|
| |
An
Invitation to Change the World
Spiritual arrogance is killing us, according to this latest
conversation with God.
By
Neale Donald Walsch
Excerpt
from "The New Revelations"
God, please be here. We need help.
I am
here.
We need
help.
I know.
Right now.
I
understand.
The world
is on the brink of disaster. And I'm not talking about natural disaster; I'm
talking about man-made calamity.
I know.
And you're right.
I mean,
humans have had disagreements before, and serious ones, but now our divisions
and disagreements can lead not simply to wars -- which are bad enough -- but to
the end of civilization as we know it.
That is
correct. You have assessed the situation correctly.
You understand the severity of the problem; you simply do not understand the
nature of the problem. You do not know what is causing it. So you keep trying to
solve it at every level except the level at which it exists.
Which is?
The
level of belief.
The problem facing the world today is a spiritual problem.
Your ideas about spirituality are killing you.
You keep trying to solve the world's problem as if it were a political problem,
or an economic problem, or even a military problem, and it is none of these. It
is a spiritual problem. And that is the one problem human beings don't seem to
know how to solve.
Then help
us.
I am.
How?
In many
ways.
Name one.
This
book.
This book
will help us?
It can.
What do we
have to do?
Read it.
And then
what?
Heed it.
That's what
they all say. "It's in The Book," they say. "Read it and heed it. That's all you
have to do." The problem is, they all hold up a different book.
I know.
And every
book says something else.
I know.
So now we should "read and heed" this
book?
It's not
a question of what you should do. It's a question of what you may do if you
choose to. It is an invitation, not a requirement.
Why would I
want to read this book when I've already been told by True Believers that all
the answers are in the other books -- they books that they are telling me to
heed?
Because
you have not heeded them.
Yes, we
have. We believe that we have.
That's
why you now need help. You believe that you have, but you have not.
You keep
saying that your Holy Book (your cultures have many different ones) is what has
given you the authority to treat each other the way you are treating each other,
to do what you are doing.
You are
able to say that only because you have not really listened to the deeper message
of these books. You have read them, but you have not really listened to them.
But we
have. We are doing what they say we should be doing!
No. You
are doing what YOU say that they say you should be doing.
What does
that mean?
It means
that the basic message of all the sacred scriptures is the same. What is
different is how human beings have been interpreting them.
There is nothing "wrong" with having different interpretations. What may not
benefit you, however, is separating yourself over these differences, making each
other wrong because of these differences, and killing each other as a result of
these differences.
This is what you are now doing.
It is what you have been doing for quite some time. You cannot agree even within
a particular group of you, much less between groups, about what a particular
book says and what it means, and you use these disagreements as justifications
for slaughter.
You argue among yourselves about what the Qur'an says, and about what its words
mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Bible says, and about what its
words mean. You argue among yourselves about what the Veda says, what the
Bhagavad-Gita says, what the Lun-yü says, what the Pali Canon says, whawt the
Tao-te Ching says, what the Talmud says, what the Hadith says, what the Book of
Mormon says…
And what of the Upanishad, the I Ching, the Adi Granth, the Mahabharata, the
Yoga-sutras, the Mathnawi? The Kojiki?
Okay, we
get the point.
No, actually, you don't. And that's the
point. The point is, there, there are many holy writings and sacred scriptures,
and you act as if there is only one.
It is your sacred scripture that is really sacred. All the rest are poor
substitutes at best, and blasphemies at worst.
Not only is there only one Sacred Scripture, there is only one way to interpret
that Scripture: your way.
This spiritual arrogance is what has caused you your greatest sorrow as a
species. You have suffered more -- and caused other people to suffer more --
over your ideas about God than over your ideas about anything else in the human
experience.
You have turned the source of the greatest joy into the source of your greatest
pain.
That's
crazy. Why is that? Why have we done that?
Because
there is one thing for which human beings seem willing to give up everything.
They will give up love, they will give up peace, they will give up health,
harmony, and happiness, they will give up safety, security, and even their
sanity, for this one thing.
What?
Being
right.
You are willing to give up everything you've ever worked for, everything you've
ever wanted, everything you've ever created, in order to be "right."
Indeed, for this you are willing to give up Life itself.
But isn't
that how it should be? I mean, you have to stand up for something in life. And
the Word of God IS what's right!
Which
God?
Which God?
Yes,
which God?
Adonai? Allah? Elohim? God? Hari? Jehovah?
Krishna? Lord? Rama?
Vishnu? Yahwey?
The God
whose words were brought to us clearly by the Master and the Prophets.
Which
Master and which Prophets?
Which
Master? Which Prophets?
Adam?
Noah? Abraham? Moses? Confucius? Siddhartha Gautama? Jesus? Patanjali? Muhammad?
Baha'u'llah?
Jalal al-Din
Rumi? Martin Luther? Joseph Smith? Paramahansa Yogananda?
You're not
equating all of those with each other, are you?
Why not?
Is one greater than the other?
Certainly!
Which
one?
The one in
whom I believe!
Exactly.
Now you get the point.
So what do
you want me to do, give up my beliefs?
I don't
"want" you to do anything. The question is, what do you want to do?
I want to
find a way to get past all of these mixed-up beliefs that humans have.
There is
a way….
'The New
Revelations' © 2002 by Neale Donald Walsch
Conversations with God Index
Inspire the World website
Visit the "Conversations
with God" website
Conversations with God Books at Amazon.com
Link to
"The New Revelations" at Amazon.com
|
