Gene's Blog

Ennui – part deux

October 24th, 2007 | by gene |

It still isn’t ennui, but hey, that’s where this started so I may as well continue with the, ummm, continuation under the same title. Then again, nothing I’ve ever read, or seen, that had part deux in its title was worth reading, or seeing, so caveat emptor, even if you aren’t paying for this privilege, that is, if this is a privilege. :^) Where I left this yesterday was:

Neale: “You’ve made this point before.”

God: “Yes, and you’ve done this thing before – not once, but several times.”

Neale seems a bit put out that God is being consistent since, he then says, “Sometimes this book seems to be going in circles, making the same points over and over again.

God responds: “Sort of like life.”

Neale: “Touche.”

God: The process here is that you’re asking the questions and I’m merely answering them. If you ask the same question three different ways, I’m obliged to continue answering it.”

Neale: “Maybe I keep hoping You’ll come up with a different answer. You take a lot of the romance out of it when I ask You about relationships. What’s wrong with falling head over heels in love without having to think about it.”

God: “Nothing. Fall in love with as many people as you like that way. But if you’re going to form a lifelong relationship with them, you may want to add a little thought.

On the other hand, if you enjoy going through relationships like water – or, worse yet, staying in one because you think you “have to,” then living a life of quiet desperation – if you enjoy repeating these patterns from your past, keep right on doing what you’ve been doing.”

Neale: “Okay, okay. I get it. Boy, You’re relentless, aren’t You?”

God: “That’s the problem with truth. The truth is relentless. It won’t leave you alone. It keeps creeping up on you from every side, showing what’s really so. That can be annoying.”

Neale: “Okay. So I want to find the tools for a long-term relationship – and you say entering relationships purposefully is one of them.”

God: “Yes. Be sure your and your mate agree on purpose.
If you both agree at a conscious level that the purpose of your relationship is to create an opportunity for, not an obligation – an opportunity for growth, for full Self-expression, for lifting your lives to their highest potential, for healing every false thought or small idea you have ever had about you, and for ultimate reunion with God through the communion of your two souls – if you take that vow instead of the vows you’ve been taking – the relationship has begun on a very good note. It’s gotten off on the right foot. That’s a very good beginning.”

Neale: “Still, it’s no guarantee of success.”

God: “If you want guarantees in life, then you don’t want life. You want rehearsals for a script that’s already been written. Life by its nature cannot have guarantees, or its whole purpose is thwarted.

Neale: “Okay. Got it. So now I’ve got my relationship off to this “very good start.” Now, how do I keep it going?”

God: “Know and understand that there will be challenges and difficult times.

Don’t try to avoid them. Welcome them. Gratefully. See them as grand gifts from God; glorious opportunities to what you came into the relationship – and life to do.

Try very hard not to see your partner as the enemy, or the opposition, during these times.

In fact, seek to see no one, and nothing, as the enemy – or even the problem. Cultivate the technique of seeing all problems as opportunities. Opportunities to…” (gene notes, God sounds a lot like some people I know, giggle)

Neale: “…I know, I know – “be, and decide, Who You Really Are.”

God: “Right! You’re getting it! You are getting it!”

Neale: “Sounds like a pretty dull life to me.”

God: “Then you’re setting your sights too low. Broaden the scope of your horizons. Extend the depth of your vision. See more in you than you think there is to be seen. See more in your partner too.

You will never disserve your relationship – nor anyone- by seeing more in another than they are showing you. For there is more there. Much more. It is only their fear that stops them from showing you. If others notice that you see them as more, they will feel safe to show you what you obviously already see.”

Neale: “People tend to live up to our expectations of them.”

God: “Something like that. I don’t like the word “expectations” here. Expectations ruin relationships. Let’s say that people tend to see in themselves what we see in them. The grander our vision, the grander their willingness to access and display the part of them we have shown them.

Isn’t that how all truly blessed relationships work? Isn’t that part of the healing process – the process by which we give people permission to “let go” of every false thought they’ve ever had of themselves?

Isn’t that what I am doing here, in this book for you?”

Neale: “Yes.”

God: “And that is the work of God. The work of the soul is to wake yourself up. The work of God is to wake everybody else up.

