Part of the Change – Chapter 5

Your role as a spiritual helper. By Neale Donald Walsch.

“Water of life” – By Gil Dekel.

The fifth step in becoming a spiritual helper is to:

5. BEGIN LIVING THE TRUTHS WE SAY WE BELIEVE

This is a big step, because this step brings us out of the closet in an even bigger way. It is one thing to announce ourselves to each other (Step 1), it is quite another thing to show ourselves to each other (Step 5).

Your truth means nothing until you live it.

Did you hear that? Did you understand the implication of that?

Please don’t be offended by these questions. Every day I have to act as if I never heard that before. Every day I seek to bring myself to a new understanding of what all of that means. Sometimes I can hear something and “not hear it,” know what I mean? And sometimes I have to say the same thing over and over again to myself to stop it from going in one ear and out the other. I’ve heard some things so often it’s like I’ve never heard them at all. I have to really focus to bring myself to such tidbits as if they were brand new.

So sometimes I sound like I’m repeating myself, but that’s not always bad. ‘Cause it gives me a chance to hear the same thing over again, and hear it “brand new.” So let me ask you again, did you hear that? What I SAID was…your truth means nothing until you live it.

The implication of that is enormous. Because if you see this and embrace this and accept this wholly, not merely intellectually, you may want to change your entire life. Not many people are living their innermost truth. Not many people even know it. The first step in living your truth is to know it. Heart Circles are wonderful for this. They allow you to get in touch with the deepest desire inside of you—and make no mistake about this: your deepest desire is your deepest truth.

Truth does not exist as an exterior reality. There is no such thing as Objective Truth, nor is there such a thing as Absolute Truth. Truth exists as the prime experience of relativity. In the Realm of the Absolute truth as we know it cannot exist, because there is nothing else but what is So. In the absence of that which is Not True, that which is True cannot be known as being True. It can merely be known as What It Is. That is sufficient, of course. A thing is sufficient unto itself. It needs nothing else to prove its existence. It simply is, whether anything ELSE is or not. Yet it cannot be known as what it is, it cannot be experienced, unless and until that which It Is Not appears somewhere in time and space.

This concept is explored many times in the Conversations with God material and is mentioned here only to reinstate and reenforce it within the context of the present discussion. Your life has created a context within which you can know That Which Is Not True about you. Think about this. This is a grand awareness. This is an important insight. Think about this.

Your life has produced the events it has produced, brought in the people it has brought in, for the simple and explicit purpose of allowing you to know That Which IS True—about you, about God, and about everything else. So bless, bless, bless all that has happened and all that is yet to occur, seeing it all as Perfect in the Process of Life, which is the process by which we come to know ourselves in our True Identity.

Are you in ‘uncovery’?

So as you seek to live your truth, you must first seek to know it This is accomplished through process of deep self-uncovery, for we have hidden ourselves from ourselves in this experience called human life. “Self-uncovery” is a new term that I have coined. It is the only accurate term that I can come up with to describe the process of which I am now speaking. Life is not a process of discovery. CwG tells us that early on.

Nor are we in REcovery, as might be a person who has fallen ill or who has lost something and is trying to recover it. Both of those positions are positions of weakness—and weakness is everything that is OTHER THAN Who We Really Are. We are in a process of UNcovery. Who we are has not been lost, nor are we ill or diminished in any way, nor reduced in any of our capacities (though we may think that we are).

Similarly, who we are is not something that does not now exist (We therefore do not have to “create it.”) Nor is it something that we have to go out and find. (We therefore do not have to “discover” it.) Who we are is who we ARE. We don’t have to go looking for it, we ARE it. We don’t have to recover it, we HAVE it. All there is left to do is UNCOVER it.

So life is a process of pulling the cover off of what is now there, has always been there, and always will be there. Again, for emphasis: Our magnificence is not waiting to be discovered, it is waiting to be uncovered. The glory and wonder of who we are is not there for us to recover, it is there for us to reveal. It is there for us to reveal.

This, then, is The New Revelation. The process of self-revelation, of uncovery, in a step-by-step process that begins with the Five Levels of Truth Telling mentioned in Chapter 2. To review them, without making you have to page back…

Level 1: Tell the truth to yourself about yourself
Level 2: Tell the truth to yourself about another.
Level 3: Tell the truth about yourself to another.
Level 4: Tell the truth about another to that other.
Level 5: Tell the truth to everyone about everything.

Once you engage this process fully, making a part of the way you live and the way you are, you will be well on your way to living the truth that you say you believe.

