A New Year, a New Start
In This Issue...
Notes from Neale
The CwG Reader
DEEP STUDY
The Calendar
Notes from Neale...
My dear friends...
And so now here we are, already past the first week of the New Year. What a remarkable thing Time is. It moves so slow when we are waiting for something special, and it moves so fast when we are not looking.
I don't know what happened to 2009. I really don't. Because just the other day I was talking about IT being the "New Year," and now here we are and it is 2010! And did I do everything I wanted to do in 2009? No. Did I do enough? Yes? I accomplished enough of what I wanted to accomplish to call it a successful year, a good year. But it was not a good year for everyone. People lost their homes. Their savings and pensions. Jobs ended for many. Relationships dissolved. For many, everything changed.
Now we have a chance to start over. I love this time of the New Year celebration, because for me it signals A New Beginning, a New Start. We live in cycles. All of life expresses in cycles. Life itself is a cycle. And when a cycle begins anew, there is a freshness in the air; a new sense of hope.
Hope is something we must never give up. Yet it is only the beginning. After hope comes faith, or belief, and after faith comes knowing.
Hope is the beginning of the Mind's Journey to Awareness. When we hope for something, we are saying that we are not sure that it will or can happen, but we fervently wish that it would. When we have faith in something, we are saying that we believe that it will or can happen, yet there is still some element of wonderment or doubt...otherwise "faith" would not be necessary. When we know about something, we are saying that we are certain that it can and will happen. There is no doubt whatsoever, because there is now way it cannot happen. We hold this information as a knowing. We stand in awareness of something, positively.
When you walk into your bedroom and flip on the light switch, you don't hope that the room will light up, nor do you have faith that it will. You know that it will. There is no wondering about it; there is no doubt in your mind.
Closer to home, I know that my wife loves me. I don't believe that she loves me, I don't hope that she loves me, I know that she loves me.
When I transfer this kind of "knowing" to other subjects --- God, for instance, and the goodness of Life, the awareness that Life is on my side and that Life always turns out --- everything changes in my reality.
Yet getting to Absolute Knowing is the challenge. It is about rising in Consciousness to another level of Awareness --- perhaps the highest level of Awareness to which one has ever ascended.
To rise to this level we must abandon the data of the Mind and embrace the knowing of the Soul. We move from "Mindata" to "Soulogic." The Soul knows what the Mind can barely conceive. In order to operate from the Level of Soul you have to be, quite literally, out of your Mind.
This is what the New Year offers you. A chance to start over. A chance to be out of your Mind. A chance to move from Hoping to Believing to Knowing. At the beginning of this new cycle, we can abandon, toss away, the data of the past year and begin again. That was last year, this is now.
We begin with a knowing that God is real and that Life is on our side. It never occurs to me that it could be otherwise. Everything is working toward my highest good --- and the highest good of all Life. How can it be any other way? Evolution demands it. I know that whatever is happening is happening for the highest good because it is happening. If it were not for the highest good, it would not be happening, because Life is not self-defeating. Life is self-perpetuating, self-sustaining.
The Three Great Principles of Life, CwG tells us, are these: Life is always 1. Functional, 2. Adaptable, 3. Sustainable.
Whatever last year was for you, therefore, call it Perfect. Do not argue with it. Do not regret it or call it bad. It was as it was because Evolution demanded it. You don't have to hope that this is true, you don't have to believe that this is true, you can know that this is true. Do you know how you can know that this is true? Because it happened the way it happened.
The idea that kills us, that makes our Minds go crazy, is the idea that it should have happened another way. Obviously, it should not have, or it would have. We do not live in a universe of random chance. Nor is God sadistic, tossing us into the fire and then offering to pull us out. Our opportunity, then, is to move into Gratitude at every occurrence.
"Thank you, God, for 2009 and for everything that happened. And thank you for 2010 and everything that will happen. I know that I stand in the midst of Perfection, for that is Your World and I am in it."