Ahhh. Mmmm. That is soul-satisfying. Or soul-stirring. Or perhaps both. Don’t you think?

I want to close this bit with a last quote as chapter 8 ends. Believe me, I have barely touched on chapter 8, it is filled with wisdom and light. And wonderful advice. I have said often, that I recommend only books 1 and 2, in truth I don’t know how many Neale has actually written by now, though I own at least three others, two of which I’ve read once, one of which I’ve not opened, and doubt I ever will, my jenna is a demanding taskmistress, giggle. Okay, not that, but she knows what is “right’ for me to see and when, and I have been taking, mostly, okay almost mostly, her advice long enough now to trust her when she tells me to stay out of something, to at least attempt to stay out of it. A quick example, for some reason, months ago, a movie caught my eye while I was trolling the movie channels, Lovers of the Arctic Circle, it said it was a hauntingly beautiful love story of two people whose lives had been intertwined since they were 8. It was in spanish, I didn’t know that part, subtitled, I set my dvr to record it and have had it there for months. Now something has happened with my dvr, the color red seems to have disappeared and I am going to have it replaced, so I need, I thought, to watch these things I have recorded and never watched. So the other night, I watched that movie and found out why jen had never let me really do that. It was hauntingly beautiful and an odd love story, but the flipping thing ended with her getting killed by a bus JUST after they’d flown thousands of miles from different countries to meet each other in a place they treasured as children. I was aghast. I couldn’t believe I had watched that whole thing waiting for them to finally get together to have it end like that. I HATE endings like that. I just hate them. I won’t watch movies that have bad endings. I just want everything to ALWAYS turn out well, and it just so hurts within when it doesn’t. I just sat there stunned, unbelieving I had just given 108 minutes of my life over to a movie that ended so horribly. Life can’t be that way. I know it can’t always be happy endings, but damn it, my MOVIES can be! All jenna said was, this is why you never had the impetus to watch that movie, honey. And why you should have listened to me in the first place. But, I swear, sometimes her voice is so soft, or my determination so loud, I blow past what I should have heeded. Tricky thing this sort of guidance, this listening for the small still voice within. Sometimes we have to shut our own voice down in order to hear it. And engage in the conversation within to understand it. Being stubborn has just never been a good tactic for me, giggle. I don’t know why I don’t seem able to get that. Anyway, back to the books, out of book 3, the only thing I really “liked” were the vows Neale and his new wife wrote. I barely remember them and I do remember parts of them were annoying to me, but parts of them incorporated what God talked about above. To heal every small or false thought each other has ever had about themselves, together, well, that seems to me to be a very good beginning indeed. And He’s right, of course, if you want guarantees, you don’t want life, you want a script. And, here? There isn’t one. None but that which we ourselves write each day with the choices we make and don’t make. Sooooo.

Chapter 8 closes cutely. I like cute. So bear with me. I think you’ll like this too. :^)

God: “…Why don’t we end this chapter with a joke?”

Neale: “Good idea. You got one?”

God: “No, but you do. Tell the one about the little girl drawing a picture…”

Neale: “Oh, yes, that one. Okay. Well, a Mommy came in the kitchen one day to find her little girl at the table, crayons everywhere, deeply concentrating on a freehand picture she was creating. “My, what are you so busy drawing?”, the Mommy asked. “It’s a picture of God, Mommy,” the beautiful girl replied, eyes shining. “Oh, honey, that’s so sweet, ” the Mommy said, trying to be helpful. “But, you know, no one knows what God looks like.”
“Well,”, chirped the little girl, “if you’ll just let me finish…”

God: That’s a beautiful little joke. Do know what’s most beautiful? The little girl never doubted that she knew exactly draw Me!”

Now, I’ll tell you a story, and with that we can end this chapter.”

Neale: “Alright.”

God: There once was a man who suddenly found himself spending hours each week writing a book. Day after day he would race to pad and pen – to capture each new inspiration. Finally someone asked him what he was up to. “Oh,” he replied, “I’m writing down a very long conversation I’m having with God.”
“That’s very sweet,” his friend indulged him, “but, you know, no one really knows what God would say.”
“Well,” the man grinned, “if you’ll just let me finish.”

