A Note from Neale...

This week we continue to explore a fundamental question: Why is life sometimes so difficult? I said before that "nothing happens without purpose, nothing occurs by chance, there is no such thing as coincidence, and there are no victims and no villains in the world. Everything is placed before us so that it might bring benefit TO us. It's all in how we react." 

It is difficult for many people to embrace these ideas. On some days, it is difficult to me to embrace them. Like everyone else, I am not immune to being overcome by events that are not what I had hoped for. When such things occur, I keep having to ask myself, "Who am I, and who do I choose to be, in the face of this?" 

Often, I have to reinvent myself, because the "me" that I am being in that moment is not the "me" that I would choose; not the "me" that I would wish that I could be. And so I try to "recreate myself anew, in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about who I am. 

This is not always easy. In fact, in my experience it seldom is. Sometimes I just want to drop all this "spirituality stuff," just turn around and run. Or go hide some place. Find a neat little hideaway somewhere and go there and never show my face again. Just live out my days like a "regular person" and not worry about having to "walk my talk" as "the man who wrote the book." In Conversations with God I feel I have produced something that I now am being invited to step into. It is something way above me, way beyond me, calling me to a higher way of being. 

I am told in CwG that Life is so difficult because we call forth and collectively create Life's Events in perfect order and in perfect time, so that, as spiritual beings, we may play out the perfect solution to the perfect problem: how to perfectly produce Perfection Itself—which is Who We Are. 

In other words (and in fewer words), Life's Events invite us to a grander and grander expression of who we really are. Yet we cannot move into or create that grander expression if we don't have the foggiest notion of Who That Is. An artist can have all the paints in the world on his palette, but he cannot paint anything until he has a picture in his head. It must be either something just before him at which he is looking, or something in his mind's eye that he is seeing in his imagination, but he must have some image somewhere of what he wants to paint. 

We are the artists of the heavens. We can create breathtaking pictures, but we must have an image somewhere in our mind's eye of what we are trying to create. 

From childhood many of us in certain cultures have been told that we were "made in the image and likeness of God." If this is true, then we are invited to recreate ourselves in this image. Such a notion, such a life mission, if you will, calls upon all of our resources, all of our courage, all of our determination and commitment, and all of our humility as well. For Life will humble us, that is for sure, and if we have no humility to offer, we will break. 

And so, I attempt very hard to humbly welcome every disclosure of myself to myself, through all the events of my life. Life, and its Events, reveals "me" to me—and then invites me to reveal a new "me" to me through the process of recreation. 

And so I pray, in Life's most difficult moments, a prayer of gratitude. That is, if I have my wits about me, if I am on top of my game, if I am present in this moment now, and not caught somewhere in my mind, where Guilt and Fear reside. 

One of my life's wonderful teachers, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, used to say, "Guilt and Fear are the only enemies of Man." I considered that a communication straight from God, through Elisabeth. God is talking to us all the time; we are having conversations with God every moment, and we are calling this something else. 

And so, why is life so difficult? Because it is designed to bring us the greatest—and then the next greatest—opportunities to recover our Selves. That is, to be once again who we always were and always are. 

Kermit the Frog—the wonderful Muppet character on Sesame Street—used to say, "It's not easy being green." To which I want to add, "It's not easy being Divine." 

To which God wants to add: "...until it is." 

This business of becoming who we already are and always were gets easier, I am told. I am trusting in that. I am trusting in God. 

Love & Hugs,