You may know that Pope Benedict XVI made an assertion last July that the Catholic Church was the only true church. Can this is correct? If so, what does this mean? Is every other path to God doomed to failure?

In a video just released, Steve Farrell, the worldwide coordinator director of a global grass roots citizen's movement called Humanity's Team, said that the Pope would serve humanity best if he renounced his earlier statement and now declared that no path to God was better than any other; that all paths lead to God.

Claiming one faith or tradition is better or truer than another not only goes against the concept of an unconditionally loving God, Farrell said, it also leads to judgmental division, which is the root cause of the world's discord and violent conflict.

Farrell called on the pope to prayerfully reconsider his statements and take a leadership role in reaching out to people of all spiritual and cultural understandings in a spirit of Oneness.

I agree with him completely. I founded Humanity's Team a number of years ago, and have since released it to its own creations, which have brought much good to our world. (You may wish to check this organization out at www.humanitysteam.com). In the book Communion with God humanity is gently reminded once again that there is no One and Only Path to God. (Everyone wants to say and to claim that there is, but there is not.)

As Steve Farrell points out, there is great danger is making such a claim. It tears the world apart, putting God-believer against God-believer in a psychological (and sometimes a physical) battle to see who is "right." Yet, dangerous and unhelpful or not, the Pope did indeed declare that the Roman Catholic Church was the only path to salvation.

Benedict approved a document released last July 11 that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches, and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation, according to the Associated Press news story released at that time.

The statement, the AP said, "brought swift criticism" from Protestant leaders. “It makes us question whether we are indeed...

There is a big spiritual lesson to be learned from yesterday's Democratic Primary election results: Tell the truth. All the time. About everything. The results in both North Carolina and Indiana showed that people want the truth, not political pandering.

By now you all know that Barack Obama won North Carolina massively -- by 14 percentage points -- and that Hillary Clinton won Indiana meagerly -- by something just over 1%, or less than 23,000 votes out if millions cast statewide. The Clinton campaign had hoped for a much larger margin of victory there, and was even talking in recent days about an upset in North Carolina -- or at least holding Obama to a victory spread less than double digits, "which is the standard they held us to in Pennsylvania," her strategists declared.

Well, actually, Clinton did not meet that standard, having won Pennsylvania, after all was said and done, by 9 percentage points (something that the Clinton campaign does not point out). And Obama did meet that standard in North Carolina.

The Sen. from New York centered her campaign over the past week or two around a populist appeal, using as her "hook" the fact that she supported the summer gas tax holiday proposed by Sen. John McCain, while Obama opposed it. Obama countered by telling the truth: The gas tax holiday would save the average American around 30-cents a day over three months, or something like $28 in total for the summer.

Obama said it was a sham and a shuck-and-jive shell game to impress voters with the appearance of some sort of solution to their economic woes, but without real substance. Typical political pandering, he declared. The kind of politics we are tired of and want to change. He said that not a single economist could be found who asserted that the gas tax holiday made economic sense. To which Hillary Clinton replied that she had no intention of listening to the opinion of economists, who she described as "elite" and out of touch with working class Americans

Well, working class Americans are not dumb. Exit polls in Indiana and North Carolina showed that on the gas tax holiday issue the vast majority of them (something near 70%) said that Clinton was simply using the idea as a political tool and that the gas tax holiday had no real economic value. Failure to gain any traction from the gas tax issue is why Clinton lost North Carolina massively and won Indiana meagerly. Nobody believed that her stance was a sincere effort to help people economically, but, rather, was simply politically motivated.

In fact, Hillary Clinton scores the lowest of all the candidates in just about every poll when it comes to "trustworthiness" and "honesty". Obama scores the highest.

And in his victory speech in North Carolina yesterday, he made it clear that he understood that. He said he got into the race for president because he wanted to end politics as usual -- which he called the politics of polarization and division and distraction. He added: "We will end it by telling the truth -- forcefully, repeatedly, confidently -- and by trusting that the American people will embrace the need for change."

