Neale Donald Walsch

Are All Our Experiences Choices?

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Neale Donald Walsch | February 24 2012

My dear friends…

There are many areas of life, many situations, in which you may choose to have the Holy Experience.

Now that may sound like a strange thing to say, so let’s take a look at it. At first, it may seem strange to speak of the Holy Experience as something that you “choose to have.” Most people think of things that are holy as things that are rare. Or at the very least, not controllable in the first person. That is, they do not see themselves as being at cause in the matter.

In fact, they are. We all are. All of us. We are “choosing to have” all of the experiences that we are having, moment-to-moment.

Now remember, I said all of the experiences, not all of the conditions, circumstances, or events. An “experience” is something that you feel inside about something that is happening outside. Your “experience” of something is “how it felt to you.” It is nothing more, and nothing less, than that.

In the world of Duality Thinking (which is the world in which most of us live), you could imagine that somebody else is “doing something” to you, or that some seemingly uncontrollable outward condition, such as the weather, has been encountered by you, without you having anything to do with it. (This is impossible, actually, but in the world of our illusion such impossibilities can seem very real.)

The world of Duality Thinking says that there is Us. and It, or U.S. and Them. In the world of Non-Duality Thinking there is only Us and Us. There is nothing else but Us in differing form.

If there is only Us, then nothing can be happening To us, and everything must be happening Through us.

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“Are You A Spiritual Scrooge?

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Neale Donald Walsch | February 3 2012

godMy dear friends…

We are embarked in this space on a year-long exploration of The Holy Experience. I hope and trust that you are enjoying it as much as I am.

The Holy Experience is just like any other form of wealth. You cannot fully experience it until you share it with others. What good does it do you to have inherited a million dollars if you never spend so much as a nickel of it?

Like the Walt Disney comic book character Uncle Scrooge McDuck sitting there ogling his pile of gold, you’ll find that there’s not much joy in holding onto it. Yet if you grab a handful of it and give it to others–go on a “spending spree”–suddenly you know experientially what having that money is all about.

Similarly, if you keep the Holy Experience all to yourself, you will find after a very short while that you are experiencing the smallest part of it. Yet if you grab a handful of it and give it to others – go on a “spiritual spending spree”–suddenly you know experientially what having the Holy Experience is all about.

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Step Out of Yesterday

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Neale Donald Walsch | January 18 2012

My dear friends

DivinityWe spoke here last week about Awareness as a step on the road to The Holy Experience. There are just a few more words I want to say on that subject before I move to this week’s exploration…

Awareness is a very, very important aspect of Life. I think it’s an important quality to nurture and to grow. If we can grow in Awareness, I think that we grow in one of the most vital ways. I think that Awareness is Vitality. I think it is Spiritual Vitality. I think that one is “spiritually vital” when one is Aware—and I think that when one is Aware one becomes “spiritually vital.” I’m saying that I think the effect is circular.

So look deeply into each moment. Savor each nanosecond. Don’t miss a single cloud formation, if you can help it. Or a single fragrance. Or a single nuance in the energy of your Beloved. Don’t miss this; don’t miss this, Don’t Miss This.

When you are aware–deeply aware–of the wonder of Now (Eckhart Tolle has written marvelously on this subject), you find it really very easy to declare that you are now having The Holy Experience.

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The Holy Experience

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Neale Donald Walsch | December 16 2011

DivinityHello my wonderful friends…

As you know if you are a regular reader, we have been discussing here the steps toward The Holy Experience. And we concluded our exploration last week with an intriguing question: How can a thing that is inherently limited be virtually unlimited?

One of my friends, who I have quoted before here, Bill Fischofer, says this: “Mathematically, this is the distinction between being infinite and being unbounded. The divine is an actual infinity, something which is completely beyond any attempt at comprehension. Individuations of the divine are finite but unbounded, meaning that at any instant they have finite extent but that their capacity for growth and new experience is not limited. We are thus asymptotes of the divine.”

(I probably would spend the rest of my life without ever using the word “asymptotes, but then, Bill is a genius and I, a mere human.)

The solution to the paradox lies in the fact that we are unlimited in what we can ultimate know and experience of ourselves–and the moment we know and experience all that there is to know and experience, we will immediately create more to know and experience.

So we can know our Selves completely, and the moment we know our Selves completely, we do not. We accomplish this neat trick by simply changing the definition of “completely.” Only a God could do this, and that is, of course, exactly who we are.

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The Most Important Key Of All

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Neale Donald Walsch | Neale Donald Walsch
December 8 2011

We continue this week our ongoing series on The Holy Experience. As I said last week, the second step in creating the Holy Experience is understanding that you are worthy of having it. This understanding is born of the clarity that God finds us whole, complete, and perfect just as we are, in this moment, for we are not judged by God in any way.

Yet even if we accept that God will never judge us and never has, there is still the question of our own self-judgment–the harshest judgment of all. And so a major process for us, a huge portion of our internal work and of our personal preparation for the Holy Experience, and what we termed the most important key of all, has to do with self-forgiveness.

Almost always it is easier for people to embrace the idea that God forgives them than it is for them to forgive themselves. We have a whole list of “wrongs” we imagine ourselves to have done in our lives, and we can’t forget them.

We, and only we, know the inner workings of our mind, the quiet scheming of our heart, the sad assessment of our very human conscience, as we look at our lives and give ourselves a grade.

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