
All Light Longs
I hope that there comes a time
when I will not have to touch the Wound
before I touch the Heart.
When I will stride into any abyss,
and invite it to enter me, with It's
simple darkness.
I traffic and I travel
through the last of the shadows
of my fears
to reach the day, when I enter my own heart so completely,
that All Light longs again
for any darkness.
For any simple darkness, at all.
'All Light Longs' - m. Claire
(copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved)
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Message from Marion
 My Dear Friends -
It's been a crazy couple of weeks at the Foundation as we head into our biggest season. The LEP Life Mission Program starts on Saturday, and we're pretty excited about this amazing group of students we have. The Holiday Retreat is coming up and we have a new venue in Ashland that we are in love with.
We're keeping busy: the Christmas Appeal Letter goes out next week, Neale comes home in time for Thanksgiving and then we head into Christmas gift product sales and the Christmas season. Right on the heels of Christmas on December 28th we start the Holiday ReCreating Yourself Retreat, and from there move right into the 21 day onsite LEP trainings. It feels overwhelming here in the final push of preparations, even though I think most of us here in Ashland feel as if this is the most exciting and fulfilling part of the year in regards to the work we do.
I'd like to take a moment here to remind you all that we've created this amazing new component of the Life Education Program, called Life Change. Life Change is elements of the original onsite training that are focused on personal growth and one's individual spiritual progress through training. We decided to separate these elements of the program so that people could participate in our program with less time and financial burden than what our old program required.
This program includes time with Neale in an amazingly intimate setting discussing matters that are vital to our lives, Sex, Money, Love and God. We have included an intensive training that takes people deeply inside themselves through meditation and vehicles of personal expression. Life Change is running this year from January 2rd through the 13th, right after the Holiday Retreat, and the tuition is an all inclusive rate which covers all meals and accommodations. I urge you all to try and join us. Click here to register online or for further information contact Rachel Ratliff at rachelratliff@cwg.org or call her at (336) 479-0550.
Ok, now to the juicy stuff. This week I've been thinking and playing a lot with my own process around what happens when life turns on a dime. When peaceful, calm, routine days, turn suddenly to days full of tension, change, problem solving, and multi-tasking to the extreme. So often, as it's been recently in my world, it happens and you never even saw it coming.
Now there's a part of me that thrives on this kind of stress. I hate to admit it, but I tend to excel when the chips are down and I feel like I have an opportunity to make a significant difference.
Yet, there's also this part of me which shows up and feels afraid and insecure about myself. An aspect of Marion Black that nags at me and whispers to me that I'm inadequate. Tells me I'm not enough or that I'm not good enough to succeed.
Most of the time this negative voice is quiet, but in times when I'd be best served to feel full of confidence and experience ultimate belief in my own abilities and skills - it's then that the voice begins to speak. If I'm not aware of what's happening inside of me this voice will produce in me a sense of anxiety and fear. It also will send me into behaviors and thinking where I tend to blame others, or things outside of myself, for my fears and discomfort.
Another thing I notice happens, is that I find I have a tendency to dive into martyrdom or self-pity with thinking like, "I'm taking care of everything and everyone and no one is taking care of me." I think this is a disposition that happens to be common for a lot of single mothers, but in my life it becomes very pronounced in times of higher than usual stress or intensified necessity for doingness in my work. The fear and anxiety I mentioned above, I feel confident in dealing with. I know it. I see it and recognize it and move forward, but my inner, self-pitying martyr can throw me into a really sad place that doesn't serve me at all.
The other part of Who I Am in this state that doesn't serve me is being the person with too much pride and ego to share my experiences of being afraid and needing help. I don't know what it is about me, but I have an exaggerated sense of myself, where I believe I should be able to handle anything and everything alone, and to ask for help is some sign of weakness. Ugh! I don't like it, but it is true for me.
Well something happened with all this today, and it was such a new behavior and had a wonderful result.
This morning I was talking to a friend. We talk most mornings, but today I was rather quiet, and he asked me what was going on. At first, I hesitated to share, because I didn't want to sound weak and needy, but he gently prodded me and I did share how I was feeling. I told him how I wish sometimes when stuff is happening like what's been going on recently I had someone to "take care of me", someone to stop and notice and pay attention just to me personally. I was clear with my friend that I knew and had insight into my own process and that I was well aware that my sense of well-being is my responsibility and all the CwG writings say about our thoughts creating our experience. My dear friend listened and was very supportive then he said he had to go back to work and we hung up.
The rest of my morning was filled with phone calls, emails and writing. Then I heard a loud knock on my door. I was on the cell phone so I went downstairs and opened the door while still in the midst of my phone exchange. Lo and behold, there was my dear friend with a single red rose and a couple of to-go containers. I was stopped dead in my tracks. With a great big grin on his face, he said, "Hey, there, I came to make you feel better and have breakfast with you!"
