IN A NUTSHELL: CWG Book Series by Neale Donald Walsch

Neale Donald Walsch
Pic courtesy: http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com

Regarding the Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsh - I want to mention here some of the highlights that really impressed me from these three books.

• There is no right or wrong as far as God is concerned.
• The difference in good and evil exists only to show us what to choose for ourselves and also since we need a point of comparison. If evil does not exist we will never know the value of good.
• Whatever happens in our life is something we have unconsciously or consciously chosen to happen.
• There is nothing called sin. We are all playing roles in a worldwide drama. The script is written by us, the actors ourselves and the audience is God. He laughs with us, cries with us and feels each and every emotion that we do, just as we feel the emotions played by the various actors in a play or a film. And same as we feel detached when we leave the theatre, he feels detached once a particular show is over.
• Death is not the end of existence. The soul lives on. In fact, the soul lives forever. There is no hell. The soul gets back to God the moment a body dies, just like a homing pigeon. That’s all there is to it. There is nowhere else to go.
• God has only the ability to imagine and create. He cannot experience anything. That is why he has created human beings, in his image and enjoys the experience through them.
• God loves us whatever we do; however we do it. But one thing He is clear about is, avoid hurting someone else.
• We are made up of three parts – the body or the conscious, the mind or the subconscious and the soul or the super conscious. They all have different functions to perform.
• The body is made to exist over a very long period of time. Hundreds of years, in fact. Drinking, smoking, etc. spoil the body. Otherwise they are not sins.
• Eating flesh of animals - God says that He would not call it wrong. First of all, we do not have the power to kill animals. Only God has. If one particular chicken or pig or cow is killed and eaten, it is possible only because the soul in it has agreed to give its body away as food to someone.
• Using silk or leather - Well, He says it is not wrong. Only the soul that feels the extreme need to reach God does not like the idea of unnecessary killing.
• Suicide and abortion - He says that He does not consider suicide wrong since there is no wrong in the Kingdom of God. Abortion is not possible without the consent of that particular soul in the womb. It can be done only if the soul has come into that body on that particular agreement.
• The mind exists in every single cell in the body. The average man uses barely 10% of his mind. Our modern education and our religions have made us so rigid and unbelieving that we cannot believe in the power of the mind.
• The soul does not exist in the body. It only holds the body together. For those who have heard about the aura, well, that symbolizes the soul. The soul is basically a lover of freedom. It likes to be free and move wherever it pleases. It feels restricted in the body. That is why sleep has been created. During sleep, the soul takes off.
• As we align the body, mind and soul and coordinate their operations, the need for sleep becomes less as the soul feels the freedom within the body itself.
• The Devil does not exist. Religious bodies, to scare people into visiting churches or temples and take advice from the religious elders, created him.  This made them feel powerful.

THE QUEST

OLD DIARIES…… continued….

Recently, I read a trilogy, ‘Conversations with God’ by Neale Donald Walsh.  These also came to me in answer to my prayers. I always relate to God as a presence in front of me and I call him my father, grandfather or friend or brother or whatever I feel like. I sometimes felt I got his advice in the form of thought waves. This was explained in these three books, much to my astonishment.

My experience with these books was incredible. The author seemed to ask every single question I had been asking God and more and pat came the answers from God himself. Yeah, I could believe it. I felt I had reached a rosy world where everything was beautiful, there was no right or wrong, and whatever you do, you finally reach God. For many years now, I have been against the concept of a punishing God, and the concept of hell. It was all there, in black and white. I was thrilled.


In the meanwhile, my study of the self continued. For the past one and a half years, I have been religiously training myself not to pass judgements. I don’t like to say it was difficult but it was. Every moment of our staying awake, we pass judgements. It is never, ‘I don’t like something,’ but that, ‘something is ugly.’

I hope you see the difference. There are different things in the world. You have total right to choose what you want and also to choose what you don’t want. You are welcome to say that you don’t like something. It’s absolutely normal. You are not required to like everything because it is created by God and is co-existing with you. But the difference lies in just letting go of it because you don’t like it and not passing stringent comments on it. Why not? The answer again is quite logical. When you keep expecting people to live up to certain expectations of yours [by what right, I don’t know], the chances are you are bound to be disappointed.  Because that other person is a different entity with a mind of his/her own. He need not agree with you. You do the expecting and blame him for disappointing you. This happens especially when parents try to live their dreams through their children.

The next thing that happens is, we keep the same yardstick for ourselves and when we are unable to meet the standard, we are bogged down with guilt, fear and a lack of self-esteem. Then what happens to your self-value? It is either zero or in the minus.

