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Conversation with God
Neal Donald Walsch: […] Why am I continuously journeying through the Space/Time Continuum? Why have I undertaken this endless search for God?
God: Your journey is not an endless SEARCH for God, it is an endless EXPERIENCE of God.
Understood in this way, the reason for the continuous journey becomes apparent. The journey is a process.
It is the way that you know God—indeed, that you know yourself AS that which is Divine. This journey is therefore your greatest joy.
Neal Donald Walsch: Okay, so I am taking these “trips” through time and space in order to experience God.
But when do I actually meet God? Earlier you said that God will be the first experience I will have after my death.
God: If you believe that it will be, then it will be. But you do not have to wait until then.
In fact, you have been meeting God all along. That is what I have been telling you.
Here is the central error of most human theology:
You think that one day you are going to meet God.
You imagine that you are one day going to get back Home.
You are not going to get back Home.
You never left Home.
From:
Neal Donald Walsch
Home with God
In a Life That Never Ends
Hodder Mobius, 2006
Pp. 185-186
The Northwest Herald
Sunday, June 4, 2006
STRAIGHT
TALK
Rich Atwater
Wife not ready to recover
Question: My wife has had an alcohol problem for years.
She is a lovely woman – intelligent, gracious and a talented artist when she is sober.
She has stopped drinking alcohol more times than I can count, and each time is the same.
She stops drinking and is withdrawn and irritable for a few days then everything is great for a few weeks or a few months, and one time a year and a half.
She doesn’t start to drink again right away, but usually goes to the doctor for some ailment or symptom and comes home with either tranquilizers, sedatives or some kind of painkiller.
One time she purposely bruised her arm to justify a trip to the ER for pills. The pills start, and usually within a short period of time, she is starting to sneak drinks and hide liquor.
I don’t have to smell alcohol or find bottles because I can tell in an instant from her personality.
She has been in a treatment program twice, but refuses to go to AA because she says she hates to say she is an alcoholic.
Why do people need to say that? She says it makes her feel worse and makes her want to drink even more after hearing the stories.
She is also convinced now she needs to take the pills and sees no problem with that.
Answer: I have seen a lot of different paths to recovery and in my experience every one is different.
To recover a person needs to reach a point of surrender, a letting go of trying or willing themselves to be better. They need to reach a point of despair.
It is one of the hardest things in the world to do to watch someone you care deeply about suffer.
Whenever someone finds things wrong with AA (or any other program), that tells me they are still looking for a reason to continue to do it their own way.
In other words, they haven’t reached the jumping off point.
There is a phrase in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that says, “Some of us have tried to hold onto our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
No one, however, is expected to be joyous or excited about the prospect of surrender.
People who admit their alcoholism and say they are alcoholics, do so not in shame or as an indictment but simply as a statement of fact – they qualify.
They tell their stories not to glorify drinking escapades but to remember and go deeper toward the truth of the causes and conditions of their addiction. The joy comes later.
Your wife obviously wants to continue to abuse medication and avoid AA meetings.
You can accept that fact as part of her path toward surrender and start working to define your own.
From: Northwest Herald, Crystal Lake, Illinois, USA.
Richard Atwater is a licensed clinical professional counselor.
Northwest Community Counseling Services,
101 N. Virginia St., Suite 105,
Crystal Lake, IL 60014,
USA.
He can reached by e-mail at emplhealth@aol.com.
The International Herald Tribune
For
Beijing, a little religion goes a long way
Philip Bowring
SUNDAY,
MAY 28, 2006
HONG KONG - For China’s Communist Party, religion may
still be, in Marx’s words, “the opiate of the people.”
But
far from being the adversary of atheistic materialism, the Beijing leadership
is recognizing that the opiate can come in handy in helping sustain the party’s
hold on power and furthering China’s national interests.
Indeed,
Beijing may be more successful in using the soft power of religion than are the
Christians influencing policy in Washington.
The government recently administered
two large doses of opiate. In April, China hosted a World Buddhism Forum,
bringing together more than 1,000 Buddhists from around the globe.
This
month the government-sponsored Patriotic Catholic Church appointed new
bishops without Rome’s permission and enthroned them with much ceremony and
publicity.
The bottom line of all this is that the party recognized that
the appeal of religion is growing rapidly in a nation where millions are being
alienated by the single-minded pursuit of money and materialism and whose ruling
party long ago has given up even the pretense of an egalitarian ideology.
Leaders
have read enough Marx at the party school to know that he also wrote: “Religion
is the soul of soulless conditions.”
[...]
Read
the whole commentary.
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Jean’s Story: I Tried to Blame Everyone and Everything
By Jean
Hello, my name is Jean and I am a recovering alcoholic.
I am one of the fortunate alcoholics who has lived to tell my story. But for the grace of God and the program of AA, I would have died.
I started drinking at a very early age and was very popular with my high school crowd as “the life of the party”. I could always outdrink everyone who I was with.
What started out as fun ended in living hell. My drinking continued through high school and into business college and then into the first law office in which I worked.
At that time, my drinking was fairly well under control; I was young, I had the stamina to get drunk every night and work every day and the vicious cycle went on and on.
I really don’t like “drunkalogs”, so I will try to be brief and say: I was married several times, held very prestigious jobs, i.e., working in various law firms, for a state Senator and a Probate Judge and the Lt. Governor’s office.
I had a beautiful home and a husband who I thought I loved at the time; and most of all, my beautiful children.
Well, this husband didn’t love me as much as I thought; he did the right thing; he took my children, he booted me out of my beautiful home, and he divorced me. I STILL had not bottomed out. I could still outdrink anyone around; and by then, of course the blackouts had started.
[...]
(020) 681 74 31
Toespraken van Zen-meester Huang Po (Tuan Chi)
De meester zei tegen mij: Alle Boedha’s en alle levende wezens zijn slechts de Ene Geest; er bestaat niets anders.
Deze geest, die geen begin heeft, is ongeboren en onvergankelijk.
Hij is niet groen of geel en heeft geen vorm of uiterlijk.
Hij behoort niet tot de categorieën van dingen die bestaan of niet bestaan, en termen als oud of nieuw zijn er niet op van toepassing.
Hij is niet kort of lang, groot of klein, want hij overstijgt elke grens, maatstaf, naam, eigenschap en vergelijking.
Hij is datgene wat je voor je ziet - begin er over te oordelen, en je zit meteen al verkeerd.
Hij is als de onbegrensde ruimte die men niet kan peilen of bevatten.
Enkel dit Ene Bewustzijn is de Boeddha, en er is geen onderscheid tussen de Boeddha en levensvormen, behalve het gegeven dat levende wezens zich binden aan uiterlijke verschijningsvormen en daarom Boeddhaschap zoeken buiten zichzelf.
Juist door dit zoeken gaat het verloren, want dat is als het zoeken van de Boeddha via de Boeddha en het vatten van de geest via de geest.
Al doen ze eeuwig hun uiterste best, zij zullen niet in staat zijn dat te bereiken.
Zij beseffen niet dat als zij stoppen met rationele overwegingen en zich niet langer druk maken, de Boeddha voor hun ogen zal verschijnen, want de geest is de Boeddha en de Boeddha is elk levend wezen.