Then he returned the compliment that he has received from the American people -- those folks who say on those surveys that he is the most trustworthy candidate. He said...

Are Republicans voting in large numbers today for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary in order to keep the race for the Dem Nomination going...and maybe even force the Dems to nominate a candidate they perceive to be weaker against John McCain?

"Yes."

So say bloggers Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence on the USAToday blogsite, On Politics.

Says that blog today...

"A trend that's been apparent in earlier primaries -- Republicans crossing party lines to vote in Democratic presidential contests -- is happening again today around Indianapolis, our Gannett colleagues at the Indianapolis Star report. "Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties," they write."

This USAToday political blog goes on to say that the reason that some Republicans are voting in the Democratic primary in Indiana is to provide "both true support for either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton -- and a wish on the part of some voters to see the Democrats continue to battle because that may help presumptive GOP nominee John McCain."

I hate this. I hate that not only is Barack Obama forced to run against both Hillary and Bill, but also against every Republican who thinks that Obama is the tougher candidate for John McCain to run against in the Fall. It just isn't fair, and when Billary wins the Indiana Primary tonight, I just hope that the Democratic Party sees through this ruse.

Okay, enough about politics today...

We've been talking here in recent entries about life mission and life purpose, and I've been saying that God has no specific purpose in mind for us. If God had a purpose, why in the world would God keep it from us?

No, there is no purpose that God has for us in our individual lives. And that thought brought this comment from a blog reader...

I'm curious (going through a lot of this in my own life and spiritual walk), If there is no pre-defined purpose set out by GOD for our lives, When faced with a suicidal person. "GOD has something planned for you, just hold on" becomes moot.

Posted by: Michael | May 5, 2

I respectfully disagree, Michael. The thought, "God has something planned for you" is not moot -- it is simply not specific. God has a LOT planned for every one of us...but it is not about a specific purpose or mission in life. What God has planned for us is the opportunity to fully self-create and completely self-express and totally self-experience.

That is what physical life is for. As to HOW we do that, THIS is left up to US. So in that sense, God does not have a "plan" for us...but rather, plans to us make our own plans, our own choices, our own decisions. Yet there is something more, something a bit closer to the heart of the matter, that I would be saying to a person who was talking about suicide, Michael. I would open HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends and read to that person right out of that book.

I'd read, at the very least, the following passages...

I asked God in that dialogue if people who committed suicide would be punished after death...
we pick up the dialogue there...

There is no such thing as “punishment” in what you call the Afterlife. It is those who are left behind who are punished. They experience an incredible shock, from which some never fully recover. All of them feel an enormous loss. Many spend the rest of their lives blaming themselves. They wonder what they did wrong, they agonize over what they could have said that might have changed things.

The sad thing is that those who end their own life imagine that they are going to change things, and they are not.

Ending your life in order to escape something does not create a situation in which you escape anything. If you are thinking of ending your life in order to avoid something, you should know, I say again, that you are contemplating something that you cannot do.

A wish to avoid that which is painful is normal. It is all part of the human dance. However, in this particular moment of that dance a person is trying to push herself or himself away from something that the soul has come to the body to experience, not to escape.

Because that person has found the experience to be painful and difficult, he or she seeks to step into a void, where there is nothing to face and nothing to fear. But people cannot step into a void, because there is no void to step into. A void does not exist.

There is no void anywhere in the universe. Not anywhere at all. There is no “place where nothing is.” Everywhere you go, the space is filled with something.

What is it? What is the space filled with?

Your own creations. You will face your creations wherever you go, and you cannot escape them—nor do you wish to, because you have created your creations in order to recreate yourself. It will not benefit you, therefore, to attempt to sidestep them, or to dance around them.

Dancing your way to the void cannot be done.

Let me put this another way: A Void Dance is not possible.

That is very clever. That is a very clever play on words.

I use words in this way frequently, so that you can easily and always remember the message they seek to convey.

Well, I will always remember that one. “A Void Dance is not possible.”

No, because what you die with, you will continue to live with.

That is a very powerful statement.

It was meant to be.

Forgive me for going back to this, forgive me for saying this now, right here, as we are talking about ending one’s own life, but earlier you said that death was wonderful. Why wouldn’t someone whose life is terrible desire death if it is so wonderful?

What you call “death” IS wonderful, but it is no more wonderful than LIFE. In fact, “death” IS life, simply continuing in a different way.

I want you to be very clear here. You will encounter yourself on the other side of death, and all the stuff you carried with you will still be there. Then you will do the most ironic thing. You will give yourself another physical life in which to deal with what you did not deal with in your most recent one.

I will return to physical life? I can’t “work things out” in the non-physical, spiritual realm?

No, for it is the purpose of physical life to provide you with a context within which you may experience what you chose, in the spiritual realm, to experience.

And so by leaving physical life you will escape nothing, but will just place yourself right back into physical life, and into the situation you were seeking to escape…except now you will be back at the beginning again.

You will not see this as a “punishment” or a “requirement” or a “burden,” because you will do this all of your own free will, understanding it to be part of the process of self-creation, for which you exist.

So we might as well deal with whatever we are dealing with right now.

Indeed, that is what life is for.

When life is used in that way, you will die when you are ready to use death as a tool with which to create a new and different life. Suicide is the use of death to create the same life all over again, with the same challenges and experiences

.

I’ve never heard it put quite that way. That says a lot.

Yes.

So, you may use death as a tool with which to escape, or with which to create. The first is impossible, the second is incredible.

There is a reason you came to the earth. Your soul knows this reason, but your mind may not, because your mind may be thinking about it in all the wrong ways...

(Last Friday I began here a series of blogs on life purpose and life mission. You may find it useful to refer back to that blog to "catch up" on where we have been and where we are going here.)

My life mission is to change the world's mind about God. What's yours? I asked this question last week, and the first response I received in the Comments Section was this, from Josh...

Well if I had already tapped into why my soul came here to this earth to be and do what it came here to be and do I would already be doing it, but I'm not, all I know is that my soul came here to evolve and experience something, I only wish I knew what it was it came here to experience.

Josh, what I want to tell you is that millions of people feel exactly the way you do. Millions. In fact, most of the people I meet -- and I do a lot of traveling, all over the world -- tell me the same thing. "If I only knew...if I only knew..."

I want to share with you now what I share with them:

There is nothing to know, Josh. There is no 'blackboard in the sky' on which it is written:

JOSH IS A FINE PERSON WHO LIVED IN THE FIRST PART OF THE 21ST CENTURY WHO:

...followed by a blank line that God has filled in, with different words for every person....and all you have to do is find that blackboard...

That's not how it is, Josh. God is not sitting up there with a purpose in mind for each of us, our job being to discover what that is. Why would God do that? Why would God be so cruel?

"Ha! I've got a great purpose for Josh...but I'm not going to tell him what it is. Hey, angels, come on over here! Look down there! See Josh? Look at him scrambling around down there trying to find the purpose I gave him. Think he'll find out what it is before he dies? Ha! This is great!"

That's not how it is, Josh. That's just not how it is. Conversations with God tells us: "Life is not a process of discovery, life is a process of creation."

There is no purpose, set in heaven, for you to discover, there is only an opportunity for you to create. Here's the extraordinary news, Josh: With regard to "what it was you came here to experience"...you get to decide.

And here's the even better news: There's no limit to what you can decide.

The question is not, "What am i supposed to be doing here?" The question is, "What do I choose to be doing here? What do I want to be doing here?"

My own life mission -- to change the world's mind about God -- is not something that was "given" me. It is something I gave myself.. I decided that on my own. Nobody told me to do it.

You get to make your own determination about why you are here, Josh, and what you came to experience. That is what life is for. God gave you the gift of life just so that you could make this very decision -- and then live it out as your functioning reality.

More on this tomorrow...

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Sunday is Message Day on the blog. Monday through Friday we look at contemporary events and day-to-day occurrences at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality…but on Sunday, we reserve this space for a specific teaching derived from the material in Conversations with God

Through the years I have given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles revolving around this material. Every seven days we will present in this space a transcript or reprint of one of those presentations. We invite you to Copy and Save each one of them, creating a personal 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.

