Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood
144
Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood
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Overview
Even this chain of events, however, many of us cannot accept. For when we think of money, we imagine that it is an experience and an energy that stands outside of the reality of God. Yet there is nothing in the universe that stands outside of the reality of God, that is not a part of God. Once we understand that money is a part of what God is, our attitude about money changes. We see it as an extension of the glory of God, not the root of all evil. This can produce astonishing results.
Just what is abundance? Is it lots of money, lots of stuff that money can buy? That's what many people believe. And many work at jobs they dislike, just to support that belief. Neale Donald Walsch gives us the simple key to understanding the true nature of abundance, and a practical easy-to-understand philosophy for applying that knowledge to our daily lives.
Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood is an inspirational, and sometimes humorous, exploration of the real meaning of money and prosperity--and of the secret to finding happiness with "right livelihood"--all of which leads to creating the true abundance we all desire.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612830650 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Red Wheel/Weiser |
| Publication date: | 10/01/1999 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 144 |
| Sales rank: | 792,654 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood
Applications for Living
By Neale Donald Walsch
Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.
Copyright © 1999 Neale Donald WalschAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61283-065-0
CHAPTER 1
Abundance and Right Livelihood
* * *
Well, nice to see you all here. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, my darling. That's my wife. Good morning. I don't call everybody in the audience my darling. But I could be tempted to.
Well, I suppose you wonder why I called this meeting. And so do I. I'd like to start off our time together this morning just chatting a little bit about what happened to me in my life. I wanted to kind of roll into some of the experiences that I've had over the last six or eight years, bring you up to speed and up to date, and let you know what that was like for me. And we can go from there, and begin talking about some of the specific topics that I hope we have a chance to explore here together.
How nice of you to choose to be in the room with me on this day. And how nice of you to choose to be on the planet with me at this time. This is a very, very important time. People have said that for centuries, and they've always meant it. But I'm not sure it's always been quite as true as it is right now.
We're moving into a period of time on this planet when the decisions and choices we make will produce a critical impact and an extraordinary effect on the lives that we are collectively creating. So, it's really important that we come together in groups like this, groups large and small, and share our reality, share our understanding, become even more clear about what it is that we hold in common. And when we find that there are differences between us, find a way to celebrate those differences. Because if we don't learn how to celebrate our differences, we're not going to be able to make a difference on this planet. And you came here to make a difference. That's why you came to this body, at this time. That's why you came to this particular planet at this particular moment. Whether you know it or not, you came here with a very big agenda. And for most people, if you're like me, the agenda is much larger than you might originally have thought or imagined. I'm going to repeat that. I said: For most people, if you're like me, the agenda is much larger than you might originally have thought or imagined.
To begin with, your life has nothing to do with you. And that might change your whole idea about what you're doing here. And your life has nothing to do with your body. That also might change your whole idea about what you're doing here. Your life has to do with the agenda that has been set for you by you, by that part of you that we've come to call, in our language, your soul.
And it has been my observation that very few people have spent a lot of time during this particular life paying attention to the agenda of their soul. I know that I haven't. Most of my life, I paid attention to the agenda of my ego, of my mind, of my body — in other words, of that part of me that I thought that I really was. And I paid very little attention to the agenda of my soul, to the real reason that I'm here. And yet, those of us who begin to pay attention to the real reason that we're here begin to make an extraordinary impact on the world — an impact beyond anything that you might have imagined possible. Suddenly you find yourself at a ... at a precipice, at the edge. And it is very much, as Apollinaire once put it, "Come to the edge."
"We can't. We're afraid."
"Come to the edge."
"We can't. We'll fall."
"Come to the edge." And they came. And he pushed them. And they flew.
There are a few of us, a very few of us, who are now ready to fly, who are ready to go, as Gene [Roddenberry] said, to places where no human has gone before — who are really ready to fly now, and to take all those whose lives they touch with them, on a flight of fancy that will truly change the world. And in these days and times, you will have an opportunity to decide whether you are one of those select few; selected, I might add, by yourself, not by anyone else. This is a self-selecting process. You'll wake up one day and look in the mirror, and say, "I select me. I choose me. I'm it." It's a game of tag, with only one player. "I'm it."
It is very much like a children's game, you know. It is very much like a children's game, played with the abandon and with the joy of children who play together — except in this game, there is only one player. And now you get to quit playing hide and seek, and you get to start playing tag. "I'm it." "You're it." "Thank you very much."
So, in these days and times, you get to choose yourself; or not, as you wish. As you wish. But if you choose yourself to play in this particular game, you'll find that you have caused yourself to set aside all of your prior beliefs, understandings, thoughts, and ideas about what it is that you are doing here, about why you brought yourself to your body at this time and in this place. You'll change everything you ever thought about that. And you'll find that your life, indeed, will have nothing to do with you, or with your body.
