Let
Unworthiness Melt Away
by
Neale Donald Walsch
========================
Hello my wonderful
friends...
We continue
this week our ongoing series on The Holy Experience Experience. The second step in creating the Holy Experience is understanding
that you are worthy of having it.
We touched
upon this briefly in the preceding chapter. You might say that the first step in creating the Holy Experience is believing
that such a thing is possible, and the second step is believing that such a thing is possible for you.
Most people
who suffer from unworthiness around this picked up their thoughts from religion. Many people have been told that they are
sinners, that they were born in sin, and that they will die in sin, their only hope for salvation being their constant call
for forgiveness, and God's mercy in granting it, or their belief in God's Son as the Redeemer.
Others have
been told that even if they were worthy of seeing God-- which is what the Holy Experience is all about--they would not be
able to see God anyway, because God is so magnificent and utterly unfathomable that God cannot be seen, comprehended, or experienced.
Still other
religions teach that to even try to fathom God, to try to understand God, is blasphemous. God is the Inexplicable, and should
remain so.
Conversations with God tells us that all of these premises are
false.
No one is "born
in sin." Indeed, sin itself does not exist. There is no such thing as "offending" God. Nor is God subject to stress, anger,
frustration, or disappointment. That is simply not the nature of That Which Is Divine.
Perhaps this
is a good juncture at which to undertake a brief review of just who and what God is.
In The New
Revelations we were told...
"God is not
a singular Super Being, living somewhere in the Universe or outside of it, having the same emotional needs and subject to
the same emotional turmoil as humans. That Which Is God cannot be hurt or damaged in any way, and so, has no need to seek
revenge or impose punishment."
We are told
something else there as well, something perhaps a bit more unexpected:
"God needs
nothing. God requires nothing in order to be happy. God is happiness itself. Therefore, God requires nothing of anyone or
anything in the universe."
Now if these
statements are true (and I say they are), there is no reason for us to worry about God being angry with us, nor to assess
ourselves unworthy of God's love, or of God's presence in our lives, or of the Holy Experience.
Two years later,
in Tomorrow's God, we were given an even more comprehensive close-up view of God and the nature of Divinity, with some of
the earlier revelations being essentially repeated, but with new ones added. Few of the ideas found there, however, are held
by the majority of people in today's society.
Nearly all
of these concepts violate most people's most fundamental beliefs about God. Yet if we were to embrace these concepts, I believe
that our whole lives would change.
Here is what
that extraordinary text tells us:
Tomorrow's
God does not require anyone to believe in God.
Tomorrow's God is without
gender, size, shape, color, or any of the characteristics of an individual living being.
Tomorrow's
God talks with everyone, all the time.
Tomorrow's God is separate from nothing,
but is Everywhere Present, the All In All, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Sum Total of Everything
that ever was, is now, and ever shall be.
Tomorrow's God is not a singular
Super Being, but the extra-ordinary process called Life.
Tomorrow's God
is ever changing.
Tomorrow's God is needless.
Tomorrow's
God does not ask to be served, but is the Servant of all of Life.
Tomorrow's
God will be unconditionally loving, non-judgmental, non- condemning, and non-punishing.
Given
all that we have now come to know about God, any thoughts of unworthiness melt away. This assumes, of course, that we accept
these new understandings and embrace them as truth.
In order to
do this we would have to be willing to step away from practically everything we have been told in the past about God and ourselves.
We would have to consider the possibility that there may be something we do not fully understand about God, the understanding
of which would change everything. We would have to give up our spiritual arrogance.
My friend Bill
Fischofer likes to say, "In fairness, no religion claims they 'understand' God, for all believe that He is infinite and thus
beyond understanding. The problem, always, is that our concepts of God are too small. Since God is infinite in all 'directions,'
wherever one turns one finds an inexhaustible terrain. Religion A and Religion B both find themselves in infinite fields of
wonder and thus assume that they have 'found God.' Indeed, they have, but God is so unfathomably vast that what they fail
to notice is that God is 'big enough' to contain the entirety of their (seemingly different) infinite vistas (and more). This
is why it is in the mystical traditions of religions that one finds spiritual unity (and, of course, in Conversations with
God), for only here is this larger realization glimpsed."
The followers
of many of the world's so called "mainline" religions will tell you that everything you need is in the doctrines and dogmas
of their particular faith. It's a complete road map, and all we have to do is follow it. It's the surest path to our salvation.
Indeed, say some, it is the only path.
Yet that path
has not brought humanity to its salvation, but rather, to its knees. It is time now to do something that we have not been
willing to do. It is time to question the prior assumption.
Our prior ideas
about God and Life and each other may very well be incomplete. I do not believe that they are "wrong," but I do believe that
there is more to know, that there are gaps to close, that there are blanks to fill in regarding our understanding of who we
are, who God is, and what life is all about. I believe that the gathering of this knowledge (presuming that we have the courage
to do so), the closing of these gaps, and the filling in of these blanks will render obsolete all question of your worthiness
for the Holy Experience.
Hugs and love,
Neale
