Weekly Bulletin #317
November 14, 2008
A Long Journey Over at Last
NOTE: The Weekly Bulletin is sent free of charge to anyone who asks for it. It is a publication of the ReCreation Foundation, a non-profit organization undertaking the work of sharing the message of Conversations with God with the world. That message is that the purpose of life is to recreate ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.
In This Issue...
Notes from Neale
The Looking Trap
Best of the Blogs
The Calendar
Notes from Neale...
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My dear friends...
Well, we did it. Two whole ... without a let-up. Two ... on the road.
We left on September 14. We are scheduled to return on November 13. We'll be in our own bed. We'll be getting our clothes out of the closest in the morning instead of a suitcase. For the first time in eight weeks...
We'll be able to mosey on down to the kitchen in our robes and grab a morning snack. We get to take a shower in our own bathroom! Wow.
There's no place like Home.
Whoever planned this trip must have been crazy. (Oh, wait....that would be me. Hmmm.)
Not that we didn't have fun, because we did. Findhorn was wonderful. Hamburg in the Fall is very sweet. The English countryside whispered "the moors," with morning misty and evening fog rising from the fields. Zurich is culture candy...French, English, Italian and German is spoken there, and the place is like four European cities at once. Venice was...well, Venice. Nothing more need be said.
Paris takes you into itself and owns you. No one ever leaves Paris. You can depart the city, but you can't leave. And Copenhagen tucks itself away up there in Denmark like a hidden piece of magic, revealing its wonder narrow street by narrow street, city square by city square.
And, of course, the most wonderful part of the journey was the deep satisfaction of watching the message of CwG be embraced by so many wonderful people in so many wonderful places.
So yes, it was fun. But it was also very tiring. We carried Conversations with God to more than four thousand people-but I don't want to see another Room Service meal for a long time.
Now I am preparing for the first of its kind One Day Spiritual Help program: When Everything Changes, Change Everything, which will be offered on December 7th in Medford, Oregon.
This 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. event focuses on all the changes that are now rapidly coming toward us, and how we can deal with them in both our exterior and interior world. (See Events Calendar, below, for additional info.)
Then on December 28th the Foundation will produce its most popular event of the year, our year-end Spiritual Renewal Retreat. This offering stretches across portions of five days, concluding on New Year's Day. It includes our very special New Year's Eve Resolutions Ritual, in which participants get to make the best and most spectacular New Year's Resolutions of their lives-resolutions that, past participants tell us, really stick.
The focus of this wonderful end-of-year retreat is to give us a chance to look back over 2008 and make an assessment of how we have created our lives, how happy we are, and what, if anything, we would like to see different in 2009-and then, to explore how to apply the freedom-giving messages of Conversations with God in our day-to-day encounters in a way that produces the experiences that we choose.
The program will end with each person having an opportunity to have their own conversation with God. I will explain and describe how this happens for me, and then lead you through a process that offers you a chance to experience the same thing.
As I said, the annual Holiday Retreat is our most popular program every year, with people coming from all over the world to be with us, and we use the whole city of Ashland, Oregon (I call it Christmas Card Town, for reasons that will be apparent to you as soon as you get here) as our campus, presenting the program in one of the theatres of the famous Ashland Shakespeare Festival, walking to our meals in the many fabulous restaurants nearby, and residing at the beautiful Ashland Springs Hotel just down the street from the theatre.
I can't wait for this event because it's always so doggone much fun, and every time it is also so very fulfilling, both for us and for the participants! All the information that you may need to grab a place in this very special event will be found in the Events Calendar below.
And, of course, before all of that is our family Thanksgiving, to which we are also so looking forward. So, yes, it will be good to be home!
Neale.
The Looking Trap
An essay by Neale Donald Walsch
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It is amazing how many people are caught in the trap of being deeply concerned with how things are looking to others. Keeping Up Appearances has become, for some, an obsession. Many of us will even give up our own happiness (or our chance at it) in order to keep "looking good" in the eyes of others. This is beyond sad. It is tragic.
It is tragic because all we have is the Time of Our Life. It is the essential gift. It is the treasure of treasures. And it is not infinite, but finite. Indeed, it could run out at any moment.
During this Time of Our Life we should be having the time of our lives. Instead, many of us are living lives of dulled acceptance-and some are even living lives of quiet desperation. Waiting, waiting, for what, we know not. Just something, anything, other than what is going on right now, or at least richer, fuller, grander. Because there's something missing, and we dare not name it, or the name itself will do us in.
It is, of course, love. We are lacking in love, and we are dying inside. We are lacking in someone TO love, and we are lacking in someone loving us. And who we are lacking in loving us is, in the supreme irony, ourselves.
Not finding it possible to love ourselves exactly as we are and exactly as we would like to be "showing up" if we could do whatever we wanted, we do, instead, whatever "others" want us to do, in order to acquire the love for which we so desperately yearn. We pay utmost attention to how we are looking.
