Conversations with God (part one) by Neale Donald Walsch (and God)

[butterfly]

ehann recently posted about her reaction to Conversations with God. I'm a fan of the books and I thought I would share two sections from the beginning that I particularly enjoy. The words of the author are in bold, regular text is God (because I'm mostly quoting God). Page numbers are from the hardcover '96 printing.

How does God talk, and to whom?

I talk to everyone. All the time. The question is not to whom do I talk, but who listens?
...
First, let's exchange the word talk with the word communicate. It's a much better word, a much fuller, more accurate one. When we try to speak to each other -- Me to you, you to Me, we are immediately constricted by the unbelievable limitations of words. For this reason, I do not sommunicate by words alone. In fact, rarely do I do so. My most common form of communication is through feeling.

Feeling is the language of the soul.

If you want to know what's true for you about something, look to how you're feeling about it. Feelings are sometimes difficult to discover -- and often even more difficult to acknowledge. Yet hidden in your deepest feelings is your highest truth.
...
I also communicate with thought. Thought and feelings are not the same, although they can occur at the same time. In communicating with thought, I often use images and pictures. For this reason, thoughts are more effective than mere words as tools of communication.

In addition to feelings and thoughts, I also use the vehicle of experience as a grand communicator.

And finally, when feelings and thoughts and experience all fail, I use words. Words are really the least effective communicator. They are most open to misinterpretation, most often misunderstood.

And why is that? It is because of what words are. Words are merely utterances: noises that stand for feelings, thoughts, and experiences. They are symbols. Signs. Insignias. They are not Truth. They are not the real thing.

Words may help you understand something. Experience allows you to know. Yet there are some things you cannot experience. So I have given you other tools of knowing. And these are called feelings. And so too, thoughts.

Now the supreme irony here is that you have all placed so much importance on the Word of God, and so little on the experience.

In fact, you place so little value on experience that when what you experience of God differs from what you've heard of God, you automatically discard the experience and own the words, when it should be just the other way around.

Your experience and your feelings about a thing represent what you factually and intuitively know about that thing. Words can only seek to symbolize what you know, and can often confuse what you know.

These, then, are the tools with which I communicate, yet they are not the methods, for not all feelings, not all thoughts, not all experience, and not all words are from Me.

Many words have been uttered by others, in My name. Many thoughts and many feelings have been sponsored by causes not of My direct creation. Many experiences result from these.

The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a simple rule:
Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source.

Now the task of differentiation become easy, for it should not be difficult even for the beginning student to identify the Highest, the Clearest, and the Grandest.

Yet I will give you these guidelines:
The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love.

Joy, truth, love.

These three are interchangeable, and one always leads to the other. It matter not in which order they are placed.



If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says "yes" to some, "no" to others, and "maybe, but not now" to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide?

If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken.

God is the observer, not the creator, And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect.

It is not God's function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.

In this sense, your will for you is God's will for you.

You are living your life the way you are living your lfie, and I have no preference in the matter.

This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do.

I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an enviroment which you consider friendly and very okay.

Of course, you always hope that they do not hurt themselves. And if they do, you will be right there to help them, heal them, allow them to feel safe again, to be happy again, to go and play again another day. But whether they choose hide and seek or pretend will not matter to you the next day, either.

You will tell them, of course, which games are dangerous to play. But you cannot stop your children from doing dangerous things. Not always. Not forever. Not in every moment from now until death. It is the wise parent who knows this. Yet the parent never stops caring about the outcome. It is this dichotomy -- not caring deeply about the process, but caring deeply about the result -- that comes closest to describing the dichotomy of God.

Yet God, in a sense, does not even care about the outcome. Not the ultimate outcome. This is because the ultimate outcome is assured.

And this is the second great illusion of man: that the outcome of life is in doubt.

It is this doubt about ultimate outcome that has created your greatest enemy, which is fear. For if you doubt outcome, then you must doubt Creator -- you must doubt God. And if you doubt God, you must live in fear and guilt all your life.

If you doubt God's intentions -- and God's ability to produce this ultimate result -- then how can you ever relax? How can you ever truly find peace?

Yet God has full power to match intentions with results. You cannot and will not believe in this (even though you claim that God is all-powerful), and so you have to create in your imagination a power equal to God, in order that you have find a way for God's Will to be thwarted. And so you have created in your mythology the being you call 'devil'. You have even imagined God at war with this being (thinking that God solved problems the way you do). Finally, you have actually imagined that God could lose this war.

All of this violates everything you say you know about God, but this doesn't matter. You live your illusion, and thus feel your fear, all out of your decision to doubt God.

Comments

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's in my nature to believe that God exists, and I don't even feel guilty or upset that I don't.

I actually feel bad that I don't feel bad about my complete lack of faith, somehow I think I should be, but I just don't.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

If you don't believe in an overriding plan of the universe, why feel bad about it? And why feel bad if you don't feel bad? The worst result that I can see from not having faith is then translating that into being a carelessly hurtful person and people with faith do that all the time in any case.

Incidentally, what do you believe about the universe? Purely science and evolution-based?

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I'm Taoist. It's not easy to describe what that means, as it different for different people.