This is what I realized when I went for my second yagna sometime in September last. I realized that I had no love for myself at all. I constantly felt guilty about something or other and always fell short of my own expectations. My habit of passing judgement on others had become a problem for myself. I was doing the same to myself. Now that I was on the quest for becoming non-judgmental, I realized my lack of love for myself. Believe me when I say I was shocked. I thought, how was it possible, I have such a high opinion about myself. The reply was that while that may be so, still loving myself was something different. I had a high opinion, which had a number of conditions coming along with it. Loving unconditionally was a totally different story.

But the classes helped and I was on the next step of my Quest.

The result was that I was at constant war with my husband. Please don’t laugh or be shocked. He is a typical Indian male. Quite pampered, used to being waited on hand and foot and not showing any kind of appreciation. Recently, he also had been facing a lot of tensions and hence, he had taken to telling me off every time he was irritated. I was something in the lines of a scapegoat. This used to happen very often. I used to never object [even though I felt extremely hurt] since I thought that he had to get his suffering out in some way.

Now after the classes, I really understood the muhawara, ‘do thaali baja tho hi awaaz nikalthi hai’ (Sound is heard only when both the hands clap). Up till now, he had been doing the shouting and I, just the listening. Now this new love for myself would just not allow anyone to abuse me. I rose like a tigress defending myself, much to the shock of my husband. He did not know what had come over me. He asked me whether this was what they had taught at the yagna. I watched myself dispassionately as usual and wondered at the change. But I was very clear that he should not abuse me. He stopped saying much after that but his thoughts were obvious and they still had the power to hurt me. My first instinct was to blame him but deep down I was very clear about one thing. If I was suffering, then in some way I was to take responsibility for it and not shift the blame on to him. Like for eg. If I thought he was wrong, I can just declare that he is wrong and I should be able to let go of it. But I was not able to do that. I was very upset about the whole thing. So the Quest continued.

A WONDERFUL VISION

The eyes I saw in my vision

OLD DIARIES: Continued……

Only during my conversation I told Bhagavan very clearly that He should not come in front of me since I was bound to be scared. The visions themselves were quite fascinating. God led my astral body into the Sun and I felt the coolness there. There were many more until I was finally convinced that they were visions and not figments of my imagination.

Later, I had a vision of Tirupathi Balaji dancing on the seashore. He was totally dark with pink soles on his feet and danced among the gentle waves.

I came home after this yagna of three days and was lying down since I was too tired and had had very less sleep. Suddenly I saw two very mischievous eyes behind a wall, golden brown in colour. They were staring at me. I could see just the forehead and eyes and an orange turban. I was communicating not with words but by thought waves. I asked the eyes, “Why are you hiding behind the wall?”

He replied, “You were very clear that I should not come in your presence, that you would get scared.”
I said, “That’s okay, do come.”

Pic courtesy: www.thepathtooneness.org

He came forward and I invited him to sit on a chair beside me. I had seen Kalki Baghavan’s Srimurti during the classes. I had felt one very strong feeling. That he was standing throughout and his legs should be hurting. [At Kalki Mandir they teach you to relate to God as an alive being and not someone remote].

I automatically presumed that the figure in front of me was Kalki Baghavan. The eyes were the very same although the attire was slightly different.

So I made him sit down and pressed his legs with great love since that had been my predominant thought during the classes.

He asked me what I wanted. I requested him to bless my father who is the pivot my family runs on. He raised his right palm in the posture of blessing. A shining golden light rose from it and rode all the way to the hall where my father was sitting and reciting a shloka in front of the puja alamari. I heard my father reciting the shloka very loudly. The strange thing about this is that I have never heard my father praying, only my thatha, patti and sometimes my mother. The golden light covered my father who was sitting on the floor.

I woke up with a start and suddenly heard my father uttering a shloka loudly. I ran into the hall and lo and behold! He was sitting in exactly the same posture he had been in my vision. I was not even awfully surprised. I just thanked God since he had blessed my father with a golden light, no less.

DIVINE MESSAGES

Suki Sivam - Pic courtesy: www.oruwebsite.com

OLD DIARY... continued


Now coming back to my experiences – I realized a quality of mine. I kept learning things from people and felt myself outgrowing them very fast. My grandparents, my parents, my aunts, my uncles, my servants, my husband, my in-laws, my children, my friends, my colleagues, my sisters, my brothers-in-law, my nephews and nieces, the list is endless.

Then I kept feeling that everything happening in my life, every event, even very small things were different lessons for me to learn from. I kept thinking that I kept getting MESSAGES.

Whenever I grew desperate I used to pray to God and I used to always get guidance, usually in the form of a book, which a friend of mine used to suddenly give me – out of the blue – or in some kind of a writing in the newspaper or in some lecture I attended of Suki Sivam or Acharya Akshayamathiji of Kalki Mandir.