Welcome to 2010. We are one week into it already. One week of perfect moments, perfect outcomes, perfect You. Happy New Year everyone.
Love and Hugs,
Neale.
The CwG Reader
Further explorations of the Conversations with God material from the author
Neale Donald Walsch through the years has given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles revolving around the messages he received in his Conversations with God. Now, every seven days, we will present in this space a transcript or reprint of those presentations. We invite you to Copy and Save each one of them, creating a personal a collection of contemporary and uplifting spiritual thought which you may reference at any time. We hope you will find this a constant source of insight and inspiration.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
This week's offering: A blog entry that Neale Donald Walsch wrote in Australia two years ago titled: We live within a System; Life is a system!
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = It's interesting to be me. I've just decided that. It's just plain interesting to be me. You know why? I wake up many mornings with the weirdest things in my head.
This morning, for instance, at 4:20 in the morning I could not sleep another wink. My mind was racing, filled to overflowing with thoughts. They were thoughts about life and the nature of Ultimate Reality. At last, I couldn't stand it anymore. I had to open my laptop and start getting them out. I had to.
And you, I'm afraid, are going to have to suffer for it...
So here we go. Today's blog, from Down Under, at 4:30 in the morning, in Sydney, Australia...
* * * * * * * * *
AND THE VOICE SAID: Today I shall tell you everything there is to know about Life. (Or, at least, everything that you'll be able to understand Right Now.)
AND THE VOICE WENT ON...
We live within a System. We are this System. This System is run by a Process. We are this Process. This Process is fueled by Energy. We are this Energy.
There is nothing else going on.
There are one or two words that can be (and have been variously) used to describe this whole Cosmology. The word Life comes to mind. Then, as we elevate our thinking (which humans are prone to do), the word God. Both words refer to the Same Thing.
You could say, with accuracy, "God is Energy." Or, "God is a Process." Or, "God is a System." You could say, with accuracy, "Life is Energy." Or, "Life is a Process." Or, "Life is a System."
Conversations with God says: God is a Process, and that Process is Life Itself. This statement is accurate.
So let's explore this Process that God Is and that We Are.
It is a Process of Energy Exchange.
Energy -- which is the Pure Essence of All That Is, All That Ever Was, and All That Ever Shall Be -- is constantly being Exchanged. With what? With Itself. It never reaches outside of Itself. It could not if It wanted to, because nothing outside of Itself exists. That is, this Pure Essence is the All In All. It is the Sum Total of Everything. It is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Before and the After, the Up and the Down of It, the Left and the Right of It, the Here and the There of It, the Now and the Then. It is the Sum and the Substance, the Creator and the Created, the Unified and the Individuated, It is the Unmoved Mover,
This Energy exchanges Itself with Itself in a never-ending Process that has built into it a Self-Sustaining Design, or a System. The Process is not helter-skelter. It is not catch-as-catch-can. The Process knows what It is doing and It is doing it deliberately.
There is a Synergism to this Process, and it is that Synergism which renders the process eternally sustainable. Within this Process nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost. Nothing goes unused. Everything is fuel. And the fuel is reburnable.
I call the reburning of Life's Fuel Synergistic Energy eXchange -- or S.E.X.
We are having SEX everywhere, all the time. No two people ever meet without exchanging this Energy. Trust me. The question is never, Are we exchanging this Energy? The question is, What are we going to do with it...?
In human terms we call this Synergistic Energy eXchange the Cycle of Life. Indeed, it is the enegy exchange which creates Life Itself. Our description is accurate.
In truth, it is impossible to create what we call New Life. All we can really do is cause the Life (Energy) that is eternally present to emerge in a New Form. This is exactly what Stars do in the heavens.
The evidence of all that I have just said is right up in the sky. (We know this, of course. That is why we intuitively look "to the heavens" when we think of "God." That is why our eyes instinctively turn upward when we are thinking deeply, or desperately seeking help. Do you think this is an accident? It is not. At a cellular level, we know.)
In our case, in the case of this particular Solar System, we are looking at what we have called The Sun. (It is not a happenstance that earlier civilizations worshipped the Sun -- and that some people still do today.)
The Sun is giving up its Life for us. It is burning Itself out, right now. True, it may take a few more billion years, but that is What It Is Doing. Make no mistake about it. That is what is going on.
One day the Light Will Go Out. Not to worry, though. Life in its miniscule expression known as Humanity will by that time have figured this whole thing out and will have been Long Gone. We will have found a way to harness the very energy that the Sun is sending us to get out of the Sun's way when it finally implodes in its last burst of energy, then becoming a Black Hole.
We will long before then have used that energy to propel ourselves to a New Star System, where a much younger Sun, perhaps one Just Born, will guarantee our species a few more billion years of survival in pretty much our present form. And when that Sun approaches Final Burst, we will move on again, like nomads of the Universe, like gypsies of the stars, like humans have done on this very earth, traipsing around for food (read that: energy) when the local supply runs out.
What do you suppose we are eating here...? We are eating sunlight. That is what all food is. Nothing more than stored sunlight. It is not only plants that engage in the Process of photosynthesis, but all of us, everything. The Earth Itself does. We are absorbing energy from the Sun, and radiating it back out again. This is how flowers bloom. This is how trees grow. This is how planets become.
There is a huge boiler inside our planet, lying at its core. Sometimes a tiny bit of this core material oozes out, cooling considerably on its way, but still emerging as white hot molten lava. This core material is hotter than hot. It is the direct energy of the Sun, cooled at its fringes as it spewed forth to form the crust of what we now call The Earth.
As it cooled, some of this Energy liquified. We call this oil (among other things). Some of this Energy solidified. We call this minerals (among other things). Some of this Energy gasified. We call this hydrogen and oxygen (among other things). Some of this Energy vaporized. We call this ozone (among other things). Some of this Energy miniaturized and stored Itself in just about Everything. We call this vitamins (among other things). Some of this Energy maximized and showed Itself in just about Everything. We call this the Planet Itself (among other things).
We are this Energy, individualized. We are part of this eternal Process of Energy Exchange. In a sense, we eat ourselves in order to sustain ourselves. We are all the same thing at our basis, so no matter what we eat, we are eating ourselves. We need vitamins, so we eat plants and animals, and minerals and oils (fish oil capsules are very big these days). We draw the line at consuming ourselves -- but cannibals once even did this, being so primitive as to not understand that eating one's own species was not self-sustaining. When primitive humans finally figured this out, we took Each Other off the menu. Now we are gradually taking other Life Forms off the menu as well. Vegetarianism is, of course, the outflow of that. The day may very well come when we take every Life Form on this planet off the menu. We will simply get our Energy directly from the Sun.
This may seem far-fetched to some, but it does not seem so to Hira Ratan Manek. You will find it interesting to Google Mr. Manek, and read what you find there.
The eyes are not merely the instruments through which we see. They are the instruments through which we intake Energy. They work in that capacity even if we are blind. They are the portals through which Life is Absorbed. They are not the only portals, not the only way we absorb Life Energy. But they are the Most Direct Route. Which is why Hira Ratan Manek insists that if we just look at the sun a few minutes each day, we can get most of what we are eating things to get. And we can get it faster. Because when we eat things -- when we consume plants and trees and minerals and animals -- we have to first convert these substances to extract the Sun Energy that is stored there.
By sun gazing, Mr. Manek suggests, we absorb sunlight directly, without having to convert it through any internal (and energy using) digestive process.
(A word of caution however: most Sun Gazers say to look at the Sun only during the few moments around Sunrise and Sunset, to protect the eyes from permanent after-image and other possible retina against eye damage. And note: I am not here, in any way, suggesting or endorsing the process of Sun Gazing. I am merely reporting on it)
Having said that, we all know already of the benefits of sunlight. When we feel sick, it is common for those around us to say, "C'mon, you need to get out in the sun." And sunlight deprivation is now being recognized as a dis-eased condition, which medical science and modern technology has found a way to treat. SAD (or Seasonal Affective Disorder) is now treated with Full Sectrum Lighting, among other things, to give people what they are missing from not getting enough sun.
Do we really think it is a coincidence that many sunbathers are inordinately healthy? Go to any nudist colony expecting (hoping?) to see lots of nubile naked bodies running around, but don't be surprised if you see that the majority of nudists are people in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, exercising and swimming and playing volleyball and having the time of their life inside of healthy, vibrant bodies that are absorbing more Sunlight in one day than most of us do in one month.
The Process of Synergist Energy eXchange is what we call Life Itself -- and what some people call God. What we take in is what we put out, so I invite you to monitor closely the type of Energy that you are absorbing into your System every day.
Life IS a System, and there is a way to go about changing your life, improving your life, systematically. Watch the energy that you put into your body, and that you send out of your body. Just watch it. Watch what you eat. Watch what you read (and, therefore, put into your Mind). Watch what you watch. What kind of television? What kind of movies? In other words, watch what you injest.
Then watch what you divest. Watch what you think, what you say, what you do. Just watch. No judgment here. Just watch.
Then watch how you feel.
This is how you are using the System.
May 10 - 12, 2010
Ashland, OR
CWG DEEP STUDY
Will @ 352-442-2244
Email: will@cwg.org
The Foundation will be presenting a special program for those who wish to delve more deeply than they ever may have before into the Conversations with God material.
Neale will be presenting, in Ashland, Oregon, a THREE-DAY INTENSIVE May 10 - 12, 2010, called CWG Deep Study.
The program is intended for those who really want to explore the messages of CwG in a detailed way, asking specific and meaningful (and often very personal) questions about every aspect of the material and how it can be applied to their every day lives. Participants will be working closely with Neale from 9 AM until 7 PM in a very special 3-day Excursion of the Soul. You will experience a full 24 hours if intensive study on the important messages of CwG.
1. This program is especially recommended for those who wish to teach this material in any format (i.e., study groups, lectures, one-day seminars, full-scale workshops) for their church or on their own.
2. It is also a wonderful resource for individuals who simply yearn to know more -- much more -- about how these principles can be applied in their lives.
3. It is perfect for those who simply wish to be able to talk more fluidly and explain more easily and clearly what CWG is all about when family members or friends ask, "What is this that you're into?"
Participants will be able to ask any questions they wish; the questions about certain aspects of CwG that they've always wanted answered.
The CWG Deep Study program cost is $895. Participants will handle their own meals and lodging during their stay in beautiful Ashland, Oregon.
We know that this program is not for everyone We expect a handful of people from around the world will participate. So you will be in a very small group. To hold your place contact Will Richardson, the director of educational programs for the Foundation, at...
352-442-2244 or Will@cwg.org
Click here to register.
The Calendar
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.
Click on each event for more information:
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ashland, OR Contact: 352-442-2244 - willemail@aol.com |
Foundation |
|
|
Changing Ideas About God, Religion and Humanity: Creating Global Coherence UMC Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA Contact: 208-344-2682 - linda@schoolofthenewspirituality.com |
University |
|
|
A Retreat with Neale Donald Walsch and Mary O'Malley Molokai, Hawaii Contact: 206-550-2524 - sumara1@verizon.net |
O'Malley |
|
|
Kailua-Kona, Hawaii Contact: 808/447-9228 - willemail@aol.com |
Being Expo |
|
|
Three days of intense study of the major points of CwG Ashland Oregon Contact: Will at 352-442-2244 - will@cwg.org |
Foundation |
Quick Links...
Current Bulletin
CwG Home Page
Life Education Program
CwG Online Store
Last Weeks Bulletin
Geek Squared, LEP Graduates and other friends.
If you enjoy this FREE bulletin, and feel that you get great value from it, please consider making a donation to help us continue to offer services like this. The CwG Foundation is a non-profit organization and any donation amount is greatly appreciated.
Please click here to make a contribution
NOTE: 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 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.