This week’s offering: An interview with NDW-Part II

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Internet Radio Interview with Neale Donald Walsch
by SpiritualGrowthMonthly.com

Continued from last week...

Matt: So how can we learn to listen more to God and to get more of God into our lives?

Neale: By wanting to. It’s not a question of learning— there’s nothing to learn. That’s like saying: How can we learn to love? Loving and listening to God are the same thing.
A baby doesn’t have to be taught how to love; a baby is taught how not to love, and we spend the rest of our lives teaching each other how not to love.

Loving and listening to God are the same thing, so the answer to your question is: we don’t have to learn how to listen to God, we simply have to choose to, and once we choose to, the way to do that will be made obvious to us. It will be right in front of us, and there will be a million ways. There isn’t only one way.

That’s why it’s not a simple thing to say, “This is how you can learn to do that,” because there is no one way to love, and there is no one way to listen to God. God will communicate with you every day, in a thousand different ways, from moment to
moment…the words to the next song you hear on the radio, the picture you see on the billboard when you turn the corner, the chance utterance of a friend on the street, words you hear in your mind, dreams you have, and a thousand other ways that God has devised with which to communicate with us.

Matt: Do you believe that God really has a personality that is capable of verbal communication?

Neale: God has a form and a shape that coincides with whatever we choose to imagine it to be. There is nothing that God is not. God is the essence of life itself, the most basic and fundamental energy in the universe.

In a sense, God is a shape shifter. That is, God, or that which we call God, the Essence of Supreme Intelligence in the universe, can take on any shape or form that pleases us from moment to moment.

So the answer to your question is yes and no. Yes, God is a personality that actually speaks to us. No, God is not that; God is the Essence of Life itself, the energy, the most fundamental essence of the universe. God is all of the above and can be excluded by no definition whatsoever.

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.

There is a way to create peace in this world. Sometimes it feels as if there is not, that the cause is hopeless, but there is a way that we can achieve harmony on this planet. There are the Five Steps to Peace.

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NOTE: Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Silent Sacred Holy Deeply: Heart.

For this week's prose we offer...the second in a series of excerpts from The New Revelations...
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(NOTE: You are reading a portion of dialogue from a book in the Conversations with God series.)

The stubborn tendency of human beings to cling to their past, to refuse innovation or new thinking until they are forced to do so by an ultimately embarrassing weight of evidence, has been slowing your evolutionary process for millennia.

Yet now it does not seem as if we can afford to have that process drag on. It feels as though, now, time is of the essence. We have reached a crossroad here.

Yes. You are facing now a new and startling danger—a danger posed to your entire species. A threat to your very survival posed by the combination of a split in ideology and an advance in technology which makes it possible for you to seek to resolve your differences with tools of human destruction unlike anything you may have heretofore dreamed of in your worst nightmare.

My God, what can we do?

There are five things you can choose now if changing your world, and the self-destructive direction in which it is moving, is what you wish to achieve...

"I want to change the world's mind about God." That's the answer I give whenever I am asked -- as I was yesterday in a radio interview -- what my mission in the world is.

Sounds pretty outlandish, in terms of its size, doesn't it? Do I really think that I, one little old person here, can change the mind of the world about God??? Yes, I do. Not alone, of course, but with the help of my friends.

What is your life mission? Do you have one? Is there something larger than yourself that you would like to pour yourself into? Something outlandish that you would like to accomplish? If your answer is yes, good for you (and good for us.) If your answer is, well, gosh, I haven't thought about things in those terms, then I want to suggest that you do.

Life was meant to be lived extraordinarily. And we don't know how much time we have here. We could be gone tomorrow. And so we get to use each moment, each minute, each hour of each day in a way that bespeaks the wonder of who we are...or we can throw those moments away, wasting them on watching TV, or browsing the Internet for three hours.

I know someone whose addicted to YouTube. Really. I'm being serious. This person I know gets on YouTube and can't get off. And I'll admit, there's some fascinating stuff there...but really. I mean, really. You have a life to live.

Unless you don't.

Unless your life is made up of sitting in front of your computer, glassy-eyed over YouTube.

There's a contribution you're in a position to make. We're all in that position. All of us have something to offer that can make life better for the Whole. What is that for you? Have you figured that out yet? It may be something that you don't think you can actually do, something you don't figure you can really achieve or accomplish, so maybe you're just letting it sit there, in the corner of your mind, unattended except in your occasional moments of quiet frustration...

Pull it out of there. Pull it out of that dim corner and bring it out into the daylight, set it up as your target and go for it. Here's the great secret of life: It doesn't matter whether you hit the target or not. But you absolutely will not hit it, I guarantee it, if you don't even try.

So what are you aiming at? That's my question today. What is your life purpose? What is your life goal? What is your life mission? Is it bigger than you or smaller than you? Is it something you can easily handle, or something that challenges you are every level of your being?

Oh, and by the way, it doesn't have to be something exterior to yourself. It can be an inner goal. It also doesn't have to be limited. It can be both an inner goal and an outer goal! You can have two objectives. One for you soul and one for your body.

More on this on Monday, as we look closely at life in a short series of blogs I am beginning today. I'd like to explore here in the days just ahead, the meaning and the purpose and the function of life.

Hmmm. Nothing grandiose, mind you. Just your normal blog topic...

Make it a good day!

Without a passion for something, there is very little to life. With a passion, everything begins to come together, to make sense.

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Wednesday is Question and Answer Day on the blog...a time for exploring many of the questions that people have recently asked about the nine Conversations with God books and the New Spirituality. Here's this week's entry...
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Question: Dear Neale: My question has to do with creating one’s dreams. It is often said that one must “let go,” yet how do I let go of what I want to create in my life? My dreams never seem to be fulfilled without a lot of devotion. I’ve let go of many dreams, and it’s only led to a very disappointing experience of life. Also, how does one really know God—or chocolate, let’s say—with only a concept and not the experience? And similarly, how do I truly accept that the Universe is just and fair if I have no experience of it being so? I think trying to convince my self of these things is a form of self deception. M.H.,Chicago, IL.

Neale's Response:Dear M.H., Actually, it is life as most of us are living it which is a form of self-deception. In ultimate reality, nothing which you see is actually real, and that which is actually real you cannot see. That is why it is so very important to “judge not by appearances.” Let me go back to the top of your letter first, however, and see if we can’t work our way down to the bottom.

CWG may be a bt different from conventional wisdom in this regard, but CWG does not say anything about “letting go” of one’s dreams. Quite to the contrary, CWG makes it very clear that without a passion for something, there is very little to life. However, CWG says we would do well to let go of our expectations, and any need for particular results. You may think this is a contradiction in terms, and it may well appear that way until you look at it more closely.

Let’s look at an example. Let’s suppose that a person holds a dream of changing the entire world; of shifting our global consciousness about how we choose to live with each other; of altering the pattern of our world wide experience of God. Some people have always had such a dream, and have never “let go” of it, even when it looked as if the possibilities of that dream coming true were very remote. Yet while they have held fast to their dream, they long ago gave up any need for a particular result. Thus, it is the continuing dream which drives the engine of their on going experience, not the appearance or lack of an appearance of a particular out come.

Put an other way, these people always dream of this event, whether or not the event actually occurs. In this sense their work is never done, because even if they do wind up changing the world, they will always continue to dream of doing so. In other words, no matter how good things be come, they have an idea that things can always be made better! So the dream never ends, and the mission is never truly accomplished, because it is the dream which motivates these people, not its accomplishment! Mother Theresa was such a person. So was Martin Luther King.

There are many people like this is our world. There may be one living right next door to you. Or, perhaps, even in your house.

Incidentally, the way it is with these people is precisely the same way it is with God. God’s “dream,” if you please, is that we will all one day be completely realized. Yet the moment this happens, a new definition of what “completely realized” means will be created, because if we were completely realized, the game would be over! It is not in scoring that the game is experienced. Notice that once you score, you have run off the playing field. The game is in getting to the end zone, not in being there. Once a team reaches the end zone, every one goes back to the point where they began and, by mutual agreement, everything starts all over again!

This goes on until the clock runs out, the whistle blows, and the game is over. The only thing different about the game of life is that the clock never runs out. The whistle never blows. The point: to achieve happiness, serenity, and a feeling of peace about life, we would do well to be come detached from results, but it is of no benefit whatsoever to become detached from our dream of obtaining results. This is part of what CWG calls the divine dichotomy.

In his extraordinary publication, A Hand book to Higher Consciousness, the late Ken Keyes, Jr., put this principle into every day terms when he said that true emotional freedom is obtained only when we change our “needs” into “preferences,” thus eliminating our emotional “ addictions.” I consider Ken’s book to be one of the most helpful ever written, and I earnestly encourage you to find a copy and read it.

Now you also ask, how does one get to “know God” when God is only a concept and not an experience. CWG points out that most people only come to “know” about a thing when and if that particular thing is experienced. What enlightenment asks us to do, the book says, is to “know” a thing first, and thus experience it! For instance, if you know that life will always work out, it probably always will. If you know that the world is a friendly place, it will usually show up that way. If you know God, you will experience Him. And if you just know that your prayer will be answered, it will be. You would do well, M.H., to re-read the section of CWG dealing with “know ing” some thing before you experience it.

One way to get to “know” God is to take some time each day to meditate quietly. This may, of course, lead to nothing. And so, if you are attached to results you may soon become discouraged and disappointed. Only if you are detached, only if results are not the point of it all, will your meditation be serene. And it is in the serenity that God will be found.

A second way to get to know God is to cause another person to know God. The experience you encourage in another you encourage in your self. That is because there is no one else out there. So don’t spend your days and times wondering how you can come to know God. Spend your days and times wondering how you might be an instrument through whom others come to know God. For what you bring to others, you bring to yourself. And that is a great truth.

(Ask Neale may be accessed on a daily basis in the Messengers’ Circle at Neale's personal website: www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Each week Neale selects a question from those posted there and publishes it in this blog.)

I don’t agree with Jeramiah Wright’s choice of words when expressing the outrage of blacks at life in post-modern America, but I must admit that I was impressed with his defense of the overall incident that has made him a household name.

The minister from Chicago has been making the media rounds the past several days in an effort to explain himself and his views—views that seems to be causing, for reasons that I wish were not very clear to me, but are—a small complication in the campaign of Barack Obama.

Yesterday the Rev. Mr. Wright made an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington and delivered what I thought was a reasoned response to all the upheaval. The most significant thing, the most important thing, he said (in my opinion) about the infamous sermon in question was this:

“I offered words of hope. I offered reconciliation. I offered restoration in that sermon. But nobody heard the sermon. They just heard this little sound bite of a sermon."

The second most important thing he said was that the U.S. Government was “a government whose policies grind under people." There are many Americans—both black and white—who would agree with that.

There are also quite a few Americans who said after 9/11 just what Rev. Wright said. "America's chickens are coming home to roost," he declared to his congregation then. "The stuff we have done overseas is brought right back into our homes."

These are not ideas that Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright introduced for the first time into the public discourse. They were ideas being articulated by many U.S. citizens. Unfortunately, Rev. Wright then went into areas in his sermons that I would call ill-advised. Most of us would call them ill-advised. But isn’t it the job of a minister to shake things up a little?

And so we know that Rev. Wright once charged in a sermon that the U.S. government "lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color." Yet is this any more radical than the idea, spoken and promoted by many, many whites as well as blacks, that 9/11 was itself a conspiracy, co-created, if not entirely instigated, by dark forces within this very country and perhaps even its government?

I don’t believe the second statement above any more than I believe the first, but I do believe in the right of free speech that allows all Americans to say what they think and to express how they feel.

Of course, Rev. Wright’s most famous and now most quoted utterance from the pulpit was his tirade against a government that he said discriminates against blacks "and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America'.” He unwisely added: "No, no, no, God damn America. . . . God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."

