Ten years ago I began a spiritual journey. As a young man in his early twenties I began to wrestle with some of life's more complex issues. What is the meaning of life? Why is there so much hate and violence? If God is omnipotent then why does he even allow evil to exist if his will is for it not to? Why do bad things happen to good people? These were the questions I was beginning to ask and had a strong will to truly know the answers. I was a born-again christian and held fast to my faith in Christ. However, when I began to raise some of these questions in church or to people I believed to be highly educated Christians, the answers I recieved were vague, shallow, or just didn't seem to make sense to me. Answers like; Just have faith in the word, Satan was jealous of God's power, God works in mysterious ways, and my favorite, Because the Bible says so. Hmmm...So I'm supposed to base the core beliefs of my life in a book that was written by men two thousand years ago then re-written and re-translated several times since? This just didn't make sense. I knew there was a God. I was just having a hard time finding him. Then I found Neale's book.
I must admit that when I first began reading Conversations with God I made about halfway through the first chapter before I threw it down and called it rubbish. Where does this guy get off thinking he can talk to God! Blasphemous! The book sat for a while until one day when I was in a state of deep depression and dispair it revealed itself again. It litteraly fell out of my bookshelves and hit me on the head. I had just finished another book called 'The Celestine Prophecy' by James Redfield, so I had began to pay attention to life's coincidences. Picking the book up again I began to flip through the pages. I didn't put it down again until the clock read 4:00am. I had shed many tears of shear joy and my eyes just couldn't take it any more. I finished the book the next day and immediately began to go back through it with a highlighter to mark the passages which were most relavent to my life at the time. Although there are many other great books on the subject, Conversations with God is one of the most comprehensive manuscript to date dealing with the truly deep metaphysical nature of the universe. It has truly changed my life for the better and has allowed me to live a much more fulfilling and passionate life. Please read it with an open heart and an open mind. This book does not claim to be some holy scripture to worship but instead begs you to search your-self for the truth, your truth. I promise that you will begin to feel that enlightenment you have searched so long for.
-Peace & Love - James

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Doesn't that feel good?

