LIFE=GOD=CHANGE Excerpt

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Book: Tomorrow's God
Author – Neale Donald Walsch
Chapters 5 and 6

Chapter 5 – Changing God's Name:

Neale – You seem to be using the word “Life” a lot here. And you have
said before, in previous dialogues, that this word is interchangeable
for the word “God.” Is this what you want humanity to understand at
last? Will Tomorrow's God not require us to “believe in God” in the
conventional sense, but merely to believe in Life?

God – When you believe in Life, you do believe in God, whether you say
it in so many words or not. You can be an atheist or an agnostic or
anything in between, and it will not matter to Tomorrow's God. It does
not matter today, but tomorrow all of you will know this. Tomorrow,
every human will understand. And that understanding will be good,
because it will eliminate much of the conflict that has resulted from
each of you believing in your particular God in your particular way.
You have not been able to agree with each other on this topic when you
have used the word “God,” or “Allah,” or “Jehovah,” or “Brahman,” or
the many other names you have given to the Essence and the Being, the
All and the Only. Now I suggest that there is another word for God, the
meaning of which you may all agree upon. When this word is exchanged
for the word “God,” everything suddenly becomes simple and clear.

Neale – And that word is “Life”?

God – Yes. “Life” is the one word in your many languages that comes
closest to carrying the meaning that some of you are seeking to express
when you use the word “Allah,” or “God,” or “Brahman,” “Vishnu,” or
“Shiva,” and that you hope describes or can be a container for the
“stuff that God is.” In one word, LIFE is the “stuff that God is.” Life
IS. Life is that which IS. It has no shape, no form, no gender. It has
no colour, no fragrance, no size. It is ALL shapes, all forms, all
colours, fragrances, and sizes. It is both genders, and that which is
genderless as well. It is the All, and the Everything, and it is the No
Thing from which Everything emerges. There is nothing Life creates that
is not Life Itself. All that you see everywhere around you is Life,
expressing. Life is everything. YOU are Life, expressing. And Life is
You, expressing itself as you. Everybody else is Life, expressing.
There is no one, not a single living being, who is not an expression of
Life. Even those you consider the worst among you are an expression of
Life. None of these statements seems controversial. Not many people
would seriously argue with them. The truth of these statements seems
obvious on the surface. Now, play a little trick on yourself. Play a
little game. Exchange the word “Life” for the word “God,” and see what
happens. Watch your mind go crazy. Make the same statement, the exact
same statement, as above, but use the word “God” in place of the word
“Life,” and watch what your mind does with it. Go ahead. Place the
statement in quotes because it is going to be an exact duplicate of the
statement above, with the exception being that the word “God” has
replaced the word “Life.”

Neale – Okay, here goes... “God IS. God is that which IS. God has no
shape, no form, no gender. God has no colour, no fragrance, no size.
God is ALL shapes, all forms, all colours, fragrances, and sizes. God
is both genders, and that which is genderless as well. “God is the All,
and Everything. There is nothing God creates that is not God Itself.
All that you see, everywhere around you, is God, expressing. God is
everything. It runs in, as, and through everything. YOU are God,
expressing. And God is You, expressing itself as you. “Everybody else
is God, expressing. There is no one, not a single living being, who is
not an expression of God. Even those you consider the worst among you
are an expression of God.”

God – Now, was that easy to say and accept?

Neale – For me, yes, for some others, probably not.

God – Indeed, for some human beings those words would be almost impossible to agree with.

Neale – Yes. Some people would find the first statements perfectly reasonable and the second statements blasphemous.

God – That is because some of you have been imagining that God is NOT
Life, but rather, that God stands outside of Life, creating Life, but
not being it. Yet I tell you this: The words “Life” and “God” are
interchangeable. When you understand this, you will understand the
basis of the New Spirituality, you will have a one-word definition of
Tomorrow's God, and you will have the makings of an almost automatic
inner guidance system for living the New Spirituality that can change
the collective experience on your planet.