The Tao is. It's a philosophy of living our lives in harmony with thenature of the universe. (http://www.edepot.com/tao4.html)

It's not a ...religion/body of thought/nature that can be compared to any western religion.

Being Taoist doesn't mean that I don't have to believe in the existance of God, that's just me, it also doesn't require me to believe in any supernatural elements.

And why feel bad if you don't feel bad?

I feel like I aught to, it's not a strong feeling, just a vague annoyance. I can't help how I feel. :) I also don't put much thought into it.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Do you believe that the universe has a harmony to be in tune with? Because when I say I believe in God, what I mean is that I believe that everything is all connected. The Is, the Is-Not, and what Neither-Is-Nor-Is-Not.

Of course, I'm not sure that I believe in the supernatural -- to me, God is the basis of the natural.

I feel like I aught to, it's not a strong feeling, just a vague annoyance. I can't help how I feel. :) I also don't put much thought into it.

Very true -- feelings are natural, bubbling up from inside us like heated water, steam escaping. I've felt that "Oh, I should feel bad about that, yet I... don't" feeling before.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

Do you believe that the universe has a harmony to be in tune with?

I don't really think in those concepts, I know that the world is perfect, I know that everything is where it should be and the only thing that we do that disturbs that is imposing our will on others, but even then it's part of what's meant to be.

Life is suffering for humans, we think too much, we move away from nature - but the suffering is what we bring upon ourselves, hell only exists because we imagine and create it in our lives.

The Tao isn't God, the Tao doesn't think, it just is, it's not a force that I would even classify as sentient, or if it is, it only achieves it through the creatures that spring from it. It's indifferent to humans, as it is indifferent to everything, but it's an example to all things and through it everything gets done.

If there are Gods, or there is a God who thinks, demons and creatures who influence human affairs, who battle amongt themselves over the loyalty of humanity and the cosmos, then they are also subject to the Tao.

The Tao is greater then everything, because it's is beneath everything, it's the source, it's in all of us. In the order of the universe some say we are subject to Heaven, even Heaven has removed itself from the source by virtue of will.

It's really not as lofty sounding as I say, actually it's quite mundane :)

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

That thing that's greater than everything and is indifferent to people? In a way, that's what I believe of God.

I guess the big difference is that I don't think that thinking brings about suffering. I've found myself suffering the most when I react without thought, with the mental conditioning the world has given me. If I think about it, I can generally see the kinder road. I do also believe that we create hell for ourselves, that hell is separation from the whole -- or rather, believing ourselves to be separate.

The Tao is greater then everything, because it's is beneath everything, it's the source, it's in all of us.

Again, honestly, that would be part of my definition of God. In fact, that is my essential, bare-bones definition of God.

One of the interesting things that I read in CwG is that Western mythology has God as the Is, while Eastern has God as the Is-Not. From what you say here, that doesn't sound far off.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

In a way, that's what I believe of God.

See, this is a little confusing. I don't use the word God, because it has too many Christian connotations - from the idea that he's a stern older man sitting in his throne and judging all, to the loving baby Jesus.

So when you say God, that's what I think of.

I don't think that thinking brings about suffering

I find that the less I think, the more I trust my feelings the more content I am. I go around in circles when I try to reason out the world I live in, the further I get away from what I believe is the source.

If I go down the path of thinking I split things down so much I lose the reason for why I started in the first place, after a while I'm back to square one, more confused, but more exhausted, it's a pointless exercise for me. I haven't quite got to the point where I can stop my myself from doing that, but I'm less prone to it.

I look to animals as an example, a cat doesn't reason out it's life, it doesn't divide time into manageable lots, plan it's existence, it lives for the moment, it follows it's nature and it is content. That's what I aspire to, within reason.

while Eastern has God as the Is-Not

This sounds closer to what I believe, in chapter 21 of the Tao Te Ching it says:

Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

See, this is a little confusing. I don't use the word God, because it has too many Christian connotations - from the idea that he's a stern older man sitting in his throne and judging all, to the loving baby Jesus.

So when you say God, that's what I think of.

I thought that it might be partly a word issue -- I use God in part to combat that image. Christianity doesn't own the word. Of course, the idea that God can be pinned down to an image (or even several images or a gender or age... etc) is something that strikes me as intensely young on the parts of Christians. There's this Creator that's so vast we can never fully comprehend it, but there we are, putting names and faces to it.

I find that the less I think, the more I trust my feelings the more content I am. I go around in circles when I try to reason out the world I live in, the further I get away from what I believe is the source.

It's a balance, at least for me. Overthinking doens't help, but I find that I have to think in order to move past the cultural brainwashing that we receive.

I look to animals as an example, a cat doesn't reason out it's life, it doesn't divide time into manageable lots, plan it's existence, it lives for the moment, it follows it's nature and it is content. That's what I aspire to, within reason.

I've found that pets tend to vary wildly, often depending on their owners (enviromental factors). There are some highly-strung and very neurotic kitties out there. They aren't immune to stress.

Since before time and space were,
the Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I believe about God -- I just insist on using a word that's pre-loaded with meaning. Because I've been using it my life, and I'm not going to change just because most of the people who believe in 'God' use the word to describe a paranoid jerk in the sky.