Okay, I found that amusing. It isn’t the only giggle in these two books, I don’t mean to paint them as nothing but toil and trouble either. What I find in them is truth. Or at least what resonates within me as truth. And, of course, I have jen, giggle. So, there are things in both books that she tells me are not so, but I’d say, and she agrees, 90% of what is in these two books is worth the trouble of reading AND thinking about. And, gasp, perhaps, even trying to incorporate into one’s life. That is the hard part. Not only discovering, uncovering, re-membering one’s own truth, but then living it. It is a goal worthy of aspiring toward though I think. We humans live in such chaos. Sometimes I wonder how we ever got foothold on this planet, let alone came to be the dominant species on it.

I have “stuff” in me about that, but that is for another time, maybe a long way off time, giggle. But what I want to close with is just to say, that what God talked about up there, living a life of “quiet desperation”, isn’t really living at all. And that is the state most of our world exists in day to day. Even here in the exceptionally well-fed and over-stimulated United States, far too many of us live lives of quiet desperation. Afraid of rocking the boat. Afraid of what lies beneath it. And, if we here can feel this way, so many of us, so unnoticed, imagine what life must be like in so many other parts of the world, where the very real possibility of having not only your lunch, but your entire restaurant blow up with you in it, exists as a daily possibility. What of they? Those souls? What sort of desperation must they feel? What happens to children born there? Whose mothers lived in constant fear while those babies were developing within? The book I’ve mentioned before, the Biology of Transcendence, by Joseph Chilton Pearce, poses some very interesting, sobering thoughts about that.

If this world is to have a chance, if our species is to ever be able to not only dominate this planet but co-exist with it, the conditions much of the people of our world must improve. Fear must no longer be the constant companion of the world’s population. How do we do that? By lifting our lives to their highest potential, by healing every false thought or small idea we have ever had about ourselves OR others, by entering into relationship with each other, I am not speaking of marital relationships here although they are included, but of enduring respect and friendship, by reaching out across our oceans of despair with loving arms and enfolding each other in opportunities for growth and healing. By expressing the truth of Who We Really Are in each moment that we can, and seeing our own reflection in all we meet, regardless their color of skin or cultural tradition, by recognizing that under those multi-hued skin suits, we are all children of a living God, a creator who has not abandoned us, but who has given us the opportunity to create ourselves here, to define ourselves here, to recognize Her in each others eyes. We can do this. There are people here now, trying very hard to do exactly this. And some of them are succeeding.

If you wish to distrust someone, distrust the one who tries to sell you the truth of you. That which is given by God to us as free gifts, should never be for sale. Jesus never passed the offering plate. People gave freely to support His “ministry”, he did not charge for what God gave Him freely. I will grant people the right to make a living. But to withhold a gift given by God, for money, isn’t truth-sharing, it is spiritual extortion. And that is not of God. I’ll talk more about THAT topic another time, it tends to fire me up a little, giggle. And a day is coming when I will have quite a lot to say about that, but for the moment, those who ask you to open your wallet that they might live lives of quiet ostentation, are not coming to you in the name of God, but of man. And man has a sorry record on this planet.  Read a book, you’ll see. Read the bible, you’ll see. You needn’t buy Neale’s books, I don’t deny him the right to make a living either, neither does God as you’ll read in his books, but they’re available at libraries as well as book stores.

I am not criticizing those who have something to share, I am saying one does not sell what God gives us. If people wish to support it, they will. Freely. Making commerce out of spirituality is, to me and for me, something I, in my own definition of who I am, find “wrong”. Is that judgmental? It is indeed. But as God explains in book 1, we come here to make such judgments, by that which we judge “right” and “wrong” do we define Who We Really Are. And I am not a huckster for God. Or anything else for that matter. What I share here, is inspired from within, not all by Neale’s books, as I explained on my main site, once I got past my “lutheran” tradition, I didn’t find an idea in them that I did not already know and believe. Neale just put those ideas together in a way that made a huge impact on my life, at a time when I needed a huge impact. I am happy to have supported his effort by buying his books. I have bought and given away many more than I care to admit here, giggle. Because truth is where you find it, and sometimes you need to start that search without, before you understand that the truth is where it always has been, within. On that note, back into the night for me. I have some reading I need do, want to do. And won’t write again for a couple days at least. So, ttyl (talk to you later), giggle, much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene