Skyearth Letters

In Neale Donald Walsch's most recent book of God-talk, Conversations with God, book 3, towards the end, "God" describes the aspects of civilizations of highly evolved beings. Perhaps you find it hard to encompass the thought of other civilizations out there, or you may find it laughable that more people don't believe in that thought. But I've been thinking about the characteristics of beings that would be considered highly evolved. Particularly have I been thinking about them as newspapers and tv and radio are plastered with bombings and refugees in a small place called Kosovo.

I have come to the conclusion that there are two lines developing here on this planet: there is the line of which I feel a part: people who have no desire to hurt others and whose lives reflect the desire and the effort to reach a "higher" plane of being; and then there is the line which seems full of people who evince hatred, to whom murder is a common thought, and who manage to acquire enough power to put their thoughts into practice. I see the two lines diverging farther and farther apart.

I have further concluded that the people who evince hatred will take out larger and larger chunks of their associated populations as we go along; that there will be more and more deaths because we, the people who claim the higher plane, accept it in a subtle way. And perhaps what I am saying right here is an example of that subtle acceptance.

One of the God statements that Walsch reported in Conversations with God, book 2 was that the culture of the 1920s and 1930s created a world such that Hitler could become powerful in a country that had the mindset to accept that power and its horrifying outcome.

In a discussion group, we wrestle with the idea that each us comes to earth with a spiritual contract. We keep reminding ourselves that we are here to remember who we are, and, in order to do so, we may also have to experience who we are not. And what if who we are not is someone who deprives another soul of its physical life body? And is it in that other soul's contract to experience being deprived in such manner? Hard thoughts, those.

It is extremely difficult to make it seem all right, for that is another thing that Walsch's God statements reiterate: there is no right or wrong. Yet in the description of highly evolved beings living in a highly evolved culture, there still is no right or wrong, but (and this a very huge but) such beings have no need to harm anyone else in order learn anything more. There is simply no thought of such action.

Now, that is where I think I'm getting to in this line of thinking: I have no desire to hurt anyone, and, while I can't deny that there have been times in my life when the typical thought would cross my mind that my world would be better off if a particular someone wasn't it, I never have even considered physically hurting, much less killing, someone.

The concept of disliking someone because of their racial characteristics or their sexual preferences is just as unfathomable. I'll dislike someone because of what they do, not for what they are. Even that is lessening as I reflect more and more about CWG's God statements. I'm reaching the conclusion that there is no reason to waste one's energy on something that is not my responsibility to change. I am my responsibility to change. And changing myself will affect the world, even if only in minute ways.

How does this tie in to the conflict ["conflict"---what a clean word, just like "ethnic cleansing;" now there is a misnomer, if there ever was one!], or rather to the war, in Kosovo? It is not possible to effect change in a Milosovich psyche. Bombings won't do it. Just as it hasn't been possible to change Hussein. Sanctions and blockades and bombings haven't done that.

What have bombings done? Hardened the hearts of the civilians who are spending their days and nights in cellars and shelters while praying that the next whistle doesn't hit their home. Treated the children to war. It is not to say that the dictators haven't done likewise, for they have. But what have we done better?

The planet is losing a generation of children to the ills of this current world: Russia's lack of funds to pay people so that they can feed and house families and their children; China's discarding of girl babies by their families to be left in orphanages, if not worse; various areas of Africa suffering from famine or genocide; North Korea's extreme famine; the children of women deprived of all rights in Afghanistan. Each of those areas suffers because of misuse of power, which is an extremely simplified view, granted, but I believe it's true.

These are musings of a conflicted heart. No doubt about that. I have wondered if there would be any positive power in drawing together the many, many people who are living on that positive (value judgment, I realize) line. I know that there are various little actions going on: a moment of prayer at a select time every day, things like that.

I have the thought that if well-known spiritual leaders, who have been lifting people from the morass of religiosity and moribundance, gathered together for a sharply focused action, and if such a major gathering was simultaneously tied to hundreds and hundreds of local gatherings, in a very concerted way, well, I just wonder what would happen.

I offer this, which has probably been speeding around the world several times in the early days of April; my thanks to Michael David Coffey for sending it my way and to the "Author Unknown" who penned it:

"A PRAYER FOR THE CHILDREN"

We pray for the children
who sneak Popsicles before supper,
who erase holes in math workbooks,
who can never find their shoes.

And we pray for those
who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
who never "counted potatoes,"
who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead,
who never go to the circus,
who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children
who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray for those
who never get dessert,
who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
who watch their parents, watch them die,
who can't find any bread to steal,
who don't have any rooms to clean up,
whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
whose monsters are real.

We pray for children
who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,
who like ghost stories, who shove dirty clothes under the bed,
who never rinse out the tub,
who get visits from the tooth fairy,
who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
who squirm in church and scream in the phone,
whose tears we sometimes laugh at and
whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those
whose nightmares come in the daytime,
who will eat anything,
who have never seen a dentist,
who aren't spoiled by anybody,
who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must,
who we never give up on and for those who don't get a second chance.

For those we smother with love, and . . . for those who
will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

There is another difficult part to our discussions: this idea that we "choose" our parents, and therefore the awful things that parents sometimes do to their children are things that the child's soul has chosen to experience. Or the choice of the country of birth. Is this truly believable?

Finally, the discussion comes down to the question of what a "realized master" would do at the observation of some horrendous happening...such as the actions in Kosovo (or for that matter, the observation of something beautiful-but that usually is not brought up). The answer is always...nothing; such a master would be indifferent. Perhaps such masters feel such love/joy with the communion of spirit that all else falls away, and they can look upon all parts of the world with total indifference.

I realize that I am not ready to become such a "realized master." I have no desire to feel indifferent to the hurtings of the children, to the devastations of the planet. I have no desire to feel indifferent to the beautiful skies and mountains, the hawk floating, the spring beauties, my ever-so-precious granddaughter.

Perhaps the Dalai Lama who seems to live on the line between the realized master's indifference and the unrealized human's loving care is the best example of a "realized" life. A realized life...that is the direction of my aspirations.