My dear friends...

Following is the third installment of an extended series of commentaries. Over the next three weeks Neale Donald Walsch offers deep insight on the nature of life and the reason it is the way it is. This week Neale’s topic is: 

Embarking on the Journey - Keeping body and soul together

I said in this space last week that I would next discuss the reason for our temporary and selective amnesia during our life on Earth; the reason that we have to forget who we are in order to remember and experience who we are. I said that, but today I am going to move in a different direction and get to that piece next week, because I find myself today wishing to express more clearly something I said here in my last entry, so that confusion might be avoided.

Last week I made the following statement:

"If you believe that life has anything to do -- anything at all -- with the needs or goals or accomplishments of your body, then you haven't understood anything at all about the purpose of your existence, about the reason you, a spiritual being, chose to travel through time and space with your body and dwell in the realm of physicality."

I did not mean to infer or imply that we should spend no time whatsoever pursuing pleasure's of the body or the joys of fully experiencing physicality. Indeed, I would like to say to you now, very clearly, that just the opposite is true. We have brought ourselves here from the Realm of the Spiritual to the Realm of the Physical for the specific purpose of experiencing with joy ALL the wonders and the beauty and the treasures that can only be found in physical life.

"Only?"

Yes, only. Certain treasures can only be found in physical life. If these experiences could be had in the Realm of the Spiritual, we would have no reason to come into physical form. It must be understood that we are moving from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical Realm for a reason. We are coming here to life on the earth in order that we might gain a "world of experience." And what it is that we wish to experience is all that we have come to know about ourselves in the Realm of the Spiritual. And so we see that the journey of evolution is a matter of "keeping body and soul together." Even in the Spiritual Realm we have a "body." It is simply a different kind of body than that which we carry around with is in our time of physicality. It is our ethereal body, but it is our body nonetheless.

The biggest misunderstanding of so many religions is the idea that "heaven" exists on the "other side," and that this is what constitutes the so-called "spiritual world." In fact, in Ultimate Reality there are two realms.

These are not, as is commonly thought, the realms of Heaven and Hell. Rather, these are the Realm of the Spiritual and the Realm of the Physical. And the Realm of the Physical is not analogous to "hell." It is not another way of referring to Hades. In fact, there is no such place as Hades. Hell does not exist. The Realm of the Spiritual and the Realm of the Physical are two distinct realms within the Kingdom of Heaven.

That's right! Earth is part of Heaven!

We do not come here to this planet as a "test." We do not come here to be tested. Nor do we enter into physicality in order that we might "learn" something. We enter into physicality in order that we might experience who and what we know ourselves to be. Physicality and the Realm of the Relative are tools created by Divine Intelligence allowing us to create an experience of Who We Really Are, which experience is not available to us in this delicious form in the Realm of the Absolute.

Our time here is not meant to be a time of travail, but a time of bliss. The Contextual Field that we have created as a means of experiencing the bliss can be embraced as a gift and a blessing. It is merely a matter of how we look at things. It is simply a choice regarding the perspective that we take.

So while we are here on earth we are not required to wear a hair shirt and walk around with a begging bowl. We are not required to deny ourselves any of the pleasures of physicality as a means of proving ourselves worthy of God's love, or of elevating ourselves to a level of "higher consciousness," or of expanding our awareness. The word "enlightenment" does not equate with the word "miserable." Nor does "detachment" mean the same thing as "denial."

The truly enlightened being is a person who is not so deeply attached to physical forms and experiences that the absence of them causes a loss of happiness. Life urges us to enjoy physical experiences of many types, but not to require them.

It is through the enjoyment of the many aspects of physicality that we bring ourselves a rich experience and a powerful internal awareness of our true nature and our true identity.

This series of commentaries opened with a deep look at how time flies, how quickly our lives pass before us. This is good news, not bad. We were given this news as a comfort when we left Home. You see, we did not really want to leave. At some level, though we knew it was all part of the process and the cycle of life, we did not want to go. But no sooner did we enter our physical form than the angels began to minister to us, whispering: "Be of good cheer! You'll be Home in no time!"

They were, of course, being quite literal. But they also meant that in relative terms. They were conveying to us that our "time" here would pass very quickly. It would be like the blink of an eye.

As I said, we understood at the soul level that the journey to physicality was part of the endless cycle of Life Itself, and that the Realm of the Physical was created for us as the place where we could Experience what we had come to Know about who we really are. But leaving Home is never easy. Not when Home is as wonderful as ours is.

And the angels not only gave us comfort, but a great clue. They said, "If you want to really move through your next physical life quickly, if you want to really make 'time fly,' here is a secret formula: have fun. Make a joyful noise! You will find that your physical life will be over before you know it!"

What a great piece of information! What a marvelous secret! What a terrific insight! Humanity has taken this insight and reduced it to seven words: Time flies when you are having fun. Fun and joy are the jet fuel in the engine of life! We can have the experience of moving through our physical life quickly, and being Home again very fast, by just having fun!

I recently had this exchange…

FROM KAREN...Apparently Einstein said something like if we feel the day to be going quickly we are moving through time fast, similarly if the day seems to be dragging we are moving through time more slowly. I wonder what we do or fail to do to create one or the other experience? Interest or lack thereof in what we are doing I suspect?

My response: What we are doing to create one or the other experience is having fun. If we are having fun, time moves quickly.  If we are not, time moves slowly. A happy person packs more into a day than a sad person ever will. The question is: How does a person become happy? The answer: Happiness is not something we obtain from any moment; it is something we bring to it. Happiness is not a reaction; it is a creation. A Master is not one is who is happy because something happens. A Master is one who is happy and then something happens.

And the marvelous thing about "being happy" is that it requires nothing. Nothing but a decision. Remember that always. It is an amazing piece of wisdom. Nothing is required to be happy but a decision. It is a simple choice to notice that everything is perfect just the way it is. As my son is fond of saying, "It's all good."

So I want to make it clear here that Enlightenment is not about self-deprivation, it’s about just the opposite. It's about celebration. You are invited by life to celebrate yourself and to enjoy all the pleasures of life. And you are invited to notice that part of the process of your evolution is to look to see what you call "pleasure." For it is by what we call pleasure that we can measure the degree to which we humans have evolved. Our Pleasure is Our Measure.

So when I said that your life has nothing to do with your body, I did not mean that you are supposed to ignore your body, or step aside from its pleasures. Yet you may wish to redefine them. Does it bring you pleasure, for instance, to fill the lungs in your body with cell-killing smoke? Then do so

Does it bring you pleasure to watch other people hurt each other in what you call "sport"? Then do so.

Do you want to know how highly evolved you have become? Simply look to what you call "pleasure." Humanity as a whole can do the same thing. What do we call "sport"? What do we call "pleasure"? What do we call "enjoyable"?

I also meant to convey in my comments the other day that your body is not the beginning and the end of your experience here upon the earth. Bodily pleasures are outcomes, not goals. They are part of the process of life, not the process itself. Indeed, it is when we focus primarily on the goal of meeting our bodily needs and desires that we rarely do. And even in the few moments when we do, it is never enough. Because the more the body gets, the more the body wants.

Yet when we come to the understanding that what we are here for is the evolution of the human soul, we suddenly change our focus -- and the irony is that with this shift, all the peace, all the joy, all the happiness, all the bliss for which our body was yearning can be experienced Right Here, Right Now. All the safety, all the security, all the opportunity to express and experience the simple joys, are ours. That for which we have been struggling comes to us without effort.

This is the wonder and the glory of the spiritual journey. Yet it can only be encountered and experienced by those who have embarked on the journey itself.

With Pure Love,

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