I told my caller, "The greatest guy in the whole wide world is here with a rose and breakfast. I have to go," and hung up. I was amazed and actually brought to tears by this gesture, and the love I felt. I also was filled with a sense of being loved and cared for by another-fully supported by my dear friend. Wow! It was great, and it shifted my entire experience of the day.
What I learned from this experience was that in my willingness to swallow my pride, be vulnerable (something I'm not so good at), be really honest, and truthful about how I was feeling, with no expectation of things being any different, I allowed another the opportunity to care for me and love me. I also gave myself the opportunity to be open to the help and care of another. It felt great.
The next call I made that day, I decided to ask another for help, and another. All of a sudden I've created a team helping me in ways I'd never have really considered possible.
I know some of this may sound to many of you like a big "well, duh?" but some of us are slower than others and we're all right where we're supposed to be. So for all of you "movers and shakers", all of you that imagine you can do it all alone - I urge you to take a moment and give others the opportunity to help you and share the burden. It can be a wonderful win/win situation.
Until next week - remember to love and care for those around you and let them do the same for you.
Marion Black, Executive Director
ReCreation Foundation, Inc.
dba Conversations with God Foundation
PS: My email is marion@CwG.org or my cell number is (541) 301-0365 call anytime. |
Ad Copy Volunteers
Thanks so much to all of you that responded to our request for help writing ad copy.
We will be in touch with all of you this week, but if you'd like to get started we need copy on the main events on our website. These events include the LEP programs and the Holiday Retreat.
Please send any contribution of copy to marion@cwg.org.
We are so excited to be stepping into a more free exchange with so many of our amazing readers, and we hope to have more opportunities in the future.
Thank you.
Marion Black, Executive Director
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How CwG Affects Peoples Lives
Hi Neale.
I am Pall and am an Icelander. I was born in Iceland or could we say my physical body. My heart is somewhere else. I have one observation I would like to share with you but first I want to tell about my connection with your books.
I opened to spirituality in Christmas time 1995. In September 1996 I started in a Medical school in University of Iceland. On my first day of school I went for a healer first time in my life and that changed my life forever. While I was sitting in the school learning about the human body my mind was somewhere else. I thought, " why is nothing thought about power of mind or consciousness or love or energy?" but at that time I was starting to go for chi-gong classes, which are all about the chi or energy.
After sitting in the school for 2 months I decided to stop. I put everything in God's hands and he sent me to a Reiki class in beginning of December 1996. I was totally transformed and stopped drinking, smoking, and eating meat, and talked about Reiki and love and energy and of course, God in a simple and good way, I felt.
But people didn't like this kind of a talk, not even my parents, so they called the family doctor and he came and I told about Reiki in a simple way and he told my parents I had to be put on medications and have a treatment in a mental institute. There is no such thing like an energy they told me, it is a schizo. So I was put in, and to tell in a short way, their treatment wasn't very nice. Once they put me on so strong medication that I got so depressed and with so little of life in me that I slept all the time. The nurses told the doctor, but by some grace, the head doctor was abroad and some other doctor was there for a few days and he told me the nurses wanted me to be put on antidepressant to fix me. But he started to talk to me and ask questions no one else did, and I found out he was reading your books and he took me off these high doses of medicine. Thank God, and I started to feel better.
Well this was a few year process for me and I feel that many years of my life are gone to waste because of ideas about God and Life. It was in this process that your book came to me and gave me all the comfort I could have at that time. Thank God, twice. But in this process I started to read your first book again and again and I loved it. It was the best thing. It gave me confidence not to give up and not to believe narrow-minded philosophy. I don't know how often I read your first book, but at that time I had time to read, nothing else to do.
One day I was sitting in front of computer thinking to God, "what can I do to help in this world?" The moment I thought this thought, I got the answer: Write an article about CwG books, so I did. It came a few days later in the biggest and most sold newspaper in Iceland in the best place even in the paper. I was proud. Then a few months later, my friend was watching the television and there was this show about books and culture in Iceland. He told me they were talking about a book that not many copies were sold but after my article came in the paper and they showed my article in the TV, the woman in the bookshop who was interviewed said that it started to sell and sell this Conversations with God books after this article came. So I felt great about that. This was 1999
Since then I have read all of your books, and all of them more often then twice. I love it. But my understandings have, of course, been deeper, and I went to India and being with an Avatar changed my life totally. Now somehow I'm happy and content, but am facing practical problems only. That is ok, but we are not finish.
