Dear friends around the world...
The events of this day cause every thinking person to stop their daily
lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger
questions of life. We search again for not only the meaning of life, but
the purpose of our individual and collective experience as we have created
it-and we look earnestly for ways in which we might recreate ourselves anew
as a human species, so that we will never treat each other this way again.
The hour has come for us to demonstrate at the highest level our most
extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are.
There are two possible responses to what has occurred today. The first
comes from love, the second from fear. If we come from fear we may panic
and do things-as individuals and as nations-that could only cause further
damage.
If we come from love we will find refuge and strength, even as we provide
it to others.
A central teaching of Conversations with God is: What you wish to
experience, provide for another.
Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience-in your own life, and
in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source
of that.
If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.
If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are
safe.
If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help
another to better understand.
If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or
anger of another.
Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance,
for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance
at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.
This is the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching. What you
teach at this time, through your every word and action right now, will
remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives
you touch, both now, and for years to come.
We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this moment.
There is much we can do, but there is one thing we cannot do. We cannot
continue to co-create our lives together on this planet as we have in the
past. We cannot, except at our peril, ignore the events of this day, or
their implications.
It is tempting at times like this to give in to rage. Anger is fear
announced, and rage is anger that is repressed, and then, when it is
released, that is often misdirected. Right now, anger is not inappropriate.
It is, in fact, natural-and can be a blessing. If we use our anger about
this day not to pinpoint where the blame falls, but where the cause lies,
we can lead the way to healing.
Let us seek not to pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause.
Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our experience, we will
never remove ourselves from the experiences it creates. Instead, we will
forever live in fear of retribution from those within the human family who
feel aggrieved, and, likewise, seek retribution from them.
So at this time it is important for us to direct our anger toward the cause
of our present experience. And that is not necessarily individuals or
groups who have attacked others, but, rather, the reasons they have done
so. Unless we look at these reasons, we will never be able to eliminate
these attacks.
To me the reasons are clear. We have not learned the most basic human
lessons. We have not remembered the most basic human truths. We have not
understood the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, we have not been
>listening to God, and because we have not, we watch ourselves do ungodly
things.
The message of Conversations with God is clear: we are all one. That is a
message the human race has largely ignored. Our separation mentality has
underscored all of our human creations.
Our religions, our political structures, our economic systems, our
educational institutions, and our whole approach to life have been based on
the idea that we are separate from each other. This has caused us to
inflict all manner of injury, one upon the other. And this injury causes
other injury, for like begets like and negativity only breeds negativity.
It is as easy to understand as that. And so now let us pray that all of us
in this human family will find the courage and the strength to turn inward
and to ask a simple, soaring question: what would love do now?
If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand
why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet if we meet
negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then
will be the outcome?
These are the questions that are placed before the human race today. They
are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of years. Failure
to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer them at all.
We should make no mistake about this. The human race has the power to
annihilate itself. We can end life as we know it on this planet in one
afternoon.
This is the first time in human history that we have been able to say this.
And so now we must direct our attention to the questions that such power
places before us. And we must answer these questions from a spiritual
perspective, not a political perspective, and not an economic perspective.
We must have our own conversation with God, for only the grandest wisdom
and the grandest truth can address the greatest problems, and we are now
facing the greatest problems and the greatest challenges in the history of
our species.
It is not as if we have not seen this coming. Every spiritual, political,
and philosophical writer of the past 50 years has predicted it. So long as
we continue to treat each other as we have done on this planet, the
circumstance that we face on this day will continue to present itself. The
difference is that now our technology makes our anger much more dangerous.
In the early days of our civilization, we were able to inflict hurt upon
each other using sticks and rocks and primitive weapons. Then, as our
technology grew, it became possible for clans to war against clans and,
ultimately, for nations to war against nations.
But even then, until most recent times, it was not possible for us to
annihilate each other completely. We could destroy a village, or a town, or
a major city, or even an entire nation, but only now is it possible for us
to destroy our whole world so fast that nothing can stop it once the
process has begun.
That is what makes this point in our history different from any other. And
that is what makes this call for each of us to have our own conversation
with God so appropriate and so important.
If we want the beauty of the world that we have co-created to be
experienced by our children and our children's children, we will have to
become spiritual activists right here, right now, and cause that to happen.
We must choose to be at cause in the matter.
So, talk with God today. Ask God for help, for counsel and advice, for
insight and for strength and for inner peace and for deep wisdom. Ask God
on this day to show us how to show up in the world in a way that will cause
the world itself to change.
That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person today.
Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to preserve the
beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and
hatred-and the disparity that inevitably causes it - in that part of the
world which I touch?
Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence that
is You.
I love you, and I send you my deepest thoughts of peace.
Neale Donald Walsch