Neale – It is just so hard to accept a God who says that we do not have
to believe in God. I am so used to a demanding God who not only says
that I have to believe in Him, but tells me exactly how I have to
believe in Him, what I have to believe about Him, and why I have to
believe in Him.

God – Do you think that Life cares whether you believe in Life? Life
does not go away, and it does not treat you any differently, depending
on how you feel about it. Life simply is, and you believing in it or
not believing in it does nothing to change that or affect that. Life
will not “punish” you if you do not believe in Life, nor will Life
“reward” you if you do. Life does not objectively create rewards and
punishments. Life is a process.

Neale – But if the words “God” and “Life” are interchangeable, this would mean that God is a process.

God – That is correct.

Neale – God is a process?

God – That is correct.

Neale – Well, that's certainly a different definition.

God – There is much about Tomorrow's God that will be different.

Neale – Do you think this is a God that people are going to be able to accept?

God – Not today, perhaps. But tomorrow, yes. On a near-future tomorrow, yes.

Neale – What is the process that God is?

God – Life.

Neale – Ah, full circle.

God – Yes. And this is the Fifth Important Difference between
Yesterday's God and Tomorrow's God: TOMORROW'S GOD IS NOT A SINGULAR
SUPER BEING, BUT AN EXTRAORDINARY PROCESS CALLED LIFE.
Neale – This is not a small thing here. This is not an insignificant
change in our theological constructions. For some, this is a major
shift. For some, this is blasphemy.

God – Yet this shift in the way you view and understand God can save
the world. It can preserve your way of life. On humanity's yesterdays
most people who believed in God thought of God as a Super Being, which
allowed them to create a God in their mind who is like a person. In
other words, a Bigger Version of themselves. In thinking this way and
constructing God in this way, they created God in the image and
likeness of humans—which is exactly the opposite of what they said that
God did. Many humans say that God has told the world that God created
humans in the image and likeness of God. And. of course, if you imagine
God to be simply a larger, more magnificent, more powerful version of
humans, it makes sense to you that you are the way you are—albeit
imperfect—and that God is a Super Being, or a Super Version of you. But
I tell you now that God is not a Super Being at all, but the process
called Life, your theological apple cart is turned upside down.
Suddenly, not only is humanity the image and likeness of God,
everything else is as well. This changes your relationship with all
things. Now, everything is one thing, and that One Thing is called God.
This is not a new idea. This is not “New Thought” or “New Age.” Many of
your scientists and philosophers have been saying this for centuries.
In fact, this is the crossroad where science, philosophy, and religion
meet. Each may continue beyond this crossroad, taking once again their
individual direction, but if they forget or ignore the fact that they
have intersected here, they do so at their own peril. Their disciplines
become useless, for they are incomplete. The New Spirituality does not
ignore this cross-road, but stands squarely in the middle of it. That
this New Spirituality, widely adopted, would change the world, there is
no doubt. It could save the world form self-destruction.

Neale – Because human beings would never do things they are now doing
to the Earth, much less things they are doing to each other, if they
thought they were doing all these things to themselves.

God – Exactly. Self-preservation would kick in. Your built-in cellular
encoding—survival--would immediately preclude such behaviour. You would
instinctively repel from it. You would never do things to your own body
that you do without a second thought to the body of another. You could
never treat your own feelings the way you treat, without giving it a
second thought, the feelings of another. You could never do to your own
family, or your own country, what you do to the families and the
countries of another. The only way you can justify treating other
countries, other cultures, other people, the way that you do is to
imagine—no to insist—that they are separate from you. To make this
separation more vivid, and to give yourselves justification for acting
the way you do, you also insist that these others are separate from
God. Only YOU are united with God, only YOU are God's people, only YOU
are following God's plan for salvation. The fact that your
understanding of God's Plan for Salvation is killing half the human
race is of no concern to you. The reason they are dying is either
because they deserve to die (“Kill the infidels!”) or because they have
unwittingly brought about their own demise by not following the path to
the One and True God—who is separate from them and connected only to
YOU by means of some special covenant or revelation or understanding.
This is how your human theologies have created your Cultural Story
around Yesterday's God—and it is why Yesterday's God has become one of
humanity's greatest downfalls.