And yet the irony is that, in the moment that you decide and declare that your life has nothing to do with you or your body, everything you ever sought, hungered for, struggled to obtain for yourself and for your body will come to you, automatically. And you won't even care. Because you will no longer need it. You will enjoy it, for sure. But you will no longer need it. And the struggle will at last be over.
But it will have just begun for the hundreds and the thousands and, maybe, the millions of people whose lives you will touch. And you will see them every day — people for whom the struggle really has just begun, who are taking those first few steps on the journey home. And they, like you, will reach out a hand, figuratively, if not literally, and sometimes even quite literally. And they'll look around them, and hope to find someone who will reach a hand back, who will say, "Come, follow me"; who will dare to say, "I am the way, and the life. Follow me."
That may sound almost too religious for some people. But this is the third and the last of the children's games that the child in us, which is our soul, will play. No longer hide and seek; no longer you're it; now, follow the leader.
Follow the leader. And you're the leader. And we're going to follow you. We're going to walk in your footsteps. I'm going to make the choices that you are going to make. We're going to make the decisions that you are making. We're going to say the words that you say, touch the world in the way that you touch it. We're going to follow your lead.
If you thought that the whole world was watching you this day, and following your example in everything that you think, and say, and do, would it change in any way how this day went for you? Maybe for some of you, just a little bit.
Well, the whole world is following you, whether you know it or not. That's the great secret: the whole world — surely the world whose lives you touch — is following you. We're watching you. We're seeing who you really are. And we're seeing who you think that you are. And we're taking our cue from you. Like actors on a stage, we are imitating you, because we have no one else to imitate. We're all that there is. There's no one else.
We can look outside of ourselves for some larger example out in the sky someplace — maybe even in our imaginations. But in the end, we will imitate each other. In the end, children will imitate their parents, and parents will imitate their parents. And nation will imitate nation. In the end, we will take our cues from each other, until one of us steps out and says, "Not that way. This way."
So your decision at this time in your life, at this really critical period as we turn the century and move into what is truly a new age, your decision is critical. It's not a small decision. Because you're not making it just for you. The decision you make in these days and times, you're making for everyone else in the room. And the reason for that is very clear. Because there is no one else in the room. Except you. Here you are, in your many other manifest forms; here you are. And so the decision you make for you, you make for all of us. Because there's only one of us here.
That might sound a little esoteric. First we sound religious, then we sound esoteric. But it is these thoughts, these concepts, these ideas which must begin to drive the engine of our collective human experience, or our collective human experience will not be collective much longer, but will, in fact, disintegrate and fall apart, even as will our planet.
We are at that point now. You know when airplanes in the old days used to cross the ocean, they called it "the point of no return"? Too far to turn back, not far enough to safely make it there? There's this little red zone, you know, when you're neither there nor here, you're neither here nor there.
It feels very much as if that's where we are right now on this planet, in many ways: in terms of our ecology, in terms of our worldwide economy. We see, in many areas of the world, the whole thing is falling apart, in terms of our social structures, our spiritual understandings, the education of our offspring. In so many ways and in so many areas, it feels as if we're in that no- man's land, in that red zone. We're not here, and we're not there, either. Neither here nor there, but we're beyond the point of no return. We have crossed the Rubicon.
I'm giving away my age with all of these phrases. Anyone under thirty-five is saying: "'Cross the Rubicon?' What the hell is that?"
We've crossed the Rubicon, and now the question is: What do we do, and how do we get the rest of us to go over to the other side? And the answer to that question will be, in fact, supplied to the human race by people like you. By you.
And if you think it's about people like me who happen, in this particular day and time, to be enjoying our fifteen minutes in the sun, you're wrong. I want to impress on you here today that it's not about the people in the front of the room. I just happen to be here now by — I want to say — by sheer happenstance. It could just as easily be you. As a matter of fact, one of you just come on up here and do the rest of the program. (laughter) Just a thought. Nancy's ready.
But that is the real test. That is the real question. How many of you, if given the opportunity, if called to the challenge, if selected, would say: "Hey, Neale, you know what? I'm ready! I'll take the chair, I'll take the place in the front of the room." Because the real secret of life is that you're in the front of the room anyway, whether you know it or not. That's the point I've been trying to make. You're in the front of the room anyway. It just looks as if you're not. In fact, the real irony of life is that there's no place other than the front of the room. There's no back of the room. So, you can't hide out anymore. So, follow the leader, it turns out, is mandatory.