One thing I was clear about, always listen to the other with an open mind, without judgement and just take what suits you and leave the rest. This attitude has been a great help. Sometimes people comment, a man espousing spirituality should not be married, some say he should not ask for money, etc. etc. Is that what we are seeking from him? This is just a waste of energy trying to speculate on how the other person’s mind works. We have to look within and keep choosing what we want to be.

My childhood friend Anu introduced me to the Kalki Dharma. I could relate to it because of the freedom in thinking. Whenever some of the gurus placed any restrictions, I used to turn a deaf ear and take only what suited me. Once, when I spoke to Acharyaji, [she’s extremely young but a very knowledgeable soul] I mentioned that I didn’t enjoy all the lectures since they placed some kind of restrictions and some of them insisted that I do some things which I felt would take me away from my family. I was not in agreement to this idea. She very sweetly advised me to do what I thought best and she had but one request of me that I should pray regularly. And here, she did not mean formal prayer; this is about conversing with God.

Now, for those who don’t know, KALKI DHARMA is an extension of our Hindu Dharma. Kalki is Mahavishnu’s tenth avatar and appears on this earth every 24000 years. The purpose of His birth is to take us out of Kaliyugam and place us in the Sathyugam. This again has created a lot of controversy amongst the people.

The people prefer the place of God to be in the scriptures. The very idea that He must be amongst us has probably put the fear of God in them [excuse the pun].  But that’s the funniest part of it. God and Fear are the very opposite of each other.

I attended a vara yagna with Anu about five years back. This is not a yagna as in havan. These are basically classes training you to think or rather unthink what you have been thinking all these years. Suited me just fine; just what I had been looking for. To my great surprise, I got a number of visions during these classes [I had believed that God was someone who lived UP there].

Continued..........

RECALL HAPPY MOMENTS

Happy Moments

OLD DIARIES... continued

Here I would like to mention something that I think is very important. The main problems we face in life today are the result of all the guilt, fear and judgement we have over others and ourselves. We have a mind; we have to think about what? How can someone do this or that? Hate ourselves for what we are doing or have done? Is this what God wanted? NO NO NO! He wants us to love ourselves.

Okay, now comes the question, “Sundari, how do YOU know?”

The answer is very simple. I know because I never stopped questioning throughout the 41 years of my life and my quest has given me some wonderful answers and I have no words to thank God for this.

I also have to mention here that I have considered everyone in my life a teacher and have learnt something from that person, be it my father-in-law or my mother-in-law and my sisters-in-law.

You may wonder how. The answer is simple, as we grow we come across so many qualities in the various people we meet, and as we keep judging and grading these, we keep choosing what qualities are suited for us and what we choose not to have.

I always believed in informal prayers

I learned a lot of shlokas after I met my mother-in-law. She used to keep saying that the different prayers to different Gods had different values. I could relate to this. I have heard my grandparents praying loudly and knew a lot of shlokas by heart, although I was not even aware of this. Later, I started learning them on listening to my MIL’s advice. She was my teacher in this respect.

It was my Revathi Chitti who taught me not to feel guilt. My father was and is still a person who considers his duty above everything else. He is so dutiful that I feel he has totally forgotten how to enjoy life. He feels he has to do his duty very correctly and feels tense and guilty for the smallest things. Most of us daughters have acquired this quality of his. My mother is the cool one despite having lived with my father for 44 years now.

Well, my chitti advised me very strongly that I should do what I am capable of to my heart’s content and then go ahead and keep myself happy. She explained to me about how there was no end to people’s expectations and if we start living up to that then we would never find time to live for ourselves. How profound! I started realizing something else now. I got my messages at the right times in my life especially when I was seeking them. The QUEST is important.

Someone asked me the other day, ‘you have answers to so many questions. What about the sufferings we have? Do you have an explanation for these?’

I did not have it then. But now I do. We have both sufferings and happiness in our lives. We always feel that the one is all encompassing and the second is fleeting. This is a trick of the mind.

When we suffer, we feel it very deeply. When we are happy, we run through it so fast. ‘So what? Happy times do fly by.” Very true! But as I mentioned earlier, stop wallowing in the past. But of course, that is just ‘yetu suraikkai’. How can we do that? We keep running through our past. When we do that, do we keep reliving our happy moments? Some of us do, but many of us keep recalling the pain and keep at it.

The result, you keep repeatedly getting what you are visualizing. Keep visualizing your happy moments and thank the Lord for this and see what it makes of your life. I will not tell you. You DO it.

Continued.......