Neale – Oh, my God, don't say that. It is Satan who is the downfall of
Man. Don't say that God is Man's downfall. That is apostasy!

God – By Yesterday's God I mean Yesterday's ideas about God,
Yesterday's conceptualisations about God. These are what have been
humanity's downfall. They have not led humanity to the place where it
says it wishes to go. They have not brought peace, harmony, and
happiness. They have not produced a Golden Age of Enlightenment. They
have brought tears and anger and violence and bloodshed and untold
anguish and terrible destruction across the globe and around the world.
God herself has not done this, but your ideas about God have. God
himself would never do such a thing, but human beings would, and have.

Neale – And Tomorrow's God will change all this?

God – The ideas about God that humanity will embrace on that future
tomorrow can and will affect all of this in a very positive way.

Neale – So, as I said, this really isn't just a modest shift in our
conceptualisations about God. This is a major change, and would, in
turn, create massive alteration of our Cultural Story. It would
dramatically alter what we tell each other about life. I'm not sure
humanity is ready for a change on that order of magnitude. Human beings
have a complicated relationship with change. They don't like it very
much.

God – And that is why human beings have always had a complicated relationship with God.
**END OF CHAPTER 5**

CHAPTER 6 – Redefining God's Character:

Neale – Our complicated relationship with “change” has created a complicated relationship with God?

God – Yes.

Neale – Why? Why is that so?

God – Because there is another word that is interchangeable with God, and that is “Change.”

Neale – Here we go again. Does this never end, this continual redefining of God?

God – We are not redefining God, we are actually fully defining God for the first time.

Neale – Ah.

God – We are expanding that definition to include ever more subtle
nuances that will allow the human mind to more deeply understand the
nature of God—God's character, if you please—thus to see Divinity in
more places, so to heal its sense of separation and estrangement, and
to embrace its unity with Deity.

Neale – That is exactly what humanity needs right now! It is what we need to see more of.

God – “Need” does not exist. It is an illusion. Given where humanity
says it wishes to go, however, and given what it claims it wishes to
experience, this expansion of its definition of God would be useful and
beneficial. Now, I said earlier that God is that which is Constantly
Present and Constantly Changing, suiting Itself to each moment, so that
God may be understood in that moment, embraced in that moment,
experienced in that moment, and expressed in that moment. I also said
that the words “God” and “Life” were interchangeable. And now what I
want to tell you is that Life is a process of Change. This is why the
words “God” and “Change” are synonymous. Here , then, comes another
shift in your understanding. Yesterday's God was said to be that which
never changes. That God has even been called the Unmoved Mover. So here
is the Sixth Important Difference between Yesterday's God and
Tomorrow's God: TOMORROW'S GOD IS EVER CHANGING.
Neale – You really want the whole paradigm—practically everything we have ever thought about God—to be thrown out, don't you?

God – Not “thrown out,” expanded. You have had a limited awareness. It
is time to expand your awareness. In a sense, your old idea of God as
that which never changes was correct. It was simply incomplete. It did
not contemplate or consider that the one thing which never changed
about God could be that God is always changing; that this could be the
Constant. In fact, it is. God is always expanding and becoming. The
process of expansion and becoming never ends. It is how Life functions,
it is how Life adapts, and it is how Life sustains Itself. This process
is what you have called Evolution.

Neale – I hate to tell you this, but some things in life never change.

God – Nothing in life “never changes.”

Neale – Nothing?

God – Nothing.

Neale – Well, some things certainly seem to not change.

God – Name one thing.

Neale – Wait a minute, we've been here before. You've discussed this
before, in previous conversations, using the Parable of the Rock.

God – Yes, but is is good to visit this understanding again. Clarity
emerges from wisdom revisited. And not everyone has read the
transcripts of those previous dialogues.

