Awesome Commentary From Neal Donald Walsh

[Oscar Carter]

"Can London be healed?

Notes From Neale Hello my friends... It is impossible for me to ignore this week the events that have occurred in London, and so I will be addressing that situation in a Letter to the Editor that I received yesterday. As we open the Bulletin however, I want to pick up where I left off in our last issue. If you have been with us these past two weeks you knew that in this space we have begun a deep discussion of The Holy Experience. We have done so in answer to a letter we received from a man named Matt. I asked at the end of last week's writing for you to let me know if you wanted me to continue this particular topic. We received literally hundreds of emails over the past week asking us to do so. So today I offer the conclusion of my response to Matt. (You may wish to reference the last issues of the Bulletin if you have them on your computer to "catch up" to where we are now...) Matt...You have asked: "Should we try to show others what we consider 'true', or should we only try to share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships?" Now Matt, you have placed your question inside a riddle that offers two choices---yet these choices are not, in truth, mutually exclusive. It does not have to be one or the other, as you have posed it. I believe we can do both. Our "mission" vis-a-vis people of other faiths is to accept them exactly as they are. Not to seek to convert them, not to judge them, and certainly not to condemn them. As we share with others, learn from them, and build reciprocal friendships, we DO "show others what we consider true." In fact, that is the most effective way to show it. Thus, we set people free from their own limiting beliefs about us. This eventually will set them free from their own limiting beliefs about themselves. Soon they, too, will know Who They Really Are. And so, Matt, walk through the world not as one who seeks to convert or convince others of anything, but simply as one who seeks to know others as Everything. When you know all of it as Everything, then you know your Self as Everything as well. You see your Self in every other person. Indeed, in every other thing that exists. Suddenly, the magnificence and the glory of Who You Are becomes apparent to you. It becomes part of your experience. It is no longer something you know intellectually; it is something you know experientially. Many people have had this experience (the experience of being Everything) momentarily. They have had it in meditation, perhaps, or in a time of pure silence, or in the midst of an impactful interaction with another (such as sexual union or laughing until tears come, or weeping together, or walking alone through the woods on a sunlit morning, or swimming in the ocean, or, simply...washing dishes.) I call this The Holy Experience. It is when you know Who You Really Are. While many people have had this experience momentarily, the trick is to have it continually. Or at least a great deal more of the time. That was the yearning of the Buddha. It was the journey of the Christ. It is the opportunity placed before each of us. Many Masters have shown us the way. The way is for us to BE the way. I am The Way and The Life. Follow me. This is what all Masters have declared. This is what all Students have understood. Therefore, do not look for your Master, BE the Master for whom you have been looking. Do not seek the Truth, BE the Truth you have been seeking. And do not attempt to change another, BE the change you wish to see. That is your mission, Matt, and there is no other. Bless you, Matt, with the knowing of Who You Really Are. May God be experienced by you through you, and through the living of your life. Love always, and all ways... Hugs and Love, P.S. The Holy Experience is a full length book that you may download for free at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. Simply click on the Free Resources icon.

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Letters to the Editor

Dear Neale...I am dismayed and disheartened by all that has taken place in my beautiful city since the publication of your last Bulletin just one week ago. How much can change in just 7 days! Please tell me, what in the world is going on here??? And, more important, is there any way we can heal our world from its increasing, seemingly never-end, violence? Love and sadness...BKG, London

Neale Responds Dear BKG...I wrote about this extensively during the week in The Global Conversation, and rather than start over here, I would like to simply re-publish in this space what I offered there -- which, by the way, drew more than 125 entries in the Comments section of this blogsite. (www.TheGlobalConversation.com) Here is what I wrote there... It is younger people who appear, in the main, to be the rioters and looters in the U.K. Press reports quoted Chris Sims, Chief Constable in Birmingham. Many of the young people arrested or caught on camera were "astonishingly young teenagers, girls and boys," he said, as he appealed to parents to keep their children at home Tuesday night. The saddest part of the whole scenario is that they are damaging and destroying stores and businesses in their neighborhoods -- in most cases establishments run by older adults in their own communities. And so, in what is a metaphor for all of life, their violence--while failing utterly to make the point they wish to make--is hurting themselves and those they love. The rioting was said to have started as a protest against the police (see further discussion of this below)...but the burning of buildings and the looting of stores reveals at least an expansion of that agenda, if not a complete abandonment of it. A BBC reporter spoke with some of the young people -- teenage girls standing by on the sidewalk as stores in their neighborhood burned -- and asked, "But why are you picking on shops and businesses in your own neighborhood?" A teenage girl replied, "It's the rich people. They're the ones who own the shops. We're showing the rich people that we can do what we want." The London mayor's office released a statement Tuesday which seemed to confirm that the riots spreading to many neighborhoods are "not about the black community and the police, it's about young people and the police." The statement was made by a youth worker, Shaun Bailey, and released through the mayor's office. "And let's not beat around the bush and pretend this is some type of social justice protest," Bailey said. "It's sheer criminality." Today we are moved to ask: What is it that allows human beings to justify their own involvement in such violence? What could a person possibly say to himself that could make himself feel okay about what he is doing? I believe it is a reflection of the entire Cultural Story of humanity, which says that violent protest is an appropriate way, and perhaps the only way, to "fight back" against "the system" and to protest a governance structure, an economic construction, and a societal way of life that seem to be working against, and not for, too many people. What I see when I take a look is that it is the Cultural Story of humanity that is fueling what so many people actually think, and what so many people actually do. If the young people who are now rioting in London had been taught at an early age that We Are All One, the riots could and would never have occurred. Similarly, if the government and the police and the whole general society in London and throughout the world had been acting in accordance with the precepts of humanity's Oneness, and if the systems of governance and economics had been as supportive of all people as they would be under a We Are All One scenario...the riots would never have gotten started in London or anywhere else. I don't agree with those riots as a form of protest, but I understand them. They are a visible symptom of the condition facing humanity everywhere right now. In America, a bill just passed in Washington to raise the country's debt ceiling, and to pay for it by lowering benefits to the poor and the middle class, meanwhile refusing to raise one red cent of additional revenue from the wealthy. An increase in taxes of even one-half of one percent on those who earn huge amounts of money could raise billions--but no, we need to lower Medicare benefits for the poor and Social Security payments to the elderly. How long do human beings think that such behavior can go on? Yet the solution is not violence As I said, the riots in London appear to have been instigated by the shooting death of a young man in a police action last Thursday--a turn of events that has apparently served as starter fuel for much of what has happened since. I can make no judgment on whether the police shooting was justified in any way, but I do know--as we all know--that violence can never be an antidote for violence, and that, as Albert Einstein famously said, a problem cannot be solved by utilizing the same energy that created it. Or, as my mother used to say, two "wrongs" don't make a "right," and so, even if the police are found to have acted inappropriately in the way they handed the situation in question (the incident is now being investigated), wholesale violence and looting for four days following cannot possibly be useful or helpful, and it certainly can't be healing. Saying such a thing seems to be making a statement of the obvious, yet it does bring to the fore a Larger Question: What would be useful and healing? TO BULLETIN READERS...I will offer my response to this question in this space next week. London, and the world, can be healed. But someone has to ask the Only Question No One Wants to Ask. Please return here in our next issue. It could be the most important one we've sent out in a long time. Until then...I send you love. Neale "