Let me tell you how I wound up in this chair, just to give you a little bit of background on how all this began. In 1992, I had reached the end of the line for me. In 1992, I had reached a point where I was losing again another committed relationship with a significant other. My career had reached a dead end. My health was falling apart. Nothing was working in my life. And this relationship that I had with my significant other was the one that I knew would last forever. And there it was, in front of my face, just disintegrating right in my hands.
It wasn't the first time that such a relationship had disintegrated right in front of me. Nor was it the second. Nor was it the third, or the fourth. And so (laughter) I knew that there was something I don't know here, that the knowing of which would change all of this for me — I just didn't know what that was. And in my relationship life, I simply couldn't find that secret.
And then in my career, I was having the same kind of challenges. You know, I had read all the books: Do What You Love, and the Money Will Follow. I don't think so — unless it does, of course. But I couldn't seem to find the formula. I was either doing something that I did love, but I was dead broke; or I was making enough money to skim by, making it through, but my soul was dying a thousand deaths. I didn't seem to know how to put the two together. Not for very long. If I did get it together, it was always for about six or eight months, then it would all fall apart. I couldn't seem to glue the pieces together, and make them stick.
And likewise, my health: I couldn't seem to get through a year without something going on, and sometimes it was a pretty big thing that was going on. I mean, I had ulcers and I was thirty-six. I had lots of stuff happen: chronic heart problems, just a pile of stuff I'm not even telling you about. And so, at the age of fifty, I really felt as if I was eighty years old — and not a very healthy eighty years old at that: arthritis, fibromyalgia, just stuff going on. You know what I'm saying? I couldn't get this mechanism to work. All of this was happening at the same time.
Now, see, usually God had been better than that. It was usually one thing or the other in my life. But for this particular period, for reasons that still aren't clear to me, it was all at once, at the same time. "Oh," God said, "let's give him a triple whammy. Let's do the old career-relationship-body number in the same week." And so, there I was. It was kind of like a Triple Lutz, you know, kind of a metaphysical Triple Lutz. And I was skating on thin ice. I didn't know where to go with it. I was very, very, very angry — threatening to fall into chronic depression.
And one night I threw back the covers of the bed, because I had awakened in the middle of the night filled with rage and upset over how my life was. I stormed out into the larger part of the house, looking for answers in the middle of the night. I went to where I always go for answers in the middle of the night, but there was nothing decent in the refrigerator that night, so I went to the couch instead. And there I sat on the couch.
Try to picture that, sitting there in the middle of the night, four o'clock in the morning, on the couch, stewing in my own juice, as it were. Then I called out to God. I thought, well, I can run around and tear apart the house, break the dishes, or whatever. But I sat there and I called out, "God, what does it take? What does it take to make this game work? Somebody tell me the rules. I promise I'll play. Just give me the rules. And after you give them to me, don't change them." And I asked a ton of other questions as well.
And then I saw, on the coffee table in front of me, there happened to be a yellow legal pad lying there. There was a pen next to it. So I picked it up, flicked on a lamp, and I began to write my anger out, you know. Seemed to be a safe, quiet way to deal with it at 4:15 in the morning. I don't know how it is with you, when you are angry and when you're writing, but I write really big when I'm getting angry. And there I was. What does it take? I was really angry. To make life work? And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? Exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point.
And on and on I went like that for about twenty minutes, just writing out my anger, you know, defying the universe to give me a response. And then I finally calmed myself down, just a bit, felt just a little bit better. And I felt okay. I thought, hey, that worked. I have to share this process with some friends. That works. I took the pen, and put it down, and the pen would not leave my hand. I looked at that, and I thought, "Isn't that interesting? My hand is cramped up from all that writing." You always find a reason.
I brought the pen back to the paper for reasons that aren't clear to me now. And a thought came to me. A little voice, right over here, just over my right shoulder. I call it now my voiceless voice. When I first heard the voiceless voice, it was very much as if someone was whispering in my right ear. And the feeling that came over me was one of extreme calm. I was, I want to say, becalmed — very much at peace and filled with kind of an indescribable joy.
You know, I think of moments in my life when I've had that joy ... the moment that I married Nancy — not even the whole ceremony, but that particular moment when the minister finally said, you know, "do you ..." And in that moment I looked in her eyes and I just paused for a moment and said, "I do." There was just that tiny sliver of a moment when your whole body is filled with something you can't describe, and you realize that you're making an enormously important decision, a huge choice, and that you're so glad about it that there's not even a tiny bit of doubt about it — that moment of total gladness ... joy really.
I think all of us have had those moments, maybe three or four, perhaps five times in a lifetime, when we just are filled with that sense of "rightness" ... this is totally right, this is totally joyful. That's how it felt in that moment when I first heard that voiceless voice. Just ... joy. A peaceful, calming joy.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood by Neale Donald Walsch. Copyright © 1999 Neale Donald Walsch. Excerpted by permission of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc..
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