A Note from Neale...

My Dear Friends... 

It's almost New Year's Eve...and I want to wish all of you a very happy and wonderful 2019! Congratulations! We have made it through another year! 

Several weeks back, in the Weekly Bulletin we were continuing our series of entries on "How to Connect with Our Soul." In that installment, I said we would move forward with the series in the following week. But then other things jumped into the space, and I never got back to that. 

Well, one of the Bulletin readers wrote to us this past week and asked..."Is Neale ever going to finish this series?" Fair enough. So let me backtrack just a bit here and place just below the last entry, so that those of you who missed it, or have forgotten just what it said, can "catch up"... 

In that entry I wrote... 

As you know, Conversations with God tells us that we are three-part beings, made up of Body, Mind, and Soul. Three weeks ago in this space we began to explore together the pathway to the Soul. I am motivated to embark on this exploration with you because I get many questions about the Soul, and how to "get there." If you missed earlier installments in this series, I hope you will go back and read them. 

Okay, so I have said that the first step in this process is a willingness to shift. We have to consent — as individuals, and ultimately, as a species — to undertake explorations of the realms outside the Mind...and to embrace as at least possible some of our findings there. 

If the first step is Willingness, the second step is Desire. You can be "willing" to make dinner tonight, but if you don't have the desire to get up, go into the kitchen, start grabbing stuff out of the refrigerator and throwing things together in the pan in a flash of creativity, your willingness will produce meager results....at best. 

You can be willing to go to the opera, but if you don't have the desire to get up, get dressed, get into the car and head to the opera house, you'll fall asleep before the curtain drops. 

You can be willing to make love, but if you don't have the desire, there's a high likelihood that you won't have the blissful experience of Oneness with your Beloved for which the moment was designed. 

Likewise, you can be willing to make the shift from your Mind to your Soul, but if you don't have the desire, you'll probably produce meager results at best. You may even fall back asleep even as you are seeking to wake up. And there is a high likelihood that you won't have the blissful experience of Oneness with your Beloved for which the moment was designed. 

So Desire is essential in the matter of Personal Transformation. Desire is the key. Desire, not Demand. You cannot "demand" transformation. You cannot "demand" clarity or wisdom or insight or understanding or awareness or consciousness of love. 

Desire is the essence of God's energy. God demands nothing, God requires nothing of the human race. Yet God desires much for the human race. It is not what God demands of us, but what God desires for us, that should fuel the engine of our experience. When you do something because someone demands it, you are doing it out of fear. When you do something because someone desires it, you are doing it out of love. 

When you do something because you desire it, you are doing it out of love for your Self. 

So if you do not have a deep desire to shift from Mind-based living to Soul-based living, all the willingness in the world will not be of much help to you. 

What causes Desire to be present? That's a good question. As I said, you can't demand or command it to be present. Desire is present when Desire is present, and it's not when it's not. Yet there are some ways, it seems to me, to cultivate Desire. 

And we will continue this exploration in this space next week! 

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

And now here we are, in the final few days of 2018, and that feels to me like a good time to continue this discussion. So here we go... 

What causes a desire to shift from Mind-based living to Soul-based living to be present? The answer is: Awareness. 

Awareness causes Desire, Desire creates Willingness. 

You cannot desire something of which you are unaware...and so Awareness precedes Desire in every case. You must therefore become Aware of several things: 

First, that there even IS such a thing as the "Soul." Second, what the Soul IS. Third, that YOU and all living things HAVE a Soul. Fourth, that only life forms that have reached a level of consciousness which allows them to be Self Aware at a very high level can intentionally and purposefully connect with their Soul. Fifth, that it is possible for such life forms to proceed FROM the Soul in the forming of their understandings and the making of their decisions about Life. 

In short: Soul Awareness is a product of evolution. The more evolved a species is, the more Awareness that species can achieve, given its level of Consciousness. 

We humans living in the 21st Century are very lucky. We have achieved a very high level of Consciousness. It has taken hundreds and thousands of years for our species, and those of us living today are the beneficiaries of all that evolutionary work. 

We are conscious of ourselves, and we are conscious of the fact that we are conscious. As a species that had achieved self-consciousness, we have stepped into a grander and grander awareness of ourselves and our relationship to all of Life. The opportunity of each individual now is to expand personal awareness further and further, until Complete Awareness has been achieved. 

This expansion of Awareness is a process in which individuals personally and consciously and intentionally engage. It is not something that occurs by happenstance, except in very rare instances. There are those who have had "lightening bolt experiences" in which they have achieved Total Awareness instantaneously. But for most of us, the journey is somewhat different — and somewhat longer. 

NEXT: The Journey to Awareness. 

Stay tuned... 

And once again, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

Love and Hugs,