Saturday, February 25, 2012

NDW: On Jesus's Message

The following is a letter to the editor featured in Neale Donald Walsch's Weekly Bulletin (Number 477) from Saturday 25 February 2012. Very insightful. I thought I would copy it here on my blog. While Neale at some points quotes the bible without citing the exact passage as bible scholars do, you can simply Google the quotes to find their proper citations.
Dear Neale...I'm new with this and have not read your books , being that I have poor vision and they are not in large print and I'm on disability and can't afford the CDs . I have two questions; 1. Who was Jesus and what does God say about Him? 2. I'm a Reiki Master and is doing Reiki to Help people OK with God ? Thank You, Love , Brian ..

Neale Donald Walsch Responds

Dear Brian.....I want to take your second question first, because it is much easier to answer. Of course is it "okay with God" to do Reiki "to help people." It is okay to do ANYTHING "to help people." How can helping people in any form not be okay with God?

Now, to your first inquiry...

Brian, you've asked what many consider to be the central question of the century. The impact of Jesus' life was so extraordinary, it will never be forgotten. That is because Jesus was/is a savior to all humankind. As are you and I.

Now, the difference between you and me and Jesus is that he donned the mantle, wore the cloak, accepted the responsibility. Most of us have not. In that sense, Jesus is our savior. For he did with his life what very few of us have done with ours. He did what we all came here to do! And in so doing it, he "saved" us from the necessity of doing it at all, if we do not wish.

Let me explain. We have all come to save the world. Not from the "snares of the devil," or from "everlasting damnation." (As CWG teaches, there is so such thing as the devil, and damnation does not exist.) We have come to save the world from its own mistaken notion of itself.

We are, right now, living in a world of our own creation, a non-truth, an experience which has nothing to do with ultimate reality, or with Who We Really Are. Jesus knew this. He also knew Who He Really Was. And he declared it, for all to hear. He declared something else as well. He said that what he did on the earth, we could do also.

Some people do not believe this. They cannot believe that they could be given--indeed, that they have been given--the same abilities as Jesus. Yet this level of faith is the key to experiencing those gifts. That is what Jesus taught. That was his central message. I think a careful reading of the following pages (CWG Book 1) would help provide clarity for you about this: pages 52, 55, 67, 86, 180 and 197.

I wrote a booklet, Recreating Yourself, which addresses much of this directly. In it, I make the point that it was Jesus himself who said, "According to your faith be it unto you." It was Jesus himself who said, "0 woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt." And the woman's daughter was made whole from that very hour. And it was Jesus himself who said, "If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

Yet if you cannot believe in yourself and in your own divine heritage (and because so many people cannot), Jesus set himself before us as the Sample. As the Model. As the Example and Expression of who we all really are. He wanted you to know that you can do it, you can be it, you are it. And in an act of enormous love and compassion, Jesus invited you, if you cannot believe in yourself, to believe in him. The idea being that if you can believe it is possible for one person to do it, you can believe it is possible for all people to do it.

Jesus didn't come here to show you how much greater than you he is, but how much greater you can be. Be demonstrating what he can do, he wanted to show you what you can do.

"Verily, verily I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it."

Isn't that an extraordinary promise? So great and so complete was Jesus' understanding of who he was, and of who you are ("I and my Father are one" he said, and later, "all ye are brethren"), that he knew deeply there was no limit to what you could do if you believed in yourself, or in what was true about you because of what was true about him.

Could there be a mistake about Jesus' declarations here? Could there be a misinterpretation? No. His words are very clear. He wanted you to consider yourself one with the Father, exactly as he is one with God. So great was his love for all humankind, and so full was his compassion at their suffering, that he called upon himself to rise to the highest level, to move to the grandest expression of his being, in order to present a living example to all human beings everywhere. And then he prayed that we would not only see the evidence of his oneness with the Father, but of our own as well.

"And for their sakes I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one."

You can't be much clearer than that.

Conversations with God tells us that all of us are members of the Body of God, though we imagine ourselves to be separate, and not part of God at all.

Christ understood our difficulty in believing that we were part of God, part of God's very body. Yet Christ did believe this of himself. It was therefore a simple matter (and a marvelous inspiration) for him to invite those who could not imagine themselves to be a part of God to imagine themselves to be a part of him. For he had already declared himself to be a part of God, and if we could simply believe that we were a part of Christ, through the simple truth of our Oneness with each other, with everyone...we would by extension necessarily be a part of God.

Jesus must have emphasized this point of our Oneness with each other, and therefore with him, many times, because the record of his teachings, and the commentaries upon them in the Bible contain countless references to our interrelationship. String just a few of these separate references together and you have an extraordinary revelation:

I and my Father are one. (John 10:30)

And the glory which Thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one. (John 17:22)

I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in One. (John 17:23)

That the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:26)

So we, being many, are one body in Christ; and everyone members, one of another. (Romans 12:5)

Now he that planteth and he that watereth are One. (1 Corinthians 3:8)

For we, being many, are one bread, and One Body: for we are all partakers of that one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:17)

For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by One Spirit are we all baptized into One Body, whether we be Jews or gentiles, whether we be bound or free; and have been all made to drink into One Spirit for the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? (1 Corinthians 12-16)

But now are they many members, yet but One Body. (1 Corinthians 12:20)

The Bible could not be more clear. Jesus could not have said it more directly. All of us are members of the Body of Christ. All of us are the Christed One. And if Christ is one with God, so, too, are we. We simply do not know it. Refuse to believe it. Cannot imagine it.

Yet it is not true that going through Jesus is required in order to be going with Jesus. Jesus never uttered such words, nor did he come close. That was not his message. His message was: If you cannot believe in me, if you do believe that I am who I say I am, what with all that I have done, then you will never, ever believe in yourself, in who you are, and your own experience of God will be virtually unattainable. Jesus said what he said, did what he did --- performed miracles, healed the sick, raised the dead --- even raised himself from the dead--that we might know Who He Was...and thus know also Who We Really Are. It is this second part of the equation which is most often left out of the traditional doctrine about Christ.

You see, Jesus is our savior, to the degree that he has saved us from the illusion of our own separation from God. Jesus is the Son of God, as are we all.

As are we all.

Beginning in February, 2012 I began sharing a very daring teaching. I did so then because I saw the world entering a very important period of its evolution, a time of change and a time of great expansion in our consciousness, and I knew that people were more ready than ever before to hear a very particular message.

"Imagine what your life would be like," I began saying everywhere I went, "if you told yourself before entering any moment, any space, or any experience: 'I have come that you may have life...and that you may have it more abundantly.' What would it be like if you thought of yourself in this way? Do you dare to do so? Is it sacrilegious? Is it blasphemous? Is it heresy or apostasy? Or is it your Natural State of Being?

"If you embrace it at last as your Natural State of Being, you will change your life forever--and the lives of all those whose life you touch."

You will have accepted the central invitation of Christianity, which from the beginning has been the same: To Be A Christed One.

I hope you have found this reply helpful as you continue your own search for your own answers to life's most challenging questions.

Hugs...

Neale