Neale – Okay, so we'll stick to the rock example. We'll talk about the
rocks in my garden. They're there, they've been there for years, and
they've not changed a bit. They are inert objects, and they do not
change.

God – Wrong. They move. They change. They are in constant motion. Under
a high-intensity microscope you would see this. You would see particles
constantly in motion, racing at incredible speed relative to their
size, spinning their tale. It is their story. It is the Story of the
Rock. All of life is energy in motion. Nothing stands still. Nothing.
Not a single thing in the Universe is static. All is moving. And
movement is change.

Neale – Can't some things move and still remain the same? The rock in
my garden looks exactly the same today as it did ten years ago. Twenty
years ago. Heck, a hundred years ago.

God – Not all the energy in the Universe is vibrating at the same speed
or frequency—or what you might call the same level of consciousness.
Energy that is totally aware of Itself moves in faster ways to produce
difference. Energy that is not totally aware of itself moves very
slowly, producing over and over again nearly the same pattern that
existed before, until that pattern alters itself alters over a very
long period of time.

Neale – So that's why the rock looks as if it's staying the same, while my appearance changes from year to year.

God – Year to year? Try month to month. Actually, day to day, although
those day-to-day changes, like the changes in the rock, are not
noticed. Energy systems that vibrate at lower rates of speed are more
dependable, more reliable, more stable. This is precisely because they
“produce, over and over again, the same pattern that existed before,
until that pattern alters itself over a very long period of time.” The
universe, for instance, spins in such a pattern. Your Milky Way has
been spinning in the same way for billions of years, and you can count
on it to spin the same way for billions of years more. It all has to do
with levels of self-awareness.

Neale – Are you saying that rocks are self-aware?

God – Everything is self-aware, but levels of self-awareness differ.
Highly self-aware energy always seeks to become more self-aware.

Neale - “How're ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, once they have seen Paris?”

God – Exactly. The more you know, the more you want to know. The more
you experience, the more you want to experience. This is the nature of
Life. Life seeks more Life through the Process of Life Itself.

Neale – That's poetic.

God – It's also true. So, what I am saying here is that the faster an energy vibrates, the faster it is going to vibrate.

Neale – In other words, things speed up. But what about the law of
inertia, which says that “an object in motion tends to stay in motion,
an object at rest tends to stay at rest'?

God – Strictly speaking, nothing is ever at rest. So the New Law of
your New World emerging from the New Spirituality would say that an
object in motion tends to stay in motion, and all objects are in
motion.

Neale – And that motion is the process of evolution.

God – Yes. Exactly. Yes.

Neale – Okay, I see this, I understand it. But what does this have to do with God and me and my daily life?

God – I said that what we were going to do is redefine God's character.
So long as humanity sees God the it currently sees God, you will assign
to God all sorts of characteristics that are simply not part of the
true nature of God and have nothing to do with who and what God is.
Remember when I said earlier that the God in whom you believe isn't
real, that the God in whom you believe is made up?

Neale – Yes, I was pretty startled when you made that comment.

God – Yet it's true. Yesterday's God is a God you created out of thin
air, having nothing to do with Ultimate Reality. What I am explaining
now is Ultimate Reality—a little of it, anyway—so that you can begin to
understand, begin to grasp, the complexity of it, the sophistication of
it, the subtlety of the Whole System. Hang in there through this little
short course in the physiology of God and Life, because after you hear
this, you will never be able to think of “God” in the same way again.

Neale – Okay, I'm with you. I'm right with you.
God – Good. Now, to pick up where I left off...all energy is self-aware, but not all energy is aware that it is self-aware.

Neale – I beg your pardon?

God – All of Life, down to the tiniest cell, molecule, or sub-molecular
particle, contains intelligence. This basic intelligence is built in.
It is a cellular encoding. Because that is true, these tiny particles
move in ways that make sense. Their movement produces a specific and
predictable outcome. This outcome is called Life. At the macro level,
it is called the cosmology of the universe. At the micro level it is
called particle physics, super-string theory, and so forth.

Neale – And somewhere in the middle, there's us!

