I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent my whole life looking for my truth outside of myself.
First, I found it in my parents, who were my earliest authority figures, and who I assumed spoke Nothing But The Truth on everything.
Second, I found it in my family members–my older brothers, my aunts and uncles and the relatives with whom we visited. All of them, to some degree, were authority figures.
Then, I placed my schoolteachers in that category. My earliest teachers were nuns and priests, as I went to Roman Catholic elementary schools. The nuns taught us every day and the priest came in once a week for catechism class. I learned about God and about Life from these individuals, whom I assumed to be impeccable sources.
As a result of this, God soon became my highest Authority Figure. The only problem was that I had to depend on humans to tell me what God wanted. This I did, of course. I listened carefully to what the nuns and priests told me.
Difficulties began to arise, however. Some of what the nuns and priests told me about God and what He wanted did not seem to jibe with what my stomach told me. By that I mean, it did not “sit well.” Something inside told me that some of what I was hearing at school was not true.
I left the parochial school environment when I left the 8 th grade–and left the Church’s understandings about God behind me at just about the same time. The God that I knew in my heart just didn’t seem to be the God I was being told about by others.
None of this came together for me in any complete sense until the Conversations with God dialogues began nearly 35 years later. But after those dialogues I became very clear that something I’d felt might be “so” was, in fact, so: With regard to God, and my life, I am the Truth.
No one else’s truth can be Absolute Truth for me. Others can share with me their thoughts, others can give me their ideas, but I have to make up my own mind about what is true for me.
This may sound like a simple and obvious conclusion, but I can tell you that it was not a conclusion that was easy for me to come to. Nor, from my observation, is it easy for most people. We have all invested so much of our authority in other people from the earliest days of our lives that to take that authority back, to reclaim it, later on in life is no small matter.
Yet Conversations with God made it clear that the only truth in the Universe is the truth that exists within me. There is no such thing as Absolute Truth, CwG said. This was a startling statement when I first heard it. All my life I had believed the opposite. Yet now I see that all “truth” is relative, and that it is truly, therefore, in the eye of the beholder.
The moon is “up” when looked at from the earth. Yet one can look “down” on the moon from outer space. All definitions disappear as perspectives change. Nothing is true, nothing , in the absolute sense. Truth is, to use the phrase of Hemingway, a moveable feast.
My life shifted dramatically when I gave back to myself the authority I had given to others. In some ways, this begins to happen as an automatic process of life. I remember when I first moved out of my parents’ house. I was 19, and the moment I walked into my own apartment I knew that my life had changed. I was driving my own car, living in my own place, working at a job that I loved (in radio), and–quite suddenly, it seemed to me–living “my own life.”
I could come and go as I pleased, eat what I chose, do as I wished. The parental authority over me had vanished, literally over night. I could stay on the phone as long as I wanted, come in at night whenever it suited me, even sleep with whomever I desired that desired me.
Whoa. So THIS was what life was like! Wow.
I never knew such power.
Or such responsibility.
I felt very much the same way after hearing the statement, “You are the truth” in my conversation with God. I felt that someone had just given me the “keys to the kingdom.” Suddenly, I was all-powerful. I didn’t have to believe anyone else any more. I didn’t have to take another’s word for anything.
But I also had new responsibility. I had to decide for myself what my truth was.
Now, if I had to do this alone, I would have felt that it was just too much of a task. I am just one little old human being, and I cannot decide, even for myself, the truth of the Universe.
But the wonderful news is that I do not HAVE to make these decisions alone. That’s because I have a real, a genuine, and a working friendship with God. Because of this, I can ask God’s help in determining my truth. And that, of course, is what the Conversations with God books are all about.
Each of us can have our own conversations with God. We do not have to rely on the books written by others. We can write our own.
Is this true or not? What do you believe? What do you think?
Ask God right now. Take out a sheet of paper, clear your mind of all other thoughts, ideas, or considerations. Now write out your question.
Is it true that I can have my own conversations with you? Will you respond to me just as clearly and immediately as you responded to Neale Donald Walsch?
Go ahead. Write the question. Then listen for your answer.
When you get the answer, write it down. Do not question it. Do not doubt it. Just write it down as you hear it in your head.
If the answer comes up “no,” ask another couple of questions. Ask, “Why not? If God is not replying to me right now, then who is?”
Then, keep the dialogue going. But remember, stay out of your head when you do this. When you see yourself writing the answers that are in your mind, stop the process. You can tell the difference between answers that are coming to you from the highest place of wisdom in the Universe and answers that are coming to you from your own mind or previous thoughts or deepest fears.
Trust this. You will feel the difference.
with love, Neale