A Letter to Neale

Dear Neale,

If we are creating our realities by our thoughts, words and actions, what about the victims of brutal crimes, senseless slaughters/mutilations? Do those people choose to die that way?

Alfreda, PA

Neale Responds

My friend,

You have asked a very fair and penetrating question. And the issue is even larger than you have stated it. For it is not only a matter of our intentions and choices, but of God’s. I mean, is it God’s will (even if it is not ours) that these horrible things should happen? Philosophers and theologians have been trying to answer that question from the beginning of time.

Alfreda, I was given an extraordinary answer to this question when I asked it in my dialogue.

First, it was made clear to me that there are no victims and no villains in life. Now that was difficult for me, because to my eyes so many of the things we have done to each other are very cruel, very horrible, and to me the people who perpetrated these heinous crimes certainly were the “villains” of our society. Still, God said in CwG, Book 2, “I have sent you nothing but angels.” And the parable of The Little Soul and the Sun in CwG, Book 1 explains how this could be true.

That parable has been made into a wonderful children’s book of the same name by Hampton Roads. I cannot recommend it highly enough as a way for children (and adults) to better understand why, as wonderful Rabbi Lawrence Kushner puts it, “bad things happen to good people.”

In brief (re-read the CwG or children’s book material to get the full essence of this), the human soul is an aspect of divinity, choosing freely to experience life in the universe (and, as part of that experience, life on earth from time to time) as a means of recreating and experiencing itself as who it is. Now in the realm of the relative (which is the realm in which we live in the physical worlds), you cannot experience that Which You Are except in the space of that Which You Are Not. For in the absence of that Which You Are Not, that which you are—is not!

That is, Alfreda in the absence of “small,” the concept of “big” cannot be experienced. It can be imagined, but it cannot be experienced. The only way to experience a purely conceptual idea such as “big” is to experience a purely conceptual idea such as “small.” Now in very elementary terms, Alfreda, this is why God created “evil.” For in order for God to experience Itself as the all-consuming good, there had to be something called the all-consuming evil.

Of course, there was not. There was only God. God is all there was, all there is, and all there ever will be. Yet God wished to know Itself in Its own experience. This is the same wish we all have. Indeed, this “we all” I’ve just spoken of is God Itself. Every part of life is an aspect of divinity, seeking expression and experience of the divine. Yet that which is divine cannot know and experience Its own divinity except in the presence of that which is not divine. And the problem is, that which is not divine does not exist. So, since we have the power to create anything, we have simply made it up! That is to say, we have imagined it. We have literally called it forth.

Now this whole process is not one which any individual soul undertakes consciously. We set our agendas, Alfreda, long before we enter the human body. We even make agreements with other divine beings on how we might best create and experience ourselves as the aspect of divinity we choose in this lifetime. So, no, it cannot fairly be said that, at a conscious level, people choose the horrible experiences to which many of them are subjected. So what does that do to the theory that we are creating our own reality by our thoughts, words and actions? It doesn’t change it one bit.

It just explains the mechanism by which that reality comes to be experienced. As CwG carefully explains, the moment we think, say, or do a thing that initiates the process of expressing Who We Really Are, everything unlike it may come into the space. This can be necessary in order to create a context within which the experience of Self which we have chosen may be realized.

Every religion on the earth teaches forgiveness as the path to salvation. Most of them simply teach it for the wrong reason, saying that we should forgive, and leave the judging to God. Well, the news is that God will not judge, either. Would God ask us to do something that God would not do? That would be asking us to be bigger than God! Yet the reason God will never judge, and asks us not to judge, either, will be made clear to us when we return to the realm of the absolute. It is then we will understand again God’s promise: “I have sent you nothing but angels.”

I strongly recommend that you get a copy of The Little Soul and the Sun. And read it to your children—or any children with whom you come in regular contact. For if children understand this concept early, it will change the world.

With Love,