Understandably, those words do not play well with most Americans. Whatever we think of our country and its actions, we certainly don't want God to damn our country, and we would not call upon God to do that. (Or to damn anyone, for that matter.)

But we should, if we want to be even-handed, listen as Rev. Wright yesterday explained how he could say such a thing. He was saying it within a theological framework in which he asserts that God damns everything that is evil, even as God blesses all that is good.

Most of middle America would agree with that. I venture to say that most of the writers on faith whose words grace this very Beliefnet website would agree with that. God does and will condemn (damn) evil, and God does and will reward good, I think they would agree. Indeed, isn't that the basis of most of the faith traditions represented here? (I don’t happen to embrace this idea of a judging, condemning, damning God, but I do understand that many, many people do—not only Jeremiah Wright.)

So the only disagreement now is whether America, or certain of its actions, could be called evil. Rev. Wright inserted his political opinion that God should condemn America “for treating our citizens as less than human.” He referred, of course, to black citizens. He was speaking to a black church. He was addressing black anger. And—it is once again important to note—he asserts that he offered words of reconciliation and healing in that same sermon.

Rev. Wright suggested at the Press Club yesterday that Senator Obama had no choice but to repudiate the sound bite that he heard. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American. He said I didn't offer any words of hope. How would he know? He never heard the rest of the sermon. You never heard it.”

And now I repeat, for emphasis, what Rev. Wright told the audience at the Press Club yesterday:

“I offered words of hope. I offered reconciliation. I offered restoration in that sermon. But nobody heard the sermon. They just heard this little sound bite of a sermon."

Okay. Fair enough. I wouldn’t have spoken Rev. Wright’s ill-advised, anger-sponsored words from a pulpit, but I understand—not condone, but understand—how he could have done so, especially in an emotion driven declaration of intense and immense frustration.

I think what we are seeing here in this episode is the very basis of why we don’t seem to be able to get along in this world. Gosh darn it, we don’t even want to hear each other out. We just, ourselves, want to judge, condemn, and damn.

I think there is considerable merit to Rev.Wright’s argument now that to take a sound bite out of a much longer sermon from years ago and use it as a wedge to make political points in the campaign for the presidency of the United States years later is not merely and obviously disingenuous, it is just as obviously unfair. Yet we don’t seem to care much about fairness in American politics anymore.

Unless we do...

...in which case we will place the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermonizing into context, stop trying to spray it all over Barack Obama, and get on with this campaign, focusing on the issues that really matter.

Every day I receive questions in my email and my snail mail from readers of Conversations with God asking me for clarification on some point, or for some response to something that they are asking about in their lives. I enjoy these interactions with readers immensely, and I have a thought that you might find them interesting as well. And so from time to time I'll be placing some of these interactions here.

Such as this one...

Dear Neale: Would you please clarify some thing I am confused about? Tithing. I tithed for years when I was in a fundamentalist church, so I know what it means. For the past year I have been giv¬ing away at least ten per cent of my gross income, most of it to sources of spiritual growth.

So many different things I’ve read have been consistent about the importance of putting back at least ten percent into the universe, but there seems to be no consensus about where to give it.

You have also talked about being the source of what we choose to experience more of. So, if I desire more money in my life, I need to give to those who have less. Does this come out of my tithe, or is it extra? I am willing to contribute to Habitat for Hu¬manity, because I wish to own a house. Again, should this be out of my tithe, or above it?

Also, if I wish to own a house, and give thanks that a house is coming into my life, how specific must I be about what I would like? Do specifications limit God? Do I assume God knows what is best for me? Is vague ness us able by God/the Uni verse? Again, I get dif fer ent mes sages from different places. God bless you, Neale! Brenda, Vancouver, B.C.

My Dear Brenda: God bless you, too! You know, you ask some of the most important questions dealing with the practical application in day-to-day life of the highest spiritual laws.

