A Letter to Neale

Reader question:

Hello Neale,

I attempted suicide at one point. Thankfully, I failed... but I suppose I'm thankful for my suicide attempt, because it changed my life in a positive way unlike anything else ever has, save possibly CwG for Teens.

My question is what Home With God calls a 'splitting of metaphysical hairs'. Home With Godsays things about suicide that, from my current perspective, seem to show a grand glitch in God's Perfect System.

Okay, let's say I committed suicide. Suicide, metaphysically, is the Conscious mind revolting against what the Superconscious and rest of the mind/soul have chosen.

The Conscious mind is a part of the Superconscious, thus making it a part of Who We Are. However, if the Conscious Mind revolts and commits suicide to escape the 'pains' of life, the Superconscious fails to experience what it wished to in this lifetime. I thought failure was an illusion, but clearly failure does exist in this situation.

I hope that made sense.

A friend of mind took his own life on June 6th, of 2005. I miss him dearly, and the events of his life give a reason, if not a justification, for this action. For the first time in a long time, I became furious with God for this glitch in the system.

The soul in question is most likely the most gentle and loving being I have ever met — or will ever meet. His kind and quiet demeanor were taken advantage of, and the thought of him having to go through those events again (as Home with God says happens in the case of every suicide) is something I find to be unbearable.

Pain may not exist in Ultimate Reality, but on the Physical Plane, pain is very, very real.

Also in Home With God, God says that nothing is a surprise... as in, nothing happens out of line with a soul's agenda.

If I were to commit suicide, an act that is not wanted by the Soul, but wanted by the conscious mind, this would come as an unexpected event in the lives of every soul I am in contact with, thus disrupting their agendas.

Could my friend's suicide have been planned by our souls, in order to have my, or his parent's, soul experience something?

I hope you find the time to answer my questions, Neale. I do not understand why suicide works the way it does. And what one does not understand, one fears. What one fears, one becomes hateful towards.

Each of the teachings in CwG have been taken by me and reviewed, thought about, and considered before I accept them into my belief system. While I don't take everything said in your books as Gospel, at this point I'm pretty sure there isn't anything that won't agree with my Inner Truth... save this issue of suicide.

With Great Love and Many Thanks,

Ryan

Neale Responds:

Dear Ryan...

Thank you for your wonderful letter. I am so proud of you for, at your age, coming to a place where such a letter could be written. You give me such hope for our tomorrows!

Okay, we're going to take your letter one item at a time. Let's go.

First, you have said that "suicide, metaphysically, is the Conscious Mind revolting against what the Superconscious and rest of the mind/soul have chosen." I am not sure that I agree with your definition, Ryan. May I tell you why?

In my understanding it is impossible for the Conscious Mind to "revolt" against the Superconscious Mind. I would define suicide as "a decision of the Conscious Mind which the Superconscious will not oppose." Therefore, suicide could be said to be what the Conscious Mind AND the Superconscious have chosen.

The Superconscious has only one statement to make to the Conscious Mind at this or at any other time in the Life of the soul: "Your will for you is My Will for you."

The Superconscious has no need to oppose any choice made by the Conscious Mind, because every choice made by the Conscious Mind is perfect. It is impossible to make a mistake, because a "mistake" indicates something other than what was intended, and what is intended by the Superconscious is that the Conscious Mind at all times exercise Free Will.

The Superconscious never has an agenda other than the agenda of the Conscious Mind. Should the Conscious Mind come up with a plan different from the Life Plan of the Superconscious, the Superconscious simply changes its Mind. That is, it instantly alters its agenda to fit that of the Conscious Mind, because to the Superconscious it makes no difference what the Conscious Mind decides to do. The ultimate fate of the Soul never is, and never can be, in doubt.

To put this another way, if all roads lead to the same destination, it makes no difference which road you take. Even if it had planned to take a different road, the Superconscious would just say to the Conscious, "Oh, okay, we'll take THIS road. Makes absolutely no difference at all in terms of outcome."

Now it may take more time to get to our destination by one route than by another, but this does not bother the Superconscious one bit, because the Superconscious knows that Time is an illusion. In Ultimate Reality — which is where the Superconscious dwells — Time does not exist.

The Superconscious merely give YOU the "shortest" route (in relative terms) because it knows that, in YOUR relative reality, shorter and longer, faster and slower, DO exist, and it is the joy of the Superconscious to continue to show the Conscious Mind what the Conscious Mind most desires: "the shortest route back Home."

It is very much like those navigation systems that we are now seeing in cars. The system does not care which route you take to your destination. It will plot out the shortest route if you ask it to, and if you make a "wrong" turn, the system will simply recalculate the shortest route from there, and then show you a new way to get to where you wish to go in the shortest time from that point. The navigation system makes no judgment about that, because it HAS none, and it does not try to stop your car from turning the "wrong" way, because to the navigation system there IS no "wrong way," there is only the way you're going. The navigation system is clear that if you keep following its continually renewing directions, you can't fail to get to where you seek to be.

