This leaves us with a critical question. Precisely what is it that we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything?
Conversations with God says that what we don’t fully understand is who we are and where we are and why we are where we are. We are living a Case of Mistaken Identity and we have no idea what we’re doing here.
What does any of this have to do with the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut? What does it have to do with the shooting in Aurora, Colorado? What does it have to do with the shootings in Columbine, at Virginia Tech, in Tucson and in Wisconsin, or at the mall near Portland last week?
(Did you know that a man emptied 50-rounds of ammunition just outside a Macy’s store at a shopping center in Newport Beach, California on Saturday, the day after the Connecticut school massacre? No one was hurt. He shot his gun into the air — for reasons not yet entirely clear. Was it a protest? Was it a means of drawing attention to how easy it is to shoot multiple rounds of ammunition in a public place in America? We don’t know. The man is in custody and is now being questioned.)
What does this stuff about God and who and where we are have to do with any of that?
Everything. Because if those shooters understood who we are, where we are, and why we are here — that is, if they had been taught in their earliest years (or even heard later in life from our society’s most highly valued sources) that who we are is an Individuation of Divinity, that We Are All One (including One With God), and that we are in the Physical Realm in order to express and experience Divinity Itself — they would and could never have pulled triggers on guns that fire 30 shots in 30 seconds, as Jared Loughner did in Arizona, in an effort to kill as many people as possible.
(From the bench in Federal District Court, Judge Larry A. Burns said he was not going to make “political statements,” that he was just “a single federal judge” who had “no intention to change the law.” Still, he questioned the wisdom of allowing the unrestricted sale of high-capacity magazines, like the one Mr. Loughner used to carry out his crimes.
“I don’t understand the social utility of allowing citizens to have magazines with 30 bullets in them,” Judge Burns said.
Neither do I, judge. Neither do I.)
And as part of that Big Discussion we need to ask ourselves with pure motive and honest evaluation: Is what we have believed in the past about ourselves and about God working? (That goes for those who don’t believe in God at all, by the way.) Are our fundamental and most sacred and fervently held beliefs about God, about life, and about each other producing the results we had hoped for? Or are they, in fact, producing exactly the opposite results?
I believe the second assessment is patently and obviously true. And so I invite people everywhere to engage — softly and with reverence, gently and with patience, kindly and with tolerance — in a global conversation (I call it the Conversation of the Century) as part of a worldwide movement aimed not at rejecting God or eliminating God, but at expanding God in our lives.
I invite people to join a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a vengeful, violent, and vindictive God, and releasing our species from a global doctrine that creates separation and vicious competition, replacing it, finally, with an ethos of unity and cooperation, understanding and compassion, generosity and love.
I will speak more about this in the days ahead. And in my next entry here, I will offer my answer, from Conversations with God, to the searing and penetrating questions with which this exploration began. We need to make some sense of what happened in Newtown last week, and about what’s happening all over the world on this very day. What is going on with our species — and why?
The exploration here continues…
And until next we meet here to move that exploration forward, I send you my deepest hope that you will experience God’s infinite caring and unconditional love, and that Divine Compassion will comfort you at this hour, even as It comforts those directly and immediately affected by all of the violence and dysfunction occurring on our planet.
May God’s blessings come to you and move through you to everyone whose life you touch this day.
Rich Text Area Toolbar Bold (Ctrl + B) Italic (Ctrl + I) Strikethrough (Alt + Shift + D) Unordered list (Alt + Shift + U) Ordered list (Alt + Shift + O) Blockquote (Alt + Shift + Q) Align Left (Alt + Shift + L) Align Center (Alt + Shift + C) Align Right (Alt + Shift + R) Insert/edit link (Alt + Shift + A) Unlink (Alt + Shift + S) Insert More Tag (Alt + Shift + T) Toggle spellchecker (Alt + Shift + N) ▼ Toggle fullscreen mode (Alt + Shift + G) Show/Hide Kitchen Sink (Alt + Shift + Z) Format – Paragraph Paragraph ▼ Underline Align Full (Alt + Shift + J) Select text color ▼ Paste as Plain Text Paste from Word Remove formatting Insert custom character Outdent Indent Undo (Ctrl + Z) Redo (Ctrl + Y) Help (Alt + Shift + H) This leaves us with a critical question. Precisely what is it that we don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything? Conversations with God says that what we don’t fully understand is who we are and where we are and why we are where we are. We are living a Case of Mistaken Identity and we have no idea what we’re doing here. What does any of this have to do with the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut? What does it have to do with the shooting in Aurora, Colorado? What does it have to do with the shootings in Columbine, at Virginia Tech, in Tucson and in Wisconsin, or at the mall near Portland last week? (Did you know that a man emptied 50-rounds of ammunition just outside a Macy’s store at a shopping center in Newport Beach, California on Saturday, the day after the Connecticut school massacre? No one was hurt. He shot his gun into the air — for reasons not yet entirely clear. Was it a protest? Was it a means of drawing attention to how easy it is to shoot multiple rounds of ammunition in a public place in America? We don’t know. The man is in custody and is now being questioned.) What does this stuff about God and who and where we are have to do with any of that? Everything. Because if those shooters understood who we are, where we are, and why we are here — that is, if they had been taught in their earliest years (or even heard later in life from our society’s most highly valued sources) that who we are is an Individuation of Divinity, that We Are All One (including One With God), and that we are in the Physical Realm in order to express and experience Divinity Itself — they would and could never have pulled triggers on guns that fire 30 shots in 30 seconds, as Jared Loughner did in Arizona, in an effort to kill as many people as possible. (From the bench in Federal District Court, Judge Larry A. Burns said he was not going to make “political statements,” that he was just “a single federal judge” who had “no intention to change the law.” Still, he questioned the wisdom of allowing the unrestricted sale of high-capacity magazines, like the one Mr. Loughner used to carry out his crimes. “I don’t understand the social utility of allowing citizens to have magazines with 30 bullets in them,” Judge Burns said. Neither do I, judge. Neither do I.) And as part of that Big Discussion we need to ask ourselves with pure motive and honest evaluation: Is what we have believed in the past about ourselves and about God working? (That goes for those who don’t believe in God at all, by the way.) Are our fundamental and most sacred and fervently held beliefs about God, about life, and about each other producing the results we had hoped for? Or are they, in fact, producing exactly the opposite results? I believe the second assessment is patently and obviously true. And so I invite people everywhere to engage — softly and with reverence, gently and with patience, kindly and with tolerance — in a global conversation (I call it the Conversation of the Century) as part of a worldwide movement aimed not at rejecting God or eliminating God, but at expanding God in our lives. I invite people to join a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its belief in a vengeful, violent, and vindictive God, and releasing our species from a global doctrine that creates separation and vicious competition, replacing it, finally, with an ethos of unity and cooperation, understanding and compassion, generosity and love. I will speak more about this in the days ahead. And in my next entry here, I will offer my answer, from Conversations with God, to the searing and penetrating questions with which this exploration began. We need to make some sense of what happened in Newtown last week, and about what’s happening all over the world on this very day. What is going on with our species — and why? The exploration here continues… And until next we meet here to move that exploration forward, I send you my deepest hope that you will experience God’s infinite caring and unconditional love, and that Divine Compassion will comfort you at this hour, even as It comforts those directly and immediately affected by all of the violence and dysfunction occurring on our planet. May God’s blessings come to you and move through you to everyone whose life you touch this day. http://www.theglobalconversation.com/blog/?p=3178 Path : p
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