THE STORM BEFORE THE CALM – Chapter 9

Now I know that there are some people who are not going to be interested in moving beyond the very first question. You will recall, that question was…

Is it possible
that there is something
we do not fully understand about life,
the understanding of which
would change everything?

If the majority of human beings say “no”—well, there’s not much more for us to discuss. If most people believe that we as a species know everything right now that we need to know to create the lives that we wish to live, then exploration of new tools for the future will seem pointless.

We can all just drop these inquiries, go on living our lives moment-to-moment trying to get everything we want, working to give everyone we love what they want, hope for the best for ourselves, our children and their children, and let it go at that.

Yet I have a different proposal to make. I want to suggest that the trick is not to keep trying to get for ourselves, and give everyone else, what is wanted. The trick is to change what is wanted.

The trick is to set a brand new priority for ourselves.

Now if that’s not enough to start a spritely conversation in your home and in your community, then nothing is. You might start the conversation by saying, “What do you think will happen if we all just changed what we want?”

What do you mean, “Change what we want”?

I mean exactly that. I mean, change what it is that you want for yourself and what you want to give your loved ones.

We shouldn’t want peace, security…. what did you have on that list before….?

Peace, security, opportunity, prosperity, happiness, and love

Yeah. We shouldn’t want that?

No. Because if that’s what you want, you’re going to keep trying to produce that.

No kidding.

Well as Dr. Phil would say, how’s that been working for you? Yet if what you want is something else, and you produce that, then your producing of that will give you this.

I’m sorry. What in the heck are you saying…?

I’m saying that we’re going after the wrong thing. Most of us are trying to produce the wrong thing. And this is what we don’t understand…the understanding of which would change everything.

When we decide to change what we want, when we decide to produce the far more beneficial thing, the natural outcome will be that we’ll also have what we were hoping to create before.

I’m saying that these things that we all say as a species that we want are things we can have—but not very easily, not without a great deal of struggle, if we go about trying to get them the way we’ve been trying to get them.

I’m answering the question: How is it possible for an entire species to desire the same thing and be unable, after thousands of years of trying, to get it?

I’m saying it is possible that we have not been able to get it after thousands of years because we’ve been trying to get it in a way that’s not working

So what is a way that will work?

My thought about it is that the way that will work is not to want the things we’ve been wanting at all. Instead of seeking and trying to create, peace, prosperity, happiness and all the rest, seek and try to create something much larger…

Which would be?

A knowledge and an experience of your real self, of who you really are. Go after that, and all the rest will follow.

You’ve said a number of times here now that humans are Divine. Is that what you’re getting at?

I can’t give you personal knowledge of your own true identity. Yes, I’ve given you my answer, but my answer is not important; it’s not relevant to you, and it shouldn’t be. Only your answer should be relevant to you.

The problem is that in the past many of us—most of us—have embraced other peoples’ answers as if they were our own. Yet each person must finally answer the question for him or her Self.

While I know what my answer is, I am here just opening people to the question. Yet as people open this inquiry, I encourage them to consider all of the Seven Simple Questions, not just this one, and to explore them one after the other, in order. Just as I have done.

Okay, so I’ve got to ask you…how do you come to give us these answers? What makes you think that your answers are right?

(I hope that this monoconvologue has proven to be a good literary device, giving you an opportunity to see how you might respond when other people come to you with the same kinds of questions. For instance, the questions just above are two questions that I get a lot—and you may be asked them as well. I have always responded…)

Well, first of all I’m not saying that my answers are “right.” I’m simply asking, “Can we all agree that the answers we’ve been given in the past have not worked? And can we all agree that it might be beneficial to search for new ones together?”

So I’ve tried hard to make it very clear that there are no “correct” answers to these questions. The answers that are correct for you are the answers that you give. (And you may give different answers a different times of your life, by the way!)

Yet I believe that if you wish to move forward in your own evolution, you must offer some answers. I’ll be offering some of my own as our conversation here continues. If feels to me that we ignore these questions at our peril.

The world has ignored them, and is in peril. So I think the discussion is worthwhile.

Perhaps, but what makes you think that you should lead it? I’m not trying to be antagonistic here, I’m just wondering…where are you coming from with all of this?

It’s not so much where I’m coming from that you may wish to ponder, but where we’re all going. Our planet and its people are in the process of evolving, and that process is speeding up. And if we’re not careful it’s going to take us exactly where for centuries we’ve been heading.

Where I’m “coming from” in all of this is a genuine desire to help humanity evolve by getting us moving forward with The Conversation of the Century. I want to get a discussion going because I’m watching people who are dazed, sleepwalking.

I’m watching a world not seeming to know what to do next. I’m watching an entire species that appears to be mystified as to how to proceed from here.

No, it appears to be mystified about more than that. Our species seems to be unclear not only on how to proceed from here, but how we got here. And if we don’t understand out past, we don’t stand a good chance of understanding how to most beneficially create our future.

So in just a bit now, I’m going to give us a look at our past by sharing with you the basic elements of our Old Cultural Story. It’s important for us to look at this.

See, what’s happening now is that some of humanity is awakening, and more of humanity is about to be awakening, and so I’d like to assist in that process.

I think that many people would like to do that. Many are feeling this same impulse; the impulse to assist. They just don’t know how to do that, specifically. They don’t know what kind of assistance they can offer.

I’m simply creating a vehicle with which they—we—can all do that. I’m offering The Conversations Movement and placing on the table a global discussion of a possible New Cultural Story.

I’m calling that discussion The Conversation of the Century. I’m placing it before the world at TheGlobalConversation.com. I see the whole thing as a beginning; as a way to get us started; as a means of moving the energy.

But now let me repeat that the ideas I talk about are not mine, but were given to me in Conversations with God. And they have helped me tremendously. How could I not pass them on if I say that we’re all companions on the journey?

I’ve got to tell you that many other people throughout human history have claimed that they were spoken to directly by God…or that for some other reason they were qualified to lead us. I was hoping this exchange between us was going to be different from “religion” or “politics as usual.”

Oh, it is. Believe me, it is. What makes it different—totally different—is that I’m not claiming that the ideas I’m presenting here are “the best” ideas or “the only” ideas that can solve humanity’s problems. But we need to start somewhere, and I think that it needs to be somewhere new.

What I see is that as we try to solve our problems we keep coming from the same place; we keep starting our thinking in the exact same spot: deep within our Old Cultural Story. That’s why we’re not solving anything.

We’re not solving anything because we’re not changing anything. Like hamsters on a wheel, we’re running and running and getting nowhere. We need to get off the wheel.

The idea of The Conversations Movement is to do just that. It is not to put forward the “End All” Ideas, it is to place before humanity the “Beginning Of It All” Ideas!

We want to be able to look back in 100 years and say that this was the beginning of it all; this was when we finally changed our approach; this was when people from all over the world said, “Enough! What we’re doing is not working! There’s got to be another way.”

Our job now, our opportunity, our exciting task is to place before the world a set of ideas from which a brand new discussion may begin. I’m going to propose some of those ideas right here, in the conversations that we’re about to get to in this book.

Then readers from all over the planet can offer their thoughts and their ideas. That’s what the website’s about. Soon, we’ll have a global conversation going. It’ll be the—

—I know, I know. The “Conversation of the Century.”

Yes! And it will offer humanity such a fresh new beginning, with inspired input from people of every nation, that this new start will launch a new era. In fact, hey, that’s not a bad little slogan there. A new start…to launch a new era.

One idea, in particular, could do just that.

###

15 words that turn everything upside-down

Out of the 3,000 pages in the Conversations with God dialogues, one idea, in particular, jumped out at me. I knew as soon as I heard it that it was revolutionary. Utterly, completely revolutionary. It’s what I call a Turn Around Idea. If adopted, it would turn everything, everything, around. Talk about giving us a new start!

Okay, I’ll bite. What is it?

God invited—dared, actually—every minister, every priest, every rabbi, every ulama, every political party, every head of state, every corporate executive, every leader in every area of life, to stand behind every pulpit, every political convention podium, every lectern, every desk in every classroom, and share a New Gospel.

God also predicted that none of those people, none of them, would do it. Not a pope, not a president, not a prime minister, not a chief ulama, not a head of any political party, and certainly not a classroom teacher…no one would do it. Because this is not something that in our present society we would not dare to teach our children. It is not something we would dare tell our congregations. And it not something we could even imagine putting in our political party’s platform.