God – Now you're with me. Yes! Some of you call this built-in
intelligence the “survival instinct.” All of your laws of physics and
its predictability have been based on the understanding at which you
have just arrived. Now comes an interesting twist: At a certain point
in the Process of Evolution, Life Energy becomes aware that it is aware
of itself.

Neale – That's a big event, yes?

God – You bet. It is Life becoming aware of what Life IS in its present
form. It is supremely impacting, because it produces what I call the
Separation Phenomenon. This is when an element of Life first has the
“idea” that it is separate from God. it is the first Pivotal Moment.
Prior to this moment, energy particles expressed themselves as part of
an overall System. Their intelligence was experienced as the
intelligence of the System.

Neale – Kind of like the Borg in Star Trek.

God – Actually, exactly like that, only without any malevolent intent.
In the First Pivotal Moment of self-discovery, an energy unit becomes
conscious of Itself as a part of the System, rather than as the System
Itself. Its identity as part of the System soon expands into thought
that is separate from the System.

Neale – Oh-oh.

God – Yes, this is the Great Oh-Oh of the Universe. It is the Mother of
all Oh-Oh's. Actually, that's true literally, because it gives birth to
the next emerging process of Life: chaos.

Neale – Chaos? As in “chaos theory”?

God – Exactly. The thought of being something “other” than the System is what brings chaos to life.

Neale – Wow, you are making physics relevant here. This is great. So,
go on. How does the idea of separation from the All create chaos in the
System?

God – While a unit of energy becomes self-aware, it is losing its
awareness of the larger System of which it is a part. Its
intelligence—which is really the intelligence of the System—is now
experienced as its own intelligence. An example of this is what is
occurring right now.

Neale – It is?

God – Yes.
Neale – In what way?

God – You think this is YOU talking, and really, it is ME. Part of you
thinks that this explanation right now is something coming from your
intelligence, and it is not, and could not be, because you don't know
any of this. Yet, because it came through you, you think it belongs to
you. You think it is yours, and really it is ours. (The intelligence, I
am talking about. I am talking about the intelligence that is now
bringing these words forth.)

Neale – You're right. Sometimes I do think that this all is coming from me. Even when I know better, I sometimes think that.

God – Don't feel bad. It's natural. I am explaining to you here just
how natural it is. It's part of how Life works. And, of course, the
intelligence IS coming from you. It's coming from the part of you that
is me. That is, it's coming from the System, of which you are an
intrinsic part. But when an energy unit such as yourself sees itself as
not a part of the System at all, but as a product OF the System, the
Life Form has created an illusion. It is one of the Ten Illusions of
Humans. It is the Illusions of Disunity.

Neale – And then along comes chaos theory and quantum physics.

God – Yes. And quantum physics is simply the scientific explanation for
how God--”the System,” if you please—looks at Its individual parts and
watches Itself impacting those Parts. You would call this phenomenon,
in spiritual terms, a “higher level of consciousness,” or “increased
self-awareness.” It is when That Which Is Aware experiences the fact
that It affects that of which It Is aware.

Neale - “Nothing which is observed is unaffected by the observer.” The first law of quantum physics.

God – Good. That is very good. Now the energy unit, or Life form,
experiences Itself as part of System again. It becomes aware that the
more rapid is the vibration of its energy, the higher its frequency,
and the more impact it has on the energy around it.

Neale – This is absolutely fascinating, and I can even see how this
applies to my own life. The more I become self-aware, the more impact I
see myself having upon the life that's going on around me. And the more
I have a sense of that, the more conscious I imagine I become of my
potential impact, and I can take that into account as I make future
decisions.