I call this The Looking Trap. In it we are so confined in our thinking, so caught up in our appearances, so imprisoned in our outlook, that we have no outlook at all. We cannot look out of our own self-made prison. We cannot see over the walls of our own need for approval.
The Looking Trap binds people to the rigidity of what others would choose for them. It ties them down, limits their choices, dramatically alters their course, and all in the name of pleasing others even as the self is never pleased. Meanwhile, Time-that most precious of all life's treasures-is running out.
You will never see this day again. You will never again see this week, this month, this year again. You will see this time only during the moment you are living it. Be sure, then, that you ARE "living it." Try very hard not to be killing it. There shall be time enough after death to experiencing dying. It is time now to experience living. It is time now to spring free of The Looking Trap.
Spring free, my soul! Spring free, spring free!
And give me back, right now, to me.
I shall not see the time I took
To fret and stress o'er how I look.
I shall not have these days again.
For this is Now, and that was Then.
What's gone is past, yet all's not lost.
I'll seize this day, forget the cost.
I'll seize this time, forget the price.
I'll seize this Now, and throw the dice!
My gamble's won before the toss,
For now I have become the boss!
My life's my own, my choices, mine.
I'll take a stand, I'll draw the line.
No more! No more will I grant you
The power to influence what I do.
No more! No more I'll keep from me
The very things that set me free!
This day I claim again my choice.
This day I give myself a voice.
And how I look to you is not
Of my concern, and so you've got
No more power to wield o'er me.
My God, it's true! I've set me free!
Best of the Blogs...
Each week we present in this space the best from past entries on the worldwide CwG Blog. The blog may be accessed daily on the home page at www.beliefnet.com.
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Is Oneness 'sameness'?
(Posted on Beliefnet on Thursday November 6, 2008)
Is it possible that we actually now have a political leader who understands that the highest truth of life is our Oneness?
Yes, it is! The people of the United States chose that leader two days ago. It was a remarkable day for America and a remarkable day for the world.
Here, in the President-Elect's own words, is the message of Conversations with God...
"This is our moment. This is our time -- to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth: THAT OUT OF MANY, WE ARE ONE."
Wow. What a wonderful thing for Barack Obama to say in his victory speech Tuesday night.
It has been predicted in the Conversations with God material that in the next 25 years the world will recreate itself anew, with a new politics and a new economics and a new spirituality – and that even world leaders will see the essential truth of our being...that we are all one; that there is no separation between us.
Now Barack Obama has put that into words in a political speech. And I see that the change predicted in CwG is coming faster than even I thought it might.
Yes, change is coming. And the we humans are about to find out that, as Mr. Obama said Tuesday night...
"...while we breathe, we hope, and where we are met with cynicism and doubt, and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can!
I was so impressed and so moved by John McCain's concession speech Tuesday night. He was extraordinarily gracious, and urged in the strongest words that all Americans now unite and stand behind their new president – as he said that he fully intends to do – to offer support and help as the country faces the difficult challenges ahead.
I wish that all those who are blogging on the Internet with bitterness and anger and spiteful words could hear and heed the words of Sen. McCain himself. If John McCain, after the rough and tumble of this campaign, can move on and move ahead and join hands with Barack Obama in working toward a healing for America, surely the same can be done by those who supported him.
Yes?
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The Calendar
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A look at events at which Neale Donald Walsch will share the message of Conversations with God in the weeks ahead. You can learn more about the work of the ReCreation Foundation at these events...and on its official website, www.cwg.org, as well.
NOTE: Not all events are sponsored by the ReCreation Foundation, but because all of the events move forward the message of Conversations with God, which is the mission of the Foundation, the Foundation is pleased to inform you of them.
December 7, 2008
Medford, Oregon
When Everything Changes, CHANGE EVERYTHING
A Doorway to Peace in a Time of Turmoil
A one-day spiritual enrichment event
Tel: (352) 442-2244
Email: support@nealedonaldwalsch.com
December 28, 2008 - January 1, 2009
Ashland, OR
Your Conversation with God
The Holiday Retreat - The 5-Day Experience
Will: +1-352-442-2244
Email: will@cwg.org
www.cwg.org/main.php?p=Retreats&sub=RSchedule
January 22 - 25, 2009
Los Angeles, CA
The Freedom Formula Experience
Contact: +1-800-930-3713
Email: Info@thefreedomfoformula.com
March 10 - 12, 2009
Ashland, OR
Deep Study CwG Intensive
Contact Will 352-442-2244
email: will@cwg.org
March 20 - 21, 2009
Denver, CO
Weekend Workshop
Mile Hi Church
Contact: +1 303-232-4079
June 19 - 22, 2009
Golden, B.C. Canada
Quantum Leap Retreat
Quantum Leaps Lodge
Email: info@quantumleaps.ca
quantumleaps.ca/neale_donald_walsch.php
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