CwG Weekly Bulletin #283 - Starting to look at what you can do

My dear friends...

I have said in this spaceover the past several weeks that I've been wondering...

1. What, if anything, could cause the world to expand its ideas about God?

2. What, if anything, could cause human beings to change their understandings about Life?

3. What, if anything, could cause you and I to alter our thoughts about ourselves and about who we are in relationship to each other?

IN SHORT: What, if anything, could cause our species to modify the drivers of our behavior?

This entry in the Weekly Bulletin is the fourth installment of what I said would be...

A Discussion in Four Parts

THIS IS going to be a discussion in four parts, but it will take more than four installments to complete it. I can see that now. Our exploration will be centering round what I have come to call behaviorifics - the causes and birthings of human behavior. I am rolling it out here in the Weekly Bulletin to see, frankly, if it makes any sense. Your comments and reactions as we go along will be happily received,and will help me to know if any of this is making any sense!

The four areas of our exploration will include:

An exploration of why we behave the way we currently do.
An exploration of the question: Is there any need to change our current behaviors?
An exploration of what could cause us to change our behaviors if we wanted to.
An exploration of the role each human being plays in all of the above.

Two weeks ago we talked here about whether there is any need to change our current behaviors, and why we create the negative experiences that we all do. We concluded that there is not, and that the reason we create the negativities in our lives is to produce a Contextual Field within which we might know and experience Who We Really Are, and then recreate ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.

Last week we continued our exploration of the fact that there truly is no "need" to change anything in the way we behave individually and collectively on this planet. There may, however, be a reason.

If we are not pleased with the Self and the life that we are currently creating, if we are not satisfied with the reality we are producing for humanity as a whole, if we see room for improvement and enhancement of the life that our species is collectively experiencing, if we the impulse and the desire to expand and become even more of Who We Are, we may wish to alter or change certain of our behaviors.

In order to do that, we would have to know where our present behaviors have emerged from. God tells us in the CwG cosmology that beliefs create behaviors. What we believe, we act out.

Yet what creates beliefs? God tells me that perceptions create beliefs. It turns out that for most of us seeing is believing. What we perceive, we believe to be true.

Yet what creates perceptions? God tells me that perspective creates perception. What we see depends on where we are looking from. The hill we standing on determines what we see.

What we call "reality" is a simple mental construction. Our perspective creates our perception, our perception creates our belief, our belief creates our behavior, our behavior creates our experience, our experience creates "reality," and our "reality" creates our perspective. It is a circle, and one thing inevitably leads to another.

Not many people are aware of this circle, but those who are begin to understand that all it takes to change our collective reality on this planet is a simple change in perspective. That is why I am working so hard in the final years of my life to change the world's mind about God, about Life, and about Each Other.

The Next Installment: What YOU Can Do

Let us look now at the role that each human being plays in all of the above.

First, let us agree that each human being is playing a role. This is not a small step in the playing of that role. You can't take a real and vibrant and active part in something if you don't know that you are taking an active part in it already. That is, if you think that you are on the outside looking in, you will think that everything is an "inside job" and that there is no real role for you to play.

This would not be true. But it is what those who are playing very active roles want you to believe is true. If the "powers that be" can get you to believe that they are the "powers that be," and that there are no other powers -- they've won the game.

Pretty much that's how things are going right now. And so the whole thing becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People who do not see themselves sitting in the seats of power or influence have been convinced by those who are seated there that there are no more chairs at the table. And so, because they think there are no seats, these people (regular people like you and me) do not take their seats. That leaves all the decisions to be made by those who have taken their seats-making those who have not taken their seats absolutely "right" about that.

To use the circular model I've described above...if you hold the perspective that there is no room for you in the decision-making process in our world, that will be your perception. Your perception will create your belief, your belief will create your behavior, your behavior will create your experience, your experience will create your reality-and your reality will create your next perspective.

There is one sure way to get around this, and that is to change your perspective.

So the first step in learning what you can do to help the world change its perspective is for you to change your perspective about what you can and cannot do.

I like John F. Kennedy on this: "Divided, there is little we can do. Together, there is little we cannot do."