Do you understand now, Ryan?

Okay... you have also said... "if the Conscious Mind revolts and commits suicide to escape the 'pains' of life, the Superconscious fails to experience what it wished to in this lifetime. I thought failure was an illusion, but clearly failure does exist in this situation." I am once again compelled to disagree with your analysis, Ryan. The Superconscious never "fails to experience what it wished to in this lifetime" because the Superconscious has no preference in the matter whatsoever. It comes here with a Plan, but not a Preference. There is, Ryan, a huge difference.

If you plan to play tennis, but your friends want to play volleyball, and if it makes no difference to you what you play, you simply raise the net and play volleyball! It could not be said that you did not experience what you wished to experience, because you had no particular wish in the first place.

"Failure" cannot exist in an environment within which nothing in particular is required. Nothing is required of you, Ryan, in order to get back Home. Requirement does not exist. It is an illusion. You cannot NOT get "back Home." Indeed, as Home with God makes clear, you never left Home. Therefore, being Home with God is not a matter of going anywhere, but of being right where you are and of simply knowing where that is.

Ryan, you also said, with regard to your friend who ended his own life, that... "the thought of him having to go though those events again (as Home with Godsays happens in the case of every suicide) is something I find to be unbearable." My mind wonders why you should find it unbearable if he does not? I guess what you do not quite understand, Ryan, is, first, that your friend chooses to "go through those events again," and, second, that the reason he chooses to do so is in order to experience them in a different way. And he will experience them in a different way , making different choices and creating different responses to the same set of circumstances that he encountered the first time, thus to master those circumstances and situations and, through his experience of mastery, to know more fully Who He Really Is.

Do you know anything about baseball, Ryan? Your friend is like a batter who loves to play baseball (we all LOVE life!), but who one day strikes out. And so the coach tells him the next day to get back in the batter's box and take extra batting practice. Now, since the batter LOVES batting, and ADORES every aspect of baseball, there is hardly a better thing that the coach could ask him to do. He's excited to take extra batting practice — and soon, he is hitting the ball out of the park!

Hmmm... sure sounds like fun to me!

Now Ryan, you have also noticed that... "Pain may not exist in Ultimate Reality, but on the Physical Plane pain it is very, very real." In this you are right, Ryan. But you have failed to mention that Conversations with God says that "pain" and "suffering" are not the same thing. Pain is a physical experience, and suffering is your thought about it. Many are the women in childbirth who have experienced pain. But if you asked them, "Did you suffer?", they might say, "Suffer? Why, no! It was the most joyous experience of my life! I just brought forth a new human being!"

The point: pain that has a reason with which we agree can often actually be welcome. Ever have a tooth pulled that was killing you?

You have also said, Ryan... "If I were to commit suicide, an act that is not wanted by the Soul, but wanted by the conscious mind, this would come as an unexpected event in the lives of every soul I am in contact with, thus disrupting their agendas." Once again, Ryan, I need to point out that such a thing is impossible. Every soul that you are in contact with (indeed, every soul on the planet, at some level) co-created the event with you. Nothing happens in the life of the soul, any soul, that is not created BY the soul. There are no "victims" and there are no "villains." There are no "surprises" or "unexpected events" in the life of the soul. There are events that may be "unexpected" by the Conscious Mind, but that is because the Conscious Mind exists on a limited plane of Awareness. That is, until it expands its plane of Awareness by raising its Consciousness. This "consciousness raising" creates a new perspective, allowing the Mind to see and to understand what it did not see or understand before.

There is no such thing as "an act that is not wanted by the soul," because if it is not wanted by the soul it could not happen. Home with God makes it clear that nothing happens against the will of the soul — not even death. In fact, especially not death. No death comes as a surprise, nor is any death unwanted or unexpected. Death is an act of creation.

Finally, Ryan, you end your letter with a fascinating and intuitively brilliant question... "Could my friend's suicide have been planned by our souls, in order to have my, or his parent's, soul experience something?" The answer is, yes. In fact, there is no other way that it could have happened. Yet the agenda is much larger than that, Ryan. Your friend's choices and actions were also designed to allow your friend, himself, to experience something. Now that may be obvious, but are you ready for this? His choices were also designed to allow all of US who are READING THIS RIGHT NOW to experience something as well.

Do you understand, Ryan? There is no separation between us. The One of Us that is the All of Us is creating All Of It, Right Here, Right Now.

Can you grapple with that, Ryan? Can you see how we are all responsible for all of it? You could only begin to embrace such an astonishing reality when you know and fully understand Who We Really Are.

God bless you, Ryan, in your beautiful young life. Go now, and share with the world the wisdom with which you have been touched this day. For you have created that wisdom, and received it. And so have we all.

Amen. And amen.

Blessed be.

With love,