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.