First, about tithing. The reason we tithe is as a demonstra¬tion. By tithing we systematically demonstrate the truth which we hold about money, just as our whole life is a demonstration of our truths about every thing. The only people who tithe, who rou¬tinely give money away to others, are people who are very clear that there is more where that came from. Out of this clarity arises the demonstration, and out of this demonstration arises the pre¬cise experience of that about which one is clear.

Of course, we are right back to that age old question: which comes first, the chicken or the egg? In the case of the universal laws, or what I call the metaphysical principles, the question in answerable. Demonstration always precedes experience. That is, you will experience what you demonstrate.

This is why I say, “That which you wish for your self, give away to another.” But there is a trap here. If you are doing some¬thing in order to produce a result (for in stance, tithing in order to bring more money into your life), then you will not produce the result, and you may as well give it up before you start.

The reason this is so is that your very reason for undertaking the demonstration says a lie about you: namely, that you do not have all that you wish right now, and need or want more. That underlying truth, what CWG 1 calls your “sponsoring thought,” is what produces your reality. So no matter how much you give, you will experience not having “enough” and “wanting more.”

On the other hand, if you are doing some thing as a demonstration that the result has already been produced (for instance, tithing ten per cent of your income each week out of your deep sense of knowing that there is always enough for you to share, that there is “more where that came from”), then you will have larger and larger experiences of this truth.

Remember, you are not producing the truth, you are recognizing it. Do you see? Do you get It?
There is no “rule” in the universe about the level at which one must demonstrate in order to experience a universal truth. So your question about the amount of your financial contributions back to the universe has no answer. In my own life, I just give wherever and whenever it feels comfortable and true to myself to do so. I do not give in order to produce “plenty.” I give out of simply noticing that plenty has already been produced.

Rules, such as the strict in junction to give away ten per cent of your worldly goods, are for those who need rules in order to implement basic truths and to live within the paradigm of basic understandings, such as the understanding of plenty. They provide a discipline. They offer a guide line. Masters are their own disci¬pline. Masters create their own guidelines.

So, what that means, Brenda, is that you can give what you choose to give of your abundance. If you want to stay with a strict hard and fast ten per cent, I would include everything you give to support the good of another in that figure, including the contribution to Habitat for Humanity.

Here’s how I did it some years ago. I set up a rough “division of the goodies.” To my home church: three per cent of my income each week; to the Children’s Miracle Network (which I want to support), two per cent each week; to the local medical assistance program for the indigent, two per cent each week; to a special fund for family and friends when they need help, two per cent each week; to set-aside for last minute choices and decisions (like Habitat for Humanity, one per cent each week. Voila! There’s your ten per cent!

The answer to the second part of your question (where you ask about “vagueness”) is again just about the same. Some teachers say, “don’t limit God by being too specific.” Some teachers say, “Be specific about what you choose!” I understand your frustration. So what I say here will be a great relief. It doesn’t matter.

Look, Brenda, it’s not as if God will accept your request only if it is made under certain guide lines, you know? That gets right back to ancient religions which teach that there is only one way to God, and all the rest of us are going to hell. Not so. Big lie. Same with this.

Even before you ask, God knows what you desire. You want to visualize some thing general, like “the right and perfect car”? Go ahead. You want to get specific? That’s okay, too. Visualize a big red car with black interior. See the dash board design in your mind’s eye. Call out the model number, if you choose. Yet here’s the trick; here’s the secret. As soon as you “put it out there” in the universe, let it go. That is to say, detach your self from results. CWG 1 teaches that enlightenment is not about dropping all desires, escaping all passion, eschewing all choices. It is about retaining your passion for the thing. It actually encourages you to do so, for passion, the book says, is the beginning of creation; but it also instructs us to avoid being addicted to any particular outcome. Call forth what you choose, CWG says, and then accept what the universe supplies, with gratitude and with love, knowing that it is all perfect.

And try to get clear on this, too, Brenda: there is nothing that is best for you. “Best for you” is a relative term, dependent on a great many factors, not all of which may be consciously known to you. Therefore, a master never tries to figure out what is “best” for her. A master simply knows that what is “best” is that which now is.