The observation I wanted to make is that since I started to go to India, and I have been 5 times, I met people who have been going to a very special library called the Nadhi Shastra Palm Leaf Library. The story says that thousands of years ago there lived a Saint in India who could see into the future. He wrote on palm leaves lives of I don't know how many people, and in those palm leaves he had their names in there, their parents' names, past lives and future lives, husbands and wives, date of your birth and date of your coming death. Actually they ask, what do you want to know?
I personally have not been to one, but met a few people who have and they told me that in those palm leaves it had the name of their parents, children, husbands and ex-husbands and their whole life was written on those palm leaves. Well, even Deepak Chopra said in his book about death that he also went to this palm leaf and was astonished.
If this is true, and I personally believe it is, then like God said in your Home with God books, it totally fits. We are here living one CD of a computer game and we enjoy it again and again if we like it so much. Maybe we change the CD next time or not.
Thanks, Neale, for your support and help.
I love you, Pall. |
Questions & Comments from CwG Readers - Stuck In Relationship
I am a mother of three wonderful children and I have recently been separated, this separation was my choice and still is, however, the other party is very much against this separation. I was a stay home Mom for 14 years....
I have tried to keep lines of communications open to try and assist the other party cope with this separation but our relationship is actually becoming worse. I find myself doing all kinds of favours and he is so much part of my life, as if I never left!!
I am really happy and peaceful when he is not around me, I really find myself stuck in the relationship that I would like to leave behind.
I am trying to figure out what I am doing or what I am thinking to maintain the relationship that I decided no longer serves me.
Your thoughts/words/voice of wisdom is most appreciated,
With Love
Yasmin
Canada
Dear Yasmin:
You may have separated yourself physically from this relationship, that in your words, "no longer serves" you, however, as long as you think you must assist the other party to "cope with this separation" by "doing all kinds of favors...", you are still in the relationship.
I remember when I approached my therapist with the same sort of situation when I was going through a separation with my former spouse. What she said to me, I will share with you. Her words were very relavent to my experience. It may have no validity in what you are experiencing. You decide.
She explained to me that my leaving the marraige was very difficult for him to understand. He truly had no clue how miserable our marraige had become to me. So, this new awareness, and my request for separation, hurt him deeply. He did not need me to do anything I was doing in order for him to cope. In fact, my doing these things actually prevented him from coping, and, more importantly, it hindered his ability to move forward with his life. My "helping him cope" confused him even further as I had declared I wanted the separation, yet stayed actively involved in his life. In effect, I was saying, "Go away a little closer." No wonder the situation became worse!?!
The truth was, I was scared. What if he did move on with his life without me and I changed my mind, wanting him back? I had no idea who I was outside of this marraige of 13 years, which I wanted out so badly. What if I could not make it on my own??? I was terrified to let him go, even though I did not want him as my spouse any longer.
I began to see that my "acts of kindness" were anything but kind. My decision was to face my fears and let him go. Because I loved him, as well as myself, I stopped "helping him cope" and focused on my own issues. There is only one question that is ever necessary, "What would love do now." I decided my answer, and, I set us both free.
Again, this was my experience. I offer no advice. I am very clear that you have your answers within yourSelf. I give you my love and best wishes.
Begin template response again:
Yasmin, thank you again for writing. We hope you feel heard and that this response is supportive to you as you grow in expanded awareness of the magnificence of Who You Really Are.
"I want for you what you want for you. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't sit here and make a judgment, request by request, whether something should be granted you. My law is the law of cause and effect, not the law of We'll See. There is nothing you can't have if you choose it. Even before you ask, I will have given it to you."
- CwG, Book 1, page 117
Response composed by Rachel Ratliff - LEP Graduate |
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The CwG Foundation is a non-profit organization and is extremely grateful for every bit of public support we receive. If you enjoy receiving our FREE Weekly Bulletin, and if you believe that there is value in the other work that we do, we hope you will consider making a donation.
 Even the smallest amount helps us continue offering valuable resources to our world, including this Bulletin and Books for Friends. If we received only a quarter a week from just those people who receive this Bulletin each week, it would give us a tremendous boost.
Please click here to make a contribution.
The CwG Weekly Bulletin is written and compiled by Neale Donald Walsch, Joanna Gabriel, Rose Wolfenbarger, Marion Black, Brandon Klayman and other friends and associates, working together to bring you all the value that we can from the CwG material and experience.
If you would like to connect with us with any comment, question, or sharing, please visit us online |
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If you would like to send a comment or a question to Neale here at the Weekly Bulletin, you may do so by addressing an email to: weeklybulletinresponse@CwG.org
Please note that because of the volume of mail that we receive, it is possible your letter will not get printed here. However, we do our best to see that all letters get a response, if not directly from Neale, then from a CwG Foundation staff person, or LEP participant.
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