Well, for goodness sake, what is it that’s such a show-stopper…?

It’s two simple sentences, a mere 15-words. But if its message were embraced by the world, that world would be magnificently altered. The New Gospel proposed by Conversations with God is…

We are all one.
Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way.

Okay.

Well.

Yes…well. That’s interesting. Especially the last part. It’s an interesting idea.

But if people or political parties or religions don’t believe they have a better way, why bother offering it?

Is that a fair question? If people feel a deep conviction, shouldn’t they speak out?

That’s a very fair question. So let me answer it by saying that the problem with people speaking out their deepest convictions is not the speaking out itself, but the implied message that is often not-too-well hidden beneath those convictions—which is that they are absolutely right; that their way is the best way.

When I asked the same question you just asked me, you know what I received in the CWG dialogue? This…

“Because you can’t have a ‘better’ religion, or a ‘better’ political party, or a ‘better’ economic system, does that mean you should not have any at all?

“Must you know that yours will be the ‘better’ picture before you pick up a brush and paint? Can it not be simply another picture? Another expression of beauty?

“Must a rose be ‘better’ than an iris in order to justify its existence?

“I tell you this: You are all flowers in the Garden of the Gods. Shall we turn the garden under because one is no more beautiful than another? You have done exactly that. And then you lament, ‘where have all the flowers gone?’

“You are all notes in the Celestial Symphony. Shall we decline to play the music because one note is no more crucial than another?”

But we’re talking about solving problems here. That’s all very poetic, but we have to implement ideas, not just talk about them. And of course we want to implement the best idea. And if we think ours is the best, we have to be able to say that, don’t we?

Well, certainly. Yet saying that you “think it is” is one thing, insisting on it is another. Will you excuse me for bringing a bit of old-fashioned wisdom here? My father used to tell me, “Son, two heads are better than one.”

If people spoke from their conviction, yet allowed that they might not necessarily have all the answers or the best solutions, but simply said that they see the same  problems that we all do, and if they made it clear that they are genuinely interested in opening a dialogue to see if combining ideas might produce terrific answers, then we’d have something helpful.

Yet if people speak from their conviction in a way that makes it clear they’re totally convinced that what they believe is absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt right, about everything, then we have another matter altogether.

And if they treat your opinions, and your very person, not as if you simply hold a different opinion, but as if you’re just plain ignorant—or worst yet, evil—then we have not just another matter; then we have another problem. We’re created a problem in order to solve a problem.

And that’s what’s happening right now. It’s the polarization that we talked about earlier. It’s normal to the process of an era ending, but that doesn’t mean we have to go forward in the same way. So the New Gospel is a different way of going forward.

What is being discussed here, in this conversation, is “another way” we might do things, “another way” of being human. Not the “only way,” not the “best way,” but “another way.”

This is an exploration, not a declaration; an invitation, not a proclamation; a observation, not a notification. Our gentle observation is this: What we’ve been doing is no longer working. There’s some doubt that it ever worked. And then we ask a gentle question: Is it necessary for us to continue with it?

I’ve gathered some great suggestions on how to not continue it—ideas that have emerged from many sources over the years—and I’ve put them in Part Two of this book. I hope you’ll explore them with me.

But first, I think it is only fair that I answer the Seven Simple Questions, just the way I’m asking you to. Not that my answers are any more important than anyone else’s (and certainly not any more “accurate” or “right”), but if I’m asking you to play, I’ve got to play. So my answers are next.

_________

POINTS I HOPE YOU WILL REMEMBER…

* The way for humanity to make life work is to change what it wants.

* A knowledge and an experience of your real self is what it would be of great benefit to seek.

* We are not solving anything on the planet because we are not changing anything on the planet, in terms of who we think we are and how we think we should be functioning.

* There is a New Gospel that would change everything if we would simply embrace it.

ACTION I HOPE YOU WILL TAKE…

* Change what you want in life. Decide right now that it’s not about safety or security or even happiness or prosperity or love. Decide what you want is to truly know and experience yourself as who you really are.

* As you move through the world—and especially after you seek to know and express yourself as who you really are—remember and embrace the New Gospel. Repeat it often to others…and invite others to repeat it often to even more.

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