What is Life About ?

“It’s about time that you admitted that you are a miraculous work of art.  You came into this world as a radiant bundle of exuberant riddles.  You slipped into this dimension as a shimmering burst of spiral hallelujahs.  You blasted into this realm as a lush explosion of ecstatic gratitude.  And it is your birthright to fulfill those promises.”

Rob Brezsny

I do not know much about the author of this quote.  He is an astrologist, an area I have not investigated for myself.  But I love the enthusiasm that he incorporated into this description of the beginning of life!  The quote has been on my refrigerator for some time, and each time I read it I break out into a broad smile.  As terry and I were editing this blog, we realized that she ended her blog with the same Rob Brezsny quote.  I guess like minds think alike!

So… why doesn’t life stay this way?

Because, soon after we become toddlers, we begin to make choices from other sources than the rock solid knowing we were born with; the knowing that we are made in the image of God who is ever present, guiding us from within.  We begin to be taught by the cultures and religions that surround us.   Our young people receive much love, God based support, but some of it is confusing and destructive.  Down the line in our journey we become confused and ask ourselves where we came from and why? What is the purpose of life?  We most likely have asked this question many different by the end of life.  We are going to take a circular route to answer this question.

Author Neale Donald Walsch has been having a dialogue with God for many years.  Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue Book 1 came out in 1996.  His dialogue continued, and eventually CWG: Book 2, and CWG: Book 3 were published. In 2017, CWG: Book 4 emerged from new conversations.  It surprised Walsch.  He thought he had finished the work as a trilogy.  This type of dialogue is often called channeling.  For Walsch it was automatic writing.  He literally had a conversation.  He listened to God and wrote down the dialogue they were having.  In these books he asked every question that you and I would want to ask if we had the chance to sit down and have a conversation with God.  To be able to read these books at first, I had to suspend my disbelief that this was possible.  Soon I could not stop talking about them.  I could not put the first book down, I stayed up into the night reading.  The same with the others.  I waited impatiently for the next book to be published.  The dialogue opened my eyes in so many life-giving new ways.  Walsch has also gone on to write many books about his conversations with God and I have read many of them.

I have worked discerning…rethinking.  It is a continuing process.   My process was asking what I really believe about God, and then what difference does it make if I make changes in my beliefs. Readers have heard Terry and I say many times, when you believe it you will see it, not the other way around.  That is what I have experienced.  I have changed my beliefs, usually one at a time.  Then I see it demonstrated in my life or in the lives of others.  The next step was “hearing” in a new way.  I would hear the bible verses and light up and say to myself, “Oh, I know what that means…” as I was experiencing an expanded understanding. I was experiencing having “the eyes to see and the ears to hear,” as Matthew 13: 14-17 discusses.

To further dive into the how, I find this information helpful.  Take the beliefs in, rearrange them in your mind, and test  your new beliefs out.

“Words may help you understand something.  Experience allows you to know.  Yet there are some things you cannot experience.  So I have given you other tools of knowing.  And these are called feelings. And so too, thoughts.” 

 “Yet, the greatest reminder is not anyone outside you, but the voice within you.  This is the first tool that I use, because it is the most accessible… The voice within is the loudest voice with which I speak, because it is the closest to you. It is the voice which tells you whether everything else is true or false, right or wrong, good or bad as you have defined it. It is the radar that sets the course, steers the ship, guides the journey if you but let it.”                                                            

God through Neale Donald Walsch

Let’s go back to the question.  What is the purpose of life?

According to Walsch in his CWG: Book 1, life is not like school where you learn lessons about what you do not know.  In this book, it states the reason we leave our home – the place many of us call Heaven – is to remember what we already know – God’s unconditional love – and apply it to all we do.   It is our opportunity to put love into action.   It is our opportunity to create the best version of ourselves anew, many times.   It is our soul that knows everything, nothing is hidden from it.  But the soul needs to experience, not just know intellectually.  Thus, we choose to come to this life.  As a human we have experiences that we call bad as well as wonderful. If we are “seeing and listening” and creating in positive ways, we grow in our understanding and spread love everywhere we go.  If we are creating in negative ways, we do not act out our purpose for coming here.  We do however, create opportunities for others to show compassion and love via this process.   We try again and again.

It is like the Fruit of the Spirit found in Galatians 5:22. When we feel the love, joy  and peace that comes with experience and understanding, then we have the power to be patient, act with kindness, be generous, be faithful and gentle to another using our self-control. 

 Life is about remembering, putting what we remember into action, and continuing to create the next-best-grandest-version of ourselves.

Now, do or do I not buy another book to read to help myself grow?  Well, as I look up Rob Brezsny’s book, Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia, Revised and Expanded: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings,  I must admit, I am intrigued.  He appears to have created the new word pronoia.  The concept proposes that life is a vast and intricate conspiracy designed to keep us well supplied with blessings.  What kind you ask?  Blessings like interesting surprises, dizzying adventures, gifts you hardly know what to do with, challenges that dare you to free yourself from the debilitation aspects of your suffering, and conundrums that dare you to get smarter.  He quotes Christian writer C.S. Lewis as saying, “I thank God that He hasn’t given me all the things I’ve prayed for, because as I look back now I realize it would have been disastrous to have received some of them.”  He makes the comment that the Maker of the Conspiracy is constantly tinkering, keeping the big 14 million-year-long-picture in mind, moving in the direction of ultimate blessings for all concerned.  The Divine Being – chief Architect, Builder, and Manager of the conspiracy of pronoia – needs our help.

I think this will be a book I am glad that I found.  I’ll let you know.  A bonus: he appears to be an incredible wordsmith!  He also refers to the Creator as both He and She!  Probably it is not either one.

“Whether it’s our time to ferment in the valley of shadows or rise up singing in the sun-splashed meadow, the power to transform ourselves is always on the way…  Without fail, life will deliver the creative energy we need to change into the new thing we must become… If you overthrow yourself again and again, you might earn the right to help overthrow the rest of us.”

Rob Brezsny