Some practical ways to take Step Five

Taking this fifth step in becoming a spiritual helper is as simple as A-B-C.

A. Identify your truths. Many people don’t know what their truth is. The first part of Step Five, then, is opening yourself to your own truth.

B. Share your truths with others. We are not used to telling others, blatantly, what is true for us. No wonder it is so difficult to experience it!

C. Live your truths no matter what. This single shift in our way of relating to each other can change the world over night.

If it starts to sound as though I am repeating myself here it is because I am. These steps to becoming a Spiritual Helper soon start folding in on themselves. One leads to the other in a never-ending circle, until we begin to see that, in some fascinating way, one step IS the other. There is really only ONE STEP. We’ll give that step a name: Love. So, how to become a Spiritual Helper comes down to a simple thing: act lovingly. All of these steps that I have delineated here are simply ways to do that.

Now let’s take a look at how you can do this.

There are a lot of ways that you can open yourself to your own truths—about yourself, about life, about God, about almost anything, yet there is only one decision. You must decide to commit to the process.

As we consider at Step Five I want you to know that commitment is everything. If we are not committed to, first, knowing, and then living, our truths, we will never do it fully. Commitment is the only antidote that I know to risk. Life feels unsafe enough as it is without us risking even more by getting deeply involved in all this truth stuff. Most of us have gotten used to hiding our truth, even from ourselves. Others of us wouldn’t know our own truth if it smacked us in the face. We’ve heard the truths of others for so long, we imagine them to be our own. This is particularly true in religion and politics, but it shows up elsewhere, too.

One of the first things I want you to do, once again, is a bit of reading. Reading up on truth-knowing and truth-telling can be very inspiring, I have found. Here are some wonderful books with which you may want to start:

Blue Truth, by David Deida. The product description of this book on Amazon.com says…“You are deeper than your life shows, and you know it. You are more loving than your relationships allow, more brilliant than your career suggests. In your secret depth of being, you are infinite, creative, boundless—and utterly unable to press your full glory into the world. Or so it seems.”

In Blue Truth, David Deida presents insights for uncovering your true heart of purpose, passion, and unquenchable love. ..Knowing the truth is fairly useless; feeling it is profound; living it makes all the difference,” says David Deida. With Blue Truth you have an unprecedented guide for living your own deep truth, and awakening “as the bare openness you are, in the free offering of love to all.”

Also…

Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth, by Brad Blanton.

Getting Real: Ten Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life, by Susan Campbell.

After you’re done reading…

This really is like a short-course in spiritual awakening. So yes, there is a lot of reading that I am recommending. I really hope you will dive into these books. It is not, incidentally, about agreeing with everything you see written in them. It is about beginning the internal discussion. It is about finding out what is true for you after hearing the thoughts of some others.

So please don’t get the idea that what I am saying is that these books that I have pointed you to here have the Best and Final Answer to everything. They are really meant to simply be “starter-uppers” –something to get your engines going. Now, when you’ve finished your reading about Truth as a way of life, here is an exercise I’d love for you to try.

“Water of life” – By Gil Dekel.

Getting some exercise

On a piece of paper write down five people, circumstances, or situations that are occupying your mind right now. Leave plenty of space beneath each listing. For instance:

1. My mother
2. Marilyn
3. This week’s project at work
4. Our money situation
5. My sex life

I just made all that up. It’s an example of what such a list could look like. Now look at the list that you have made, and under each heading write down, as fast as you can, the first thing that comes to your head as you complete the following sentence…

My truth about this is…

Important clue: DON’T THINK ABOUT THIS. Just write the first thing that comes to your head. This will be your truth. The rest is all that you are “thinking” about it—which may even include the idea that you shouldn’t feel that way about it.

So don’t “think” too much. In fact, don’t think at all. Just listen to your stomach when you see those headings, and write the first thing that you feel deep inside. No one is going to see this paper, so let yourself tell yourself the absolute truth—even if it is one you are not proud of, even if it is one you don’t want to hear.