God – That's the way it's supposed to work, but many Earthly
forms—most, actually—cannot always determine their impact with
precision ahead of time. So, unpredictability becomes part of the
System. This is called Creation. It is the Creation and the Creator
being the same thing. Everything is predictable in the energy unit you
call a rock. Left to its own devices, it will continue to manifest
itself in precisely the same way over an extended period. Of course,
even the rock is the outcome of a larger process that produced it. It
evolved out of something else. But that process took a very long time,
because the energy units that produce it vibrate at a very slow speed
and a very low frequency. Now along comes a human being—an energy unit
or Life Form vibrating at a much higher frequency—having the capacity
to see in the rock what the rock does not and cannot see in itself. The
human does something totally unpredictable, from the rock's point of
view. The human being picks up the rock, puts it in a tumbler, and
polishes it until it reveals itself to be a shining beautiful stone.
The much slower energy system of which the rock is normally a part can
also produce the same result, which the Earth itself becoming the
tumbler and its elements rubbing against the rock until a precious
stone appears. Yet that can take eons, whereas a human being—who knows
how to move energy around consciously to produce a specific result—can
produce the same outcome in a few hours. This is Conscious Creation.

Neale – I get it! Everything I do is part of the Creation Process
inherent in all of Life. And after I evolve to a really high level, I
can actually produce and even control the way in which I am impacting
Life. I can become the master of my own destiny.

God – Now you are, indeed, “getting it.” Now do you see what this all
has to do with your daily life? Once you understand all of this, once
you start looking at Life and God and Creation in a new way, it begins
to shift your whole ground of being. It changes the way you hold the
experience of Life Itself—and yourself IN it. And so we see all of Life
is creative, with the more evolved elements of Life able to be
consciously creative. And, the more evolved a Life Form is, the more
consciously it will create. Finally, as Life Forms become even more
self-aware, they begin to access different levels of consciousness,
including the level of consciousness from which they, themselves,
emerged. This produces a reversal of the Separation Phenomenon—the
Second Pivotal Moment: a disappearing of individual consciousness, a
melting of it into the All in an experience that some Eastern mystics
have called bliss, or Nirvana.

Neale – I can achieve this, I can get to that place right now if I want to. That is what you are telling me, right?

God – That is exactly what I am saying, yes. Bliss is the natural state
of being of all Life, and all Life Forms return to it. Highly evolved
Life Forms move in and out of this State at will. It is the cyclical
movement in and out of bliss that propels Life Itself, and causes it to
Be. Bliss is the highest vibration of energy that is possible. This is
heaven. This is nirvana. This is reunification with the One. This is
the End of the Cycle. The emergence out of Bliss, the birthing that it
produces, is the lowest vibration of energy that is possible. This is
the Beginning of the Cycle. This Cycle of Life never ends. If it did,
Life Itself would cease to be. Such a thing cannot occur; because Life
will not allow it. Life is ruled by three basic principles:
functionality, adaptability, and sustainability. It functions, or,
having atrophied to the point of near dysfunctionality, it adapts, and
having adapted, it sustains itself. Always, Life sustains itself. Life
is eternal. All things in Life support Life.

Neale – Then we have nothing to worry about on this planet.

God – Ah, but it is the second of the Three Basic Principles of Life
that you must watch carefully. For, you see, Life is eternally
adaptable. That is, it will change itself, it will alter the form in
which it is expressed, in order to ensure that it is sustained.

Neale – What does that mean to me? What does that mean to humans?

God – It means that your planet could become a living hell. It means
that the energy system of which you are a part will adapt itself in
whatever way it has to, in order to make certain that Life Itself is
sustained. And so if you, as a part of Life, adapt the Life System of
which you are part in such a way that the System itself is threatened
at the level of functionality, the System will counter-adapt in order
to sustain itself, and you, my friend, may not like the way in which is
does this. The System is bigger than your Little Self, and the mistake
you are making is in imagining that your little Self is bigger than the
System—which, of course is the Big Self. You do not stand outside of
the System, but are part of the System, and the System will adapt the
part of it that you are before it will allow you to adapt IT beyond its
functional limits.

Neale – This “system” is the “process” that you called “change,” isn't it?

God – That's correct.

Neale – This “system” is, then, what you called “God,” yes?

God – You could put it that way.

Neale – Oh, boy, another definition.

***End of Chapter 6*****