The following statement was made by Neale Donald Walsch (author of the "Conversations with God" series) on the infamous day of September 11, 2001. I found it a very meaningul text, so I decided to put it on my site. If you are more interested in this area, please check out the Spiritual and Personal Growth Resource by clicking here.
Statement - September 11, 2001 - 12 noon pst
Dear friends around the world!
The events of this day cause every thinking person to stop their
daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the
larger questions of life. We search again for not only the meaning of
life, but the purpose of our individual and collective experience as
we have created it-and we look earnestly for ways in which we might
recreate ourselves anew as a human species, so that we will never
treat each other this way again.
The hour has come for us to demonstrate at the highest level our
most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are.
There are two possible responses to what has occurred today. The
first Comes from love, the second from fear.
If we come from fear we may panic and do things-as individuals and
as nations-that could only cause further damage. If we come from love
we will find refuge and strength, even as we provide it to others.
A central teaching of Conversations with God is: What you wish to
experience, provide for another.
Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience-in your own
life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may
be the source of that.
If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you
wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are
safe.
If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things,
help another to better understand.
If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the
sadness or anger of another.
Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for
guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and
for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for
love.
This is the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching.
What you teach at this time, through your every word and action right
now, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of
those whose lives you touch, both now, and for years to come.
We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this
moment.
There is much we can do, but there is one thing we cannot do. We
cannot continue to co-create our lives together on this planet as we
have in the past. We cannot, except at our peril, ignore the events
of this day, or their implications.
It is tempting at times like this to give in to rage. Anger is fear
announced, and rage is anger that is repressed, and then, when it is
released, that is often misdirected. Right now, anger is not
inappropriate. It is, in fact, natural-and can be a blessing. If we
use our anger about this day not to pinpoint where the blame falls,
but where the cause lies, we can lead the way to healing.
Let us seek not to pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause.
Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our experience, we
will never remove ourselves from the experiences it creates. Instead,
we will forever live in fear of retribution from those within the
human family who feel aggrieved, and, likewise, seek retribution from
them.
So at this time it is important for us to direct our anger toward
the cause of our present experience. And that is not necessarily
individuals or groups who have attacked others, but, rather, the
reasons they have done so. Unless we look at these reasons, we will
never be able to eliminate these attacks.
To me the reasons are clear. We have not learned the most basic
human lessons. We have not remembered the most basic human truths. We
have not understood the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, we
have not been listening to God, and because we have not, we watch
ourselves do ungodly things.
The message of Conversations with God is clear: we are all one. That
is a message the human race has largely ignored. Our separation
mentality has underscored all of our human creations.
Our religions, our political structures, our economic systems, our
educational institutions, and our whole approach to life have been
based on the idea that we are separate from each other. This has
caused us to inflict all manner of injury, one upon the other. And
this injury causes other injury, for like begets like and negativity
only breeds negativity.
It is as easy to understand as that. And so now let us pray that all
of us in this human family will find the courage and the strength to
turn inward and to ask a simple, soaring question: what would love do
now?
If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to
understand why they have done so, what then would be our response?
Yet if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack
with attack, what then will be the outcome?
These are the questions that are placed before the human race today.
They are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of
years. Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer
them at all.
We should make no mistake about this. The human race has the power
to annihilate itself. We can end life as we know it on this planet in
one afternoon.
This is the first time in human history that we have been able to
say this. And so now we must direct our attention to the questions
that such power places before us. And we must answer these questions
from a spiritual perspective, not a political perspective, and not an
economic perspective.
We must have our own conversation with God, for only the grandest
wisdom and the grandest truth can address the greatest problems, and
we are now facing the greatest problems and the greatest challenges
in the history of our species.
It is not as if we have not seen this coming. Every
spiritual,political, and philosophical writer of the past 50 years
has predicted it. So long as we continue to treat each other as we
have done on this planet, the circumstance that we face on this day
will continue to present itself. The difference is that now our
technology makes our anger much more dangerous.
In the early days of our civilization, we were able to inflict hurt
upon Each other using sticks and rocks and primitive weapons. Then,
as our technology grew, it became possible for clans to war against
clans and, ultimately, for nations to war against nations.
But even then, until most recent times, it was not possible for us
to annihilate each other completely. We could destroy a village, or a
town, or a major city, or even an entire nation, but only now is it
possible for us to destroy our whole world so fast that nothing can
stop it once the process has begun.
That is what makes this point in our history different from any
other. And that is what makes this call for each of us to have our
own conversation With God so appropriate and so important.
If we want the beauty of the world that we have co-created to be
experienced by our children and our children's children, we will
have to become spiritual activists right here, right now, and cause
that to happen. We must choose to be at cause in the matter.
So, talk with God today. Ask God for help, for counsel and advice,
for insight and for strength and for inner peace and for deep wisdom.
Ask God on this day to show us how to show up in the world in a way
that will cause the world itself to change.
That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person
today. Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to
preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the
anger and hatred-and the disparity that inevitably causes it - in
that part of the world which I touch?
Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence
that is You.
I love you, and I send you my deepest thoughts of peace.
- Neale Donald Walsch