Editor's Introduction: The following is another excerpt from the dialogue which has been on-going between the people to whom "CoCre8tor@aol.com" e-mails a quote each day from one of Neale Donald Walsch's three volumes of Conversations with God (CWG). [The first excerpt was in September.]
From Ken: then anything goes right?
From Mike: Anything goes now, right?
From Ken: but everything goes right? nothing happens here that spirit has not chosen to experience in skin. so i think what you're saying in your responses is, anything goes right?
From Mike: I'd rephrase your second sentence to, "nothing happens here that we have not chosen to experience." We are spiritual beings having a human experience. But the choices that come from "us" originate from either spirit or ego - from love or fear. So I wouldn't say all the choices originate from spirit. If it did, I think the world would look a little different (is that an understatment?).
My comments along the "anything goes" line have to do with the fact that anything does go. Whether we choose from spirit, choose from ego, or not choose at all, choices are made, and anything goes. It's being mindful of the choices that matter.
From Ken: why do we believe that the fear choice comes from something or somewhere other than spirit? if the law of relativity is truth on this planet and the creative process is about bringing forth the 'is not' as a mirror for the 'is', then 'ego' is part of the interplay that spirit created. isn't ego and its choices simply a word and actions that we use to describe the 'is not'? if so, the choices we have 'blamed' on the ego are only spirit's creation of the mirror for the 'is'.
if the body and the inner complexities are a creation of my spirit, then the appearance of opposing forces is part of that creation. if there is this magical something called ego, it is simply a component of that created by spirit in order to play the experiencial game here. spirit makes the choices, and they are brought to form here and experienced through the vehicle which is the body and all that goes on inside of it.
i have found that once i stopped believing in this separate or opposing force called the ego, then all experience is the evolutionary game that my spirit is playing. the game is to create one thing as the opposite of the other. spirit is not partial to fear or love. it brings them both forth in order to experience. it creates both to complete the journey from conceptual to experiencial. this ego thing we created is nothing more than the duality of is not/is. again, if this body and its complexities are a creation of spirit for the purpose of experience/evolution, then ego is spirit making choices. therefore, anything goes.
From Mike: The choice of fear comes from something other than spirit because spirit is not fear.
To quote CWG, "Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all." (CWG Book One, pg 56). To further quote,
In creating "something else" - namely, the realm of the relative - I have produced an environment in which you may choose to be God rather than simply told that you are God....Fear is the other end of love. It is the primal polarity. In creating the realm of the relative, I first created the opposite of My Self. Now, in the realm in which you live on the physical plane, there are only two places of being: fear and love. Thoughts rooted in fear will produce one kind of manifestation on the physical plane. Thoughts rooted in love will produce another. [CWG Book One, pg. 57]
I believe we define the choices we make that come from an origin of fear as ego, and those from an origin of love as spirit. I believe the reason for this is that "ego" has come to mean an individual identity that is separate from everyone and everything else. In fact, I've heard the acronymn for ego is 'Edging God Out.' Choices made based on this separateness thinking is a result of fear. Judgments, blaming, hate, "looking out for number 1," "winner take all," originate from a thought rooted in fear, of separateness that doesn't recognize love.
Spirit is love.
"The Masters who have walked the planet are those who have discovered the secret of the relative world - and refused to acknowledge its reality. In short, Masters are those who have chosen only love. In every instance. In every moment. In every circumstance. Even as they were being killed, they loved their murderers." [CWG Book One, pg 57.]
This is why I would say that spirit does not choose fear or ego. It is because spirit arises out of love. We, as individualized expressions of spirit, can make our choices from fear and separation, or from love and spirit - the essence of Who We Are, and thus define Who We Are. In recreating ourselves in the Grandest Version of the Greatest Vision we ever held for ourselves, it requires us to make choices. In my own personal experience, I have found that the more the choices are based on love and the connection to the spirit that is all of us, and less on what I personally and solely desire for me, I notice a grander version of me has emerged. When I slip and think solely of my separate desires, something deep within me feels disconnected with life. It's a little difficult to put into the limiting use of language. I can only say that my proof is through experiential analysis.
So, whether choices are made consciously or unconsciously, from a basis of fear/ego or love/spirit, anything goes, because there are always choices being made.
I don't know if that fully addresses your response, Ken, but it was something that emerged upon reading it. Thanks!
From Ken: i really enjoy this exchange. this is not about who is right or wrong for me, but i love the exploration.
first, i don't believe we choose fear because we like it. i believe we are here to experience love, and all choices to experience all emotion fall within the experience of divine love. that's why i believe spirit has full command of the choosing. i think spirit chooses to have an experience, and the mind selects the scenario out of the database, which is full of 'is nots.' what is brought forth creates that experience. the feelings or energy of that experience is what the soul is after. it is all love, because love is the inclusion of all emotion.
i'm not talking about spirit choosing love, and when love is chosen, i'm happy and free and at peace, and then ego choosing fear, and i'm miserable and separate and all that. i'm talking about the emotion of fear (the 'am not') is brought forth in order to create the opposite (the 'am'). on page 83 of [CWG] book 1 it says
"Perfect love is to feeling what perfect white is to color. Many think that white is the absence of color. It is not. It is the inclusion of all color. White is every other color that exists, combined.So, too, is love not the absence of an emotion (hatred, anger, lust, jealousy, covetousness), but the summation of all feeling. It is the sum total. The aggregate amount. The everything. Thus, for the soul to experience perfect love, it must experience every human feeling."
so what i think is, for spirit to experience perfect love, it makes the choices to bring forth the conditions through the mind to experience all emotion which creates the experience of perfect love. the riddle that spirit weaves is it constantly creates the 'am not' or 'is not' in order for that to push against the 'am' or 'is.'
my experiences, as i look back on them, has been that all the experiences of fear, sadness, anger, hatred etc. have seemed to fit perfectly into this mosaic that is my life....what i'm suggesting is that every emotion i experience on this planet is about the evolution of my soul/spirit.
we seem to judge that the choice of spirit (love) is forward movement and the choice of ego (fear) is not. i believe the foundation of book 1 is reflected in the above quote from page 83 and in the last line on page 83 - "the purpose of the human soul is to experience all of it-so it can be all of it." all experience is evolution. there is no emotion outside of the evolution of the spirit, and therefore i believe it makes all the choices in order to have all the experiences. it is the interplay between the 'is not/is' that finally brings some on this planet to some sense of mastery. it's the 'am not/am' that gets us there. that's the game, the riddle.
at that magical point, when i understand what my true nature is, while still in a body, i find it less and less necessary to create the 'is not.' i believe i (spirit) am always making the choice to be the highest version of myself at any given moment. i may be killing someone or myself at that moment but that's where i am on my evolutionary path. my evolution is not in a holding pattern because i am performing an act on the physical plane that is motivated by fear. that's why hitler is in heaven and all that stuff. it is the reinactment by my spirit of the original act of god. it is creating the opposite of itself in order to experience all that it knows conceptually, to be all that is it which is perfect love.
Table of Contents
Letter to the Authors:
Ken Atwood at imasiasl@aol.com
Mike Kitchen at CoCre8tor@aol.com