My dear friends...

Goals are interesting. They can show the way or they can get in the way, depending upon how we use them.

For years "goal setting" has been touted as the pathway to higher accomplishment. Personal Planners were developed, and in the '80s People of Power were seen carrying them around wherever they went. These were thick, diary-type books, often leather bound, with little tabs for Every Human Thought, Stray Notation, or Activity. Budgeting of one's time was seen as another...

My dear friends...

Have you noticed that virtually every week these days there is some scholarly, scientific newspaper or magazine article or book or television news segment confirming the messages in the Conversations with God series of books? This is thrilling to me not for reasons of ego, but just the opposite. Each one of these scholarly, scientific revelations makes it more and more clear to me that I had very little to do with the nature or the quality of the material in my dialogue...

My dear friends...

Forgiveness, Conversations with God tells us, is not necessary in the Kingdom of Heaven. That is because God can neither be damaged nor offended, and so has no need to forgive anyone. Think of it this way. Do you have a need to "forgive" your three-year-old grandchild for misbehavior?  Of course not. And we are, to God, what a three-year-old child is to us.

In the community of humans that inhabits this earth, however, forgiveness can be very healing. What is...

My dear friends...

Mourning is a wonderful thing. At least, for me it is, and I hope that it is for you. I experience that mourning brings out my humanity and places me deeply in touch with it. It connects me, thus, to my divinity, because when I am deeply, deeply in touch with my humanity, and with all that it means to be fully human, I find that I feel deeply in touch with my divinity as well.

To be fully human feels to me to be the same as being...

My dear friends...

Nothing is evil lest thinking make it so.

Shakespeare wrote that, and the world has been proving it again and again.

A while back, there was a big brouhaha over something that Pope Benedict XVI said. Some people perceived his remarks as an insult to Islam, and thus, as damaging. The Pope's comments were damaging...but not because they were an insult to Islam. His words were, in fact, historically accurate. They were damaging for another reason altogether.

For...

My dear friends...

There is much talk these days about enlightenment , and the path to Self-Awareness. I am sure that this is why all the data on this subject have been racing around my mind for many months prior to writing the present material.

Now for many of the past several weeks here in the Bulletin  I have been talking about "enlargement" as the Second Major Step on the Path to Self-Awareness, and I would like to explain that by "enlargement" I mean an expanding sense of Self,...

My dear friends...

We have been talking on and off here about the Path to Self-Awareness, and most recently about the Second Step on that path: Enlargement. This week I would like to take a look at how we may go about achieving Enlargement. One way, at least.  

I see a three-part approach here. First, cause another to have the experience. Second, step into the experience yourself fully, even if only for a moment. Third, savor the experience in memory, where all miracles reside.

May...

My dear friends...

"Wanting" something is not a good thing to do, because it produces the experience of "not having" what you choose.

Let me explain.

Your every thought, word and deed is creative. Now, if you have a thought of "wanting" something, you will produce that thought in your experience. That is, you will see that very thought made manifest in your reality.

Therefore, if you think "I want" something, that is the experience you will have: the experience of wanting it!

On the other...

My dear friends...

There is a tendency to dismiss the experience of Self-Awareness if it is not both immediate and eternal.   In actual practice it is most often neither.  

One rarely finds one's way to Self-Awareness with the first step on the journey (this is not impossible, mind you, but it is rare), and one rarely remains in this place the first time one arrives there.   One wants to , but one rarely does.   So much is calling us back.   So much is pulling us,...

My dear friends...

Nearly every Holy Scripture of nearly every one of the world's exclusivist organized religions contains passages that describe a God of anger, of judgment, and of retribution.

Do you remember what happened to the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf? Were not 3,000 of them slaughtered by the Levites at God's command?   Did God not instruct you in Exodus   32:27 to "take every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp,...