Being your own best friend
In This Issue...
Notes from Neale
The CwG Reader
The Calendar
Notes from Neale...
My dear friends...
We talked in this space last week about one of the most important things in life: being friends. I want to reprint that commentary here, in case some of you missed it, so that as I go on into Part 2 of this observation, you will not have to wonder what was said in Part 1, yes?
So here is Part 1 again, with the newest commentary continuing at the bottom of this reprint...
I hope and trust that your life has been wonderful this week. Let me say that the important thing is to be friends.
Be friends with everybody.
Be friends with your spouse. Be friends with your children. Be friends with your relatives. Be friends with your neighbors and your fellow workers and your acquaintances. And yes, even be friends with your enemies.
Just...be friends.
One of the most stinging criticisms I ever received was when someone to whom I was once married, and who I truly and dearly loved, once said to me: "You treat your friends better than you treat me."
I never, ever forgot that. Because I knew it was true. It is absolutely, stunningly true that I had more tolerance for, more patience with, more leniency regarding my friends' behaviors than I did with the person with whom I was sharing my life.
I said things to my life partner that I would never say to a friend. I criticized my life partner for things that I would simply "let go" with a friend. I noticed things with my life partner that I would overlook with a friend. And I let things bother me---annoy me, actually---that my life partner did that wouldn't even phase me if a friend did the exact same thing.
What is this about? I began to wonder. Why do we so often treat those closest to us as if they were not "close" to us at all? Is it because we know them better than we know our friends, spending more time with them day in and day out as we do? Could it really be true that "familiarity breeds contempt"?
No, no...say it isn't so! Shouldn't familiarity breed compassion, understanding, patience, tolerance, acceptance, and deeper and deeper love? Shouldn't intimate relationship be the place of greatest safety, not of the least?
When I was a small child (which was very, very long ago) there was a song that was popular. Even then it was an Oldie But Goodie, and we had an old phonograph record of it sung by the Mills Brothers that I used to play on the family Victrola (Ha! Does anyone even know who or what I am talking about here---???)
The some was called, You Always Hurt the One You Love. And the lyrics went something like this...if I can remember them now...
You always hurt the one you love
The one you shouldn't hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
And crush it `til the petals fall
You always break the kindest heart
With a hasty word you can't recall
So if I broke your heart last night
It's because I love you most of all.
The irony of that song sticks with me to this very day. I have come to deeply regret (and to beg them and the heavens forgiveness for) the many ways that I have treated beloved others who have been close to me, and to realize that one of the greatest gifts we can give to a loved one is friendship. Pure and simple friendship. Just treat them like a Friend. Like we would treat someone we are afraid of losing.
So yes, be friends with your spouse. Be friends with your children. Be friends with your relatives. Be friends with your neighbors and your fellow workers and your acquaintances. And yes, even be friends with your enemies. And most of all...be friends with yourself!
That may be the hardest thing to do of all. And so we'll take a close look at that next week.
Be friends with everybody.
Be friends with your spouse. Be friends with your children. Be friends with your relatives. Be friends with your neighbors and your fellow workers and your acquaintances. And yes, even be friends with your enemies.
Just...be friends.
One of the most stinging criticisms I ever received was when someone to whom I was once married, and who I truly and dearly loved, once said to me: "You treat your friends better than you treat me."
I never, ever forgot that. Because I knew it was true. It is absolutely, stunningly true that I had more tolerance for, more patience with, more leniency regarding my friends' behaviors than I did with the person with whom I was sharing my life.
I said things to my life partner that I would never say to a friend. I criticized my life partner for things that I would simply "let go" with a friend. I noticed things with my life partner that I would overlook with a friend. And I let things bother me---annoy me, actually---that my life partner did that wouldn't even phase me if a friend did the exact same thing.
What is this about? I began to wonder. Why do we so often treat those closest to us as if they were not "close" to us at all? Is it because we know them better than we know our friends, spending more time with them day in and day out as we do? Could it really be true that "familiarity breeds contempt"?
No, no...say it isn't so! Shouldn't familiarity breed compassion, understanding, patience, tolerance, acceptance, and deeper and deeper love? Shouldn't intimate relationship be the place of greatest safety, not of the least?
