THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM – Chapter 6

And…should you choose to accept the call, you’ll be working not just on behalf of humanity at large, but on your own behalf as well.

So here’s the scoop:

Your participation in the evolution of our species is achieved through the work you do with your own soul.

I meant it when I said that humanity could be just one conversation from paradise. That conversation begins with a talk that you have with yourself.  It involves you questioning the prior assumption—every assumption you may have had about yourself, about your world, and about life itself.

It could then involve you having a similar conversation with others. This is what The Conversations Movement is all about.

I love this idea of working with my own soul to personally evolve…but how does talking about all this with others accomplish that?

The work of your soul is not limited to the self. The work of the soul is to also care for the souls of others. It is to care for all souls. For your soul realizes that there is really Only One Soul, individualized in countless forms. Thus, caring for all souls is caring for Ourselves; working with all souls is working with one’s own soul.

That is why the impulse to help each other is built into our genes; it is coded within our species. We care for each other, and we do what we can to show it. We have a “soul contract” to do so. I’m convinced of it. We all, each of us, feel this impulse.

One way, one very easy way, that we can show that we care for each other is to enter with others into the same vivid and vital conversation we enter into with ourselves. In other words, do our soul searching together. Because the process of soul searching can be a lonely experience. Yet it need not be.

When a person enters into soul searching, that person can change. And when a group enters into soul searching together, that group can change. And when a whole society enters into soul searching together, that entire society can change. Soon the collective culture of many societies changes. Then, the World Entire.

It all starts with you deeply questioning yourself. And then carrying the questions to others.

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The choice is yours

And so that is what I am describing here when I refer to “the work you do with your own soul.”  It is one form of soul work. It is obviously not the only form, but it can be a powerful form. It is a form so powerful that it can transform a person, a group, a society, a culture, and a world.

You’re not “required” to do any of this work, of course. Nor are you required to do it in a particular way. You can do this work with your individual soul, or you can do it with your individual soul and with the collective souls of others. The choice is yours.

How do you work with your soul? How can I even connect with my soul to so this “soul searching”?

Fair questions. No one teaches this stuff in high school. Very little is written about it. Churches don’t even get very deeply into it. But we are going to here. I will share with you in this conversation all that I know about how to connect with your soul, daily, in a wonderful way that brings you right into the soul’s experience and allows you to access the soul’s wisdom. So stick around for that. It’s a three-step process that has changed peoples’ lives.

Can I ask you what may seem like an insolent question?

Of course. Ask me anything.

What is the basis of all of this for you? You keep talking about seven simple questions. Who made ‘em up? Where did they come from? What makes them so magical for you? For that matter, where is all this stuff about an “overhaul” and the need for a “new cultural story” coming from?

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The basis of all that’s here

That isn’t insolent at all. I should think you’d want to know that. So thanks for letting me explain.

Just over a decade and a half ago I had an experience in which I was inspired by The Divine. I wrote a book about it, called Conversations with God.

That book created a global spiritual publishing phenomenon, selling over a million copies, being translated into 35 languages, and remaining on the New York Times Bestseller list for 137 weeks.

During the time since then, eight other books in this ongoing dialogue have been released, six of those also making the Times Bestseller list.

I am not telling you this to boast. I am telling you this to create a context within which to consider what I’ve been saying here—and all that I am going to say next.

God has brought a life-changing message to our world and, given the combined sales of all the CWG books and the hand-to-hand sharing of them, millions of people have been touched by it. There is a reason for this. It did not happen by chance.

The Overhaul of Humanity (remember that definition—Overhaul: a comprehensive examination and repair of something) is underway, and I believe that the sudden appearance of the CWG material is all a part of that.

Does this mean that I am somehow a messiah? No. It means that we all are. For the most important, the most prominent, and the most repeated message of Conversations with God is that all of us are having conversations with God all the time. We’re simply calling them something else.

We’re calling them moments of “inspiration.” Or “women’s intuition.” Or a “psychic hit.” Or a “bright idea.” Or a “deep insight.” Or an “epiphany.” We call the results of such encounters “serendipity” or “coincidence” or “chance.”

We deny, deny, deny that they could actually be interactions with the Divine because we’ve been culturalized to hold ourselves as being unworthy of such experiences. Indeed, to claim to have had personal contact directly from God is considered by many to be blasphemy.

Yet throughout human history women and men have experienced moments of deep connection with the heart and the source and the essence of life, by whatever name we call it, and across the span of time ordinary people have had extraordinary awakenings leading to both percipience and prescience.

Now it is time for all of us to claim that, and for a new conversation to take place. A conversation that proceeds from our conversations with God. Now it is time for us to have the conversation with ourselves that I just spoke of. And then, for all of us to have conversations with each other.

It is time for Conversations with Humanity.

For everywhere we turn today people are looking for wisdom, searching for clarity, seeking solutions, trying to figure out just what went wrong with us that we would now be acting the way we are acting—killing and maiming each other, ignoring the desperate needs of our fellow humans in spite of our basic impulse to care for each other, ruining our planet in spite of the fact that we say we love it, reaching, reaching, reaching endlessly for Bigger, Better, More while hundreds of thousands revolt because they have never had what others have right now.

The conversations I’m proposing can provide an avenue to wisdom, a roadway to clarity, a path to solutions for many. But they must be real dialogues, not simply the pontifications of those who think they have something important to say. They must be openings to mutual understanding, then mutual creation.

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POINTS I HOPE YOU WILL REMEMBER…

* Your participation in the evolution of our species has to do with the work you do with your own soul.

* That work is about deep inquiry, or what we call “soul searching.”

* The work of the soul is not limited to the self, but can involve the lifting of all other souls to peace and clarity.

* You are not required to do any of this work.

ACTION I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE…

* Read Conversations with God-Book One if you have not already done so or, if it has been some time since you read it, re-read it now.

* Engage in the process of deep inquiry with your soul, using the Seven Simple Questions, which are outlined in the next conversation in this book.

* Continue the process of igniting conversations with others, centered around their own look at these questions.

8 Nov 2015.
© Neale Donald Walsch.

Prepared for publication by Dr. Gil Dekel www.PoeticMind.co.uk . Book published with permission from Neale Donald Walsch www.cwg.org .

The Storm Before the Calm: Book 1 in the Conversations with Humanity Series – by Neale Donald Walsch. Paperback published 1 October 2011, Emnin Books, Oregon, USA; ISBN-13: 978-1401936921