You should like this exercise very much. It should feel stimulating and, in a sense, relieving. Because it may be the first time that you have been that clear even with yourself in a long while. If you did enjoy the exercise, give yourself a day off (rest from the emotional impact), and then do it again, with five new headings. Do this every other day for a week. Think of things you are concerned about that day. They may be repeats of what was on your first list, or, by the end of that time your headings may become a little more general, or a little more distant from you. They will nevertheless be things you are thinking about these days. This might be something like…

1. The next presidential election
2. Death with dignity, and end-of-life decisions
3. The culture struggle in America: ultra conservatives vs. progressive liberals
4. Gay marriage
5. Religion, and what God wants

By the close of the week you will have identified multiple areas of interest or concern to you, and you will hopefully come a lot closer to knowing what is true for you about those things. Now you might think, “This is silly. I already know my own thoughts. If I didn’t, I couldn’t put them down.” But hold on. This may or may not be true. Sometimes people just don’t want to look at what they don’t want to look at. This little exercise will force you to confront yourself and to ask yourself, what am I really feeling about this now?

Again, it is important not to think about any of this too much. Remember, you are not really interested too much in what you are thinking as you are in how you are feeling. There is often a vast difference.

More practical suggestions

The second suggestion for implementing Step Five is to share your truths with others. Once you have written down your own feelings about stuff that’s on your mind right now, find someone to share them with.

Form a Heart Circle and have a meeting two or three times a month, using this forum as a space in which you can share what is going on with you right now—about anything, really—and talk openly about what you choose right now.

Then get more “people specific.” Try this process:

More exercise

Take out three sheets of paper. One the top of each, about half and inch down and a little further in from the left margin than seems natural, write the name of a living person who is very important in your life right now.

Good. Now, in front of the name on each of those sheets, write the word “Dear…”, so that what you now have is what appears to be the beginning of a letter. Now, please write the following as the first sentence in each of those letters…

What I am afraid to tell you is…

Then…complete the sentence.

What comes out may surprise you. Now finish the letter, elaborating on that first sentence. Next, gather the courage to actually send or deliver the letter to the person whose name is at the top. This will be a powerful exercise in truth sharing.

Some final practical ideas

The last suggestion here as you embark on Step Five of becoming a Spiritual Helper is to live your truths no matter what.
This takes great courage. There is always the fear that you will be rejected. Or denounced. Or marginalized. Or simply misunderstood. You have to risk it all.

Remember: You cannot have it all unless you are willing to risk it all. Make a list—WHAT I AM WILLING TO LOSE. This could be the most important piece of writing you have ever done. This single exercise has been known to change lives. Sometimes, over night.

But now, don’t get discouraged. If you find that you cannot live your truths no matter what, that some things you still feel you need to withhold, this does mean that you cannot be a Spiritual Helper. It simply means that, on the list of people who are going to help, is you.

As you seek to assist others in identifying, sharing, and living their truths, you will find that you are talking to yourself. Keep helping, keep bringing this message to others. Ultimately you will realize that the whole process was intended for you. Then you can really help others, because you will have become doubly motivated.

The last word on Step Five

In the CwG book titled The New Revelations we are given the Five Steps to Peace. Step Five in that list is essentially the same as Step Five in this list. So it turns out that Spiritual Helpers bring peace to our world—and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

I know and acknowledge that the steps I have listed here are simple, but they are not easy. Only a person truly dedicated to personal growth and spiritual development would even bother attempting them. At some point in our lives we have to all make a decision. What am I really here for? What is the point of my life? What is its purpose?

If you have decided that you want to make a difference in the world, the first thing you are going to be invited to do is make a difference in your life. Surprisingly, this is something that many people avoid. Some consciously, some unconsciously, but they seek to avoid it nonetheless. “Do as I say, don’t do as I do” is not a very solid spiritual model, however. So we owe it to ourselves and to those whose lives we hope to touch to begin the process of self uncovery.

As I said, we do not have to have reached perfection in the rolling out of that process. It is not necessary for us to have reached mastery before we begin inviting others to do so. Indeed, many is the teacher whose student has surpassed him. In the story of the Buddha, we are told about how the young man Siddhartha sought out, and found, many teachers. Each gave him what was theirs to give. Many were masters and gurus. He is said to have surpassed them all, and they all knew it. “You have gone to a place of understanding beyond that which I, myself, have attained,” they said to him—and part of their own mastery was being able to see that,
and to tell the truth about it.

So do not worry about whether you have achieved total mastery before you become a Spiritual Helper. Yet be worried for sure if you have not even embarked on the path. You cannot show someone else a path that you have not even found. You do not have to be at the end of that path to lead another to it, but you surely must be at the beginning.

* End of chapter 5 *

Copyright © 2005 Neale Donald Walsch. Published here by Gil Dekel with Neale’s permission. 1 January 2017.

Published in 2005 by Spiritual Legacies, Ashland, OR, USA. All rights reserved.