When I was a small child (which was very, very long ago) there was a song that was popular. Even then it was an Oldie But Goodie, and we had an old phonograph record of it sung by the Mills Brothers that I used to play on the family Victrola (Ha! Does anyone even know who or what I am talking about here---???)
The some was called, You Always Hurt the One You Love. And the lyrics went something like this...if I can remember them now...
You always hurt the one you love
The one you shouldn't hurt at all
You always take the sweetest rose
And crush it `til the petals fall
You always break the kindest heart
With a hasty word you can't recall
So if I broke your heart last night
It's because I love you most of all.
The irony of that song sticks with me to this very day. I have come to deeply regret (and to beg them and the heavens forgiveness for) the many ways that I have treated beloved others who have been close to me, and to realize that one of the greatest gifts we can give to a loved one is friendship. Pure and simple friendship. Just treat them like a Friend. Like we would treat someone we are afraid of losing.
So yes, be friends with your spouse. Be friends with your children. Be friends with your relatives. Be friends with your neighbors and your fellow workers and your acquaintances. And yes, even be friends with your enemies. And most of all...be friends with yourself!
That may be the hardest thing to do of all. And so we'll take a close look at that next week.
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Okay, so now it IS "next week", and we get a chance to look at that.
It is true that being one's own best friend can be one of the hardest things in life to do. In my own experience it involved something along the lines of a three-step process, which felt like...
1. Forgiveness
2. Acceptance
3. Celebration
My road to self-friendship began with self-forgiveness. It proceeded to self-acceptance, and it ended with self-celebration. Self-forgiveness was, for me, the biggest challenge.
I have done a lot of things in my life that I am not happy about. I found that I thought about these things all the time. And the more I thought about them, the worse I felt, of course. And also, the more I thought about them, the more I thought about them. Thought begets thought. Emotions give birth to more emotions of the same species. My mind was having its way with me.
I moved into heavy guilt about a lot of my past choices and behaviors. It didn't seem to do me any good to say that "I'll never do that again." What's past is past and can't be undone. So there was nothing to BE done...except live with it. Just "life with" the guilt.
Even if I "cleaned it up" by going to the people I felt I'd hurt and apologizing and offering to do whatever I could to make amends, I still couldn't off-load the guilt. I just couldn't forgive myself.
Then I had my conversation with God, and everything changed. I learned, first, that I was spotless and innocent in the eyes of The Divine. God looked upon me as I would look upon a 4-year-old child. I simply didn't know what I was doing; I simply didn't understand. Even if I really did understand, I actually didn't. I mean, I understood part of it. I grasped a little bit of it. I certainly knew the difference between Right and Wrong, but I didn't understand the Whole Story. I didn't know who I was, where I was, why I was where I was, or what I was trying to do here. No one had given me the answers to life's Four Fundamental Questions. No one had even asked me the questions. I didn't even know these questions existed.
Then, further into my conversation with God, I was told something even more shocking, more stunning to my system. "There is," God said to me, "no such thing as Right and Wrong."
As you can imagine, this overturned my whole value system (not that I was paying much attention to it anyway...). I had to start over from scratch in viewing and evaluating the choices and behaviors of my life.
NEXT WEEK: Part 3-The Key to Forgiveness
Love and Hugs,
Neale.
SOME TRULY WONDERFUL TOOLS...
Nothing is more disruptive in life than unexpected, unwanted, unbidden CHANGE. It can tear us apart and bring us to our knees. Regrettably, most of us were not given in our childhood the tools with which to effectively deal with such upheavals. So we negotiate them as best we can-and that is sometimes not very well at all. Some of us go into a real tailspin. Some of us become sad, disillusioned, deeply disappointed, and even bitter. Some of us can't even find a reason to go on with life.That is why Neale Donald Walsch was inspired to write the extraordinary book, When Everything Changes, Change Everything, and to produce an extended spiritual renewal retreat based on this book.
The purpose of the retreat is to "change Change" before Change changes you. That is, to change our understanding of Change, and change our reaction to Change, before the Changes in our lives change us.
If Change has visited your life in the past 24 months---and we're talking about major change here (the loss of a partner, the end of a job, a huge shift in life of some sort)---and you would like some truly wonderful tools with which to deal with this, why not just check out the information about CwG Spiritual Renewal "Changes" Retreat this coming July 29-August 1 in Medford, Oregon?
Just call Will Richardson at 352-442-2244 and he'll tell you all about it. Or follow this link and you'll have a ton of information right in front of you...
http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/index.php?p=Doc&c=classes2
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.
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This week's offering: PART THREE of a radio interview over the Internet in 2004 that delves into many of the messages of Conversations with God from a layman's point of view. This transcript contains small edits and includes a few additional words here and there written in by Neale while reading the original transcript, in order to clarify a point.
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Internet Radio Interview with Neale Donald Walsch
by SpiritualGrowthMonthly.com
(continued from last week)
Matt: In your books you talk about the fact that we tend not to see God in the profane, in the things which offend us.
Neale: That is correct.
Matt: A lot of people feel frustrated and could identify, I think, with what you were saying at the beginning of the book-feeling that somehow, God is trying to thwart them or prevent them from making progress or getting the things they want in their lives. Does God ever not answer prayers?
Neale: The idea of God as a Santa Claus in the sky who says `yes' to some requests and `no' to some others is a very elementary and primitive, simplistic view of God, as is the question that you've just asked a very elementary, primitive, simplistic question.
It isn't God's function to answer or to not answer prayers; it is God's function to empower us to create what it is we choose to experience in our lives. Or, if we choose to place blockages in our own way, to stop ourselves from experiencing what we say we want to experience.
God's job is not to create or uncreate anything, not to say yes or no to anything. God's job (to use human terms), or the function of life, if you will, is to simply empower all that life creates, to create more life in whatever way that life chooses. Life is a process that informs life about life through the process of Life Itself.
Matt: In that case, why is it that some prayers go unanswered? This is sounding a lot like your book at the moment.
Neale: Well, for the reason I just gave you. Prayers do not go unanswered. We create the outcomes that we create. Sometimes we create outcomes that coincide with what we say are our highest desires, and sometimes we create realities that do not coincide with what we claim to be our highest desires. That is, sometimes we say one thing and do another. It's a very common human experience.
Matt: There seems to be a gap between making a request or trying to manifest a change that we want in our lives, or something we want to create, and that event actually taking place. In your view, is there anything that can be done to shorten that gap, or is that just a function of the way the universe works as well?
Neale: I don't know that there has to be any length of time. Time is a function of our imagination, and I'm not convinced that there has to be a particular period of time that must pass between the time that we choose to call something forth and the time it manifests in our reality.
I don't think that time is a necessary function of creation. The amount of time that passes is a matter of the degree of our knowing this around an outcome.
For instance, when we go into our bedroom and flick on a light switch, we don't have to wait for 15 minutes or 15 years for the lights to go on because we know the light will go on, and we have ultimate and complete faith in that.
In fact, we go past faith; we go to a place of knowing. We are deeply aware, at a knowingness level, that the light switch is going to turn the lights on. Unless there's a burnt-out bulb or some problem in the electrical system, the lights are going to go on.
So too, is it with certain other things as well in our lives, including our own reactions to things and our own behaviors. However, to the degree that we wonder whether something is going to happen, to the degree that we are at question about it, to the degree that we doubt it for a second, to that degree we have created the experience of time passing. We cause ourselves to have to wait for the outcomes that we seek to manifest.
Spiritual Masters and Avatars, however, are said to have eliminated the experience of waiting. They seek a particular experience and call it forth at once, because they know that there's no reason why that which they have chosen cannot be made manifest in the Instant Moment of Now.
(NEXT WEEK: Part IV of this interview.)
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:
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Tokyo, Japan Contact: +81 3 5272 3113 - naoki@sunmark.co.jp |
Publishers |
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Post-Conference Workshop Chicago, IL |
Productions |
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3 Day Intensive - July 29th -Aug 1st 2010 Southern Oregon Contact: 352-442-2244 - support@nealedonaldwalsch.com |
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Medford, OR Contact: Will @ 352-442-2244 - will@cwg.org |
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London, England |
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Amsterdam, The Netherlands Contact: +31 653 294 701 - Thom.Schouten@heartmedia.nl |
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Normandy, France |
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The most comprehensive, life changing workshop offered by Neale. Medford, Oregon |
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Austin, Texas Contact: (512) 335-4449 Unity Church of the Hills |
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Scottsdale, AZ Contact: 877-300-7352 |
Productions |
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