So, the first leg of my work in the world is to convince people that they CAN do something, RIGHT NOW, about changing the perspective of large numbers of people on our planet with regard to God, Life, and Each Other.

The good news is that we don't have to try to do this alone. There already exists a slew of people-hundreds and thousands in every country-who are ready, right now, to join in the undertaking. It is simply a question of whether and how we can all locate each other-and then find a way to work together, harnessing our collective energy and focusing it with High Purpose and Intent.

This is not an impossible, or even an overwhelming, thing to do. We don't have to be discouraged by this, but, really, we can be inspired by the possibilities. I see that it will be no problem at all to expand the reach of this movement-which I call the New Spirituality Movement-exponentially across the globe.

But it will take one thing-from you.

Commitment.

And more on that next week.

Love and Hugs,

Neale.

P.S. Marion Martin has been busy as a bee this week, putting out the monthly E-magazine. Her personal letter returns here next week.

Hooray for the Southern Baptists

Southern Baptists are finally getting it! Hallelujah! Southern Baptists are finally getting it! Well, some of them are, anyway. And that's a start.

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(NOTE: This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The "New Spirituality" is defined by the author as "a new way to experience and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it." The author's latest book is Happier Than God, published in February by Emnin Books and distributed by Hampton Roads.)
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It took forever-and for a while there I never thought it would happen-but even Southern Baptists are, at last, "getting" that we have an environment that we have to protect.

In what The New York Times yesterday called "a significant departure" from the Southern Baptist Convention's "official stance" on global warming, 44 Southern Baptist leaders have broken from the pack to issue a statement that, for them, had to have taken enormous courage...even though, for the rest of the world, it may seem like a simple noticing of the obvious.

Times journalist Neela Banerjee reports that those leaders "have decided to back a declaration on climate change."

Now that is news. No kidding around. That is news.

Southern Baptists are, of course, among the most politically and socially conservative people around. And most conservatives, if you don't know it, do not believe there even is a Climate Change Problem. They regularly poo-poo the views of environmentalists on this (and most every other) subject, have roundly denounced Al Gore's movie/book An Inconvenient Truth as a pack of, well, wild exaggerations, if not outright lies, and have even, in some instances, called the whole climate change claim a gigantic hoax.

Now come over 40 members of the leadership of this movement to tell us that, on this subject, their denomination has had it...er...wrong. The group that signed what was called "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change" included Rev. Frank Page, the current president of the Southern Baptist Convention, as well as Rev. Jack Graham and Rev. James Merritt-two Convention past presidents. In other words, some movers and shakers within the movement, which, with 16 million members, is the second largest religious denomination in the United States (Roman Catholics are first).

In their Declaration these 44 leaders said, in part, "We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice."

You have to understand what a departure this is. The Times reports that just last year the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution that took "a more skeptical view of global warming."

Yet this new Declaration pulled no punches. Other wording from the present document includes this paragraph:

"Our cautious response to these issues in the face of mounting evidence may be seen by the world as uncaring, reckless and ill-informed."

So let's give credit where credit is due. That statement, from the current president. two past presidents, and 41 other denominational leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention will surely draw some disagreement (if not antagonism) from other members of their group.

It is true, of course, that evidence of global warming-and of mankind's role in creating it--is mounting (to the point of making the matter embarrassingly clear), and so this Declaration may, indeed, seem to be a simple statement of the obvious-yet sometimes (in fact, usually) even stating the obvious can get you in trouble.

Kudos, then, to the Southern Baptist leadership for signing on to a document that, according to the New York Times report, "also urges ministers to preach more about the environment and for all Baptists to keep an open mind about considering environmental policy."

But don't get too excited just yet. As the same Times story noted, while the new Declaration on climate change was certainly noteworthy, "Still, many powerful Southern Baptist leaders and agencies did not sign the declaration, including the convention's influential political arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission."

It would seem that George Bernard Shaw had it right. "All great truth," he famously said, "begins as blasphemy."

from the blog of Tuesday March 11, 2008

Hooray for the Southern Baptists