The Holy Experience
Chapter Five

The first step in creating the Holy Experience is believing that it is
possible for you to have it.
Now you may think that this is an elementary step-almost a given.
Yet many people find this a very difficult step because they find it hard to
believe that any kind of "holy experience" can happen to them.
(1) Some believe it is impossible to have the Holy Experience
because they do not believe that such an experience even exists.
(2) Others believe it is impossible to have such an experience
because, while it may exist, they do not know what it is or how to access
it. They believe it is understandable and accessible only to aescetics and
monks and holy ones-people who have devoted their entire lives to the
search for inner truth and higher realities.
(3) Finally, still others believe that while it may be accessible to
regular, ordinary people, they, themselves are not worthy. They believe
this for one reason or another. Some feel that there is something specific
that a person has to be, do, or have in order to enter into the Holy
Experience. It is reserved for a special class of people who, while they may
be ordinary, are single-minded in their determination to know of this
experience, and are clear that their particular doctrine-which tells them
that there is only one way to have the Holy Experience-is absolute and
correct and is to be applied without exception. Others feel that because of
their own behavior in this life they are not sufficiently "holy" to have the
experience in any event.
It is with these varying ideas that people approach the Holy
Experience-and life itself. And ideas, of course, rule all human
experience. The idea that one has about anything produces one's reality
around that. And where do ideas have their birth? In how you look at
things. Your perspective about a thing is what creates your idea about it.
I have become more and more clear about this with every passing
year since the publication of the first Conversations with God book in 1995-
ten years ago to this writing. And now, in the latest and final dialogue
book, Home with God (ATRIA Books, March 2006), this progression is
described specifically.
According to the text:
Perspective creates perception, and perception creates experience. The
experience that perception creates for you is what you call "truth."
Because I know this I try very hard these days to look at everything
from the perspective of my highest desire. This means not looking at
things through the prism of what I expect or imagine or think realistically
will happen, but rather, seeing things as I choose and desire for them to
happen.
This is not easy. I find that I have been programmed by society itself to
look for the worst in everything, to anticipate the least desirable outcome,
to worry about and fret about and agonize over how bad things can be,
rather than how good something could turn out. I have had to fight this
tendency toward pessimism all my life. What's funny about this is that I
am at the very same time the supreme optimist. I believe that I walk in luck,
that God is always with me, that everything good happens to me, and that
I can get out of anything-any jam, any situation-and land on my feet.
So how these two sides of me got to juxtaposed I don't know, but
they are. Fortunately for me the positive side shows itself 80% of the time
and the negative just 20% of the time-but both sides are definitely there.
So I have to remember to think positively and eliminate negative thoughts
from my mental diet.
(Incidentally, a wonderful help in this regard is the book Ask and It
Is Given, by Jerry and Esther Hicks. It shows you how you can use your
feelings as creative tools, and I highly recommend it.)
Positive thinking about the Holy Experience
Now when it comes to anything having to do with God I have been
blessed with absolute faith. I am utterly convinced that (a) there IS a God;
(b) God is "on my side"; (c) the power of God can be used at all times in
the creation of my inner reality and my outer experience.
Because I believe this, the idea of my having the Holy Experience is
not even a little bit of a stretch for my imagination. I know that this
experience exists and I feel sure that I can have it. I am convinced that I am
going to have it. I believe that everyone has the opportunity to have it. I
believe that it is ours for the asking. The result of this is that I enter into
the Holy Experience on a regular basis. My next goal, my next step, is to
remain in it much more of the time, to live in it, to have my being within it
and to come from it in the day-to-day of my life.
If you are in this place of mind as well, or if you can go to this place
now, you have taken the first step toward having the Holy Experience. Yet
how can you go to this place if you do not know that it exists, or doubt
that you are worthy of being there? Those are the key questions. Let's take
the second one first.
The issue of worthiness
This may very well be the biggest stumbling block of all. At first
blush you may think that not many people believe themselves to be
"unworthy" of holy encounters (or of much of anything, actually), but you
would be amazed to find that low self-esteem and lack of self-worth are
among the most prevalent mental and emotional afflictions (along with
loneliness) suffered by people in the world today. This is especially true in
terms of our relationship with God.
Why?
It is really quite simple.
Many millions of people have been raised to believe that they were
born in "original sin." That is, insofar as God is concerned, they were
unworthy at birth. This, they have been told by their religion. Therefore
"unworthiness" is, for many people, an article of faith. Not to believe in
one's own unworthiness is not to believe in the Word of God.
Other religions teach us, as well, that we are all sinners, and while
they may not claim that we were unworthy at birth, they now pretty much
agree that life in human form has turned us into less-than-perfect beings,
unworthy of sitting at the right hand of God the Father Almighty unless
we are saved.
Indeed, most religions, not only just a few, teach that some form of
purification is required in order to qualify for entry into the Kingdom of
Heaven. Paradise, it seems, comes at a price.
We must all, we are told, repent of our sins and walk the narrow
path. How many of us have done so with sufficient success to meet the
requirements of God is arguable-or so conventional wisdom goes.
It is not difficult to understand, given these continuous teachings
from our elders, how it comes to pass that millions upon millions of
people do indeed think of themselves as unworthy to meet God-and
meeting God, of course, is what the Holy Experience is all about.
Defining the experience
Oh, yes, perhaps we have not made that clear before. That IS what
we are talking about here. That is what we are discussing. When we talk
about the Holy Experience we are talking about meeting God. It is a faceto-
face meeting, too, not something that exists only in conceptual
constructs. We are talking about looking at Divinity directly, seeing it
right there in front of us, knowing it as part of us, experiencing it as
integral to us, and merging into this experience as our felt reality.
This is precisely the experience that we have following our death,
and God has made it clear to us that we are not required to wait until
death in order to have it. We may embrace-and, indeed, create-this
experience at any time. But we must feel that it is possible, and that we are
worthy, to do so.
How, then, to shake off our own thoughts of unworthiness?
The first step is to re-identify ourselves. We must decide again-
and for many decide anew-who we are. So long as we imagine that we
are other than who we really are, thoughts of our unworthiness will be
possible. The moment that we re-identify ourselves, assuming our true
and real identity, the idea of unworthiness as it relates to us becomes
impossible to conceive.
Ending separation
Currently, most people imagine themselves to be separate from
God, from each other, and from everything else that is. In truth, we are all
intrinsically connected with everything-including that which we call
Divinity. When we drop our idea of Separation-which is part of what I
have called the Earth's "Separation Theology"-any thoughts of our
unworthiness drop with it.
Robert Heinlein, the famous science-fiction writer, included a line,
said many times by many characters, in his novel, Stranger in a Strange
Land. The line was, "Thou art God." In his book, Heinlein had many
people greeting and saying goodbye to each other in this way. The line,
and the book itself, though meant to be "fiction," offers a powerful
statement of what is really so.
On the day that you embrace your True Identity as Divinity
Demonstrated you will abandon forever your thought that you are
somehow not "up to" the Holy Experience, or being included in God's
Kingdom.
God's Kingdom is right here on Earth, and the Holy Experience is
life itself, lived as a demonstration of the unity of everything, in joyous
celebration of the wonder and the glory of All That Is.
Many people have a very difficult time with this idea of their
Oneness with God, however, and this makes it virtually impossible for
them to drop their idea of separation from God and embrace their true
worthiness at last.
In Home with God this matter is addressed head on. Here's a
preview of what the dialogue with God in that soon-to-be-published book
reveals%u2026
I've often heard the analogy that I am, to God, as a wave is to the
ocean. The same stuff, exactly. Just smaller in size.
That analogy has indeed been used many
times, and it is not inappropriate.
So now, let us define this "ocean." Let us
propose here that God is The Cr