Soma
Resources => Stories, Writings and Other Snippets [Public] => Topic started by: Nichi on June 14, 2010, 06:10:10 PM
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Nothing has happened to you by accident, nothing has occurred by chance. It has all been called forth, all of it, that you may experience and know what you choose to experience and know, that you may experience the grandest version of the greatest vision ever you held about Who You Are.
Neale Donald Walsch
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Watch out for God.
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Watch out for God.
Funny you should mention:
Conversations With God (Books 1, 2, & 3) by Neale Donald Walsch (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_22?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=conversations+with+god+book+1+2+3&sprefix=Conversations+With+God)
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Funny you should mention:
Conversations With God (Books 1, 2, & 3) by Neale Donald Walsch (http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_22?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=conversations+with+god+book+1+2+3&sprefix=Conversations+With+God)
Well he is rather popular here in Sweden. But I think it was a kind of affair regarding some of his books regarding copyright or something like "it is a plagiarism".
Quote:
Neale Donald Walsch is not a very good writer. That should be evident from the fact he plagiarized, though if you’d ever slogged through anything he’d actually written you’d not need plagiarism to seal the conviction. This is a man who, just before the mea culpa posted this gem:
You are an Individuation of Deity, a singularization of The Singularity, an aspect of Divinity. You are the Localized Expression of the Universal Presence... You are God... You are in the Realm of the Physical -- what has also been called the Realm of the Relative...which is where Experiencing occurs.
Let us put aside for the moment that 'singularization' is not, I think, a word. What in the name of all that is holy does anything in that collection of words mean? This is where Experiencing occurs? Experience now apparently requires an extra suffix and a capitalized first letter, because I must assume that experience is a holy act we don’t do enough of. We must reorient ourselves to the reality that we are God.
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January 9, 2009
Christmas Essay Was Not His, Author Admits By MOTOKO RICH
Neale Donald Walsch, author of the best-selling series “Conversations With God,” recently posted a personal Christmas essay on the spiritual Web site Beliefnet.com about his son’s kindergarten winter pageant.
During a dress rehearsal, he wrote, a group of children spelled out the title of a song, “Christmas Love,” with each child holding up a letter. One girl held the “m” upside down, so that it appeared as a “w,” and it looked as if the group was spelling “Christ Was Love.” It was a heartwarming Christmas story from a writer known for his spiritual teachings.
Except it never happened — to him.
Mr. Walsch’s story was nearly identical to an essay by a writer named Candy Chand, which was originally published 10 years ago in Clarity, a spiritual magazine, and has been circulating on the Web ever since. Mr. Walsch now says he made a mistake in believing the story was something that had actually come from his personal experience.
Ms. Chand said she originally wrote the piece about her son, Nicholas, and his kindergarten winter pageant and published it in Clarity in 1999. In his Dec. 28 blog posting, Mr. Walsch, who also has a son named Nicholas, said it happened at his son’s pageant 20 years ago.
Ms. Chand’s essay was reprinted, with her clearly identified as the author, in “Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul” in 2000, as well as on heartwarmers.com, a Web site for inspirational stories. In 2003 Ms. Chand copyrighted the story with the United States Copyright Office. Last June Gibbs Smith, a small independent publisher, released the story, “Christmas Love,” as an illustrated gift book. The story has also been passed around through e-mail and on blogs, sometimes without attribution.
Except for a different first paragraph in which Mr. Walsch wrote that he could “vividly remember” the incident, his Dec. 28 Beliefnet post followed, virtually verbatim, Ms. Chand’s previously published writing, even down to prosaic details like “The morning of the dress rehearsal, I filed in ten minutes early, found a spot on the cafeteria floor and sat down.”
On Saturday Ms. Chand contacted Elizabeth Sams, Beliefnet’s executive vice president of content and community, and on Tuesday morning Mr. Walsch’s post was taken down. “This blog chain has been taken down while Beliefnet investigates the ownership of the previously published material,” a brief statement on the Web site said.
In a statement posted Tuesday afternoon on his blog on Beliefnet, which is owned by the News Corporation, Mr. Walsch said he had made a “serious error” and apologized to Ms. Chand and his readers.
“All I can say now — because I am truly mystified and taken aback by this — is that someone must have sent it to me over the Internet ten years or so ago,” Mr. Walsch wrote. “Finding it utterly charming and its message indelible, I must have clipped and pasted it into my file of ‘stories to tell that have a message I want to share.’ I have told the story verbally so many times over the years that I had it memorized ... and then, somewhere along the way, internalized it as my own experience.”
In a telephone interview, Mr. Walsch, 65, who said he regularly gave 10 to 20 speeches a year, said he had been retelling the anecdote in public as his own for years. “I am chagrined and astonished that my mind could play such a trick on me,” he said.
Mr. Walsch — whose first book in the series “Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue,” published in 1996 by Putnam, a unit of Penguin Group USA, spent 139 weeks on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list — added that he would never deliberately copy another writer’s words without attributing them. “It’s not like I’m trying to find an audience or trying to impress anybody with my writing,” he said.
Ms. Chand said in a telephone interview that she did not believe Mr. Walsch’s explanation. “If he knew this was wrong, he should have known it was wrong before he got caught,” she said. “Quite frankly, I’m not buying it.”
Ms. Chand said that she had seen others take credit for writing the story twice in church newsletters, but that this was the first time she had seen a professional appropriate her words.
“I have strong issue with anyone who would appear to plagiarize my work and pretend it is his own,” she said. “That takes away from the truth of the material, it takes away from the miracle that occurred, because people begin to question what they can believe anymore.
“As a professional writer, when someone appears to plagiarize, they damage the industry, they damage other writers’ credibility and they hurt the reader because they never know what to believe anymore.”
In a statement, Beliefnet said Mr. Walsch had withdrawn from the site’s blogging roster. “As a faith-based Web portal, Beliefnet will continue to hold ourselves and our writers to the highest standards of trust,” the statement read.
Ms. Chand said she was concerned that people would now think she had copied Mr. Walsch’s story. “How many people have heard him telling people that it’s his own?” she said. “There goes my credibility again.”
Speaking of Mr. Walsch, she asked: “Has the man who writes best-selling books about his ‘Conversations With God’ also heard God’s commandments? ‘Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not lie, and thou shalt not covet another author’s property’?”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 9, 2009
An article on Wednesday about the admission by the author Neale Donald Walsch that a personal Christmas essay he recently posted on the Web site Beliefnet.com was actually written by another author, Candy Chand, who published it 10 years ago, misspelled the given name of a Beliefnet.com executive whom Ms. Chand contacted. The executive is Elizabeth Sams, not Elisabeth.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/books/07book.html
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So .... what is the lesson about Mr Neale Donald Walsch? He doesn't qualify among the Ravens?
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I like him. :)
“Every decision you make—every decision—is not a decision about what to do. It’s a decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do.”
Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
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So .... what is the lesson about Mr Neale Donald Walsch? He doesn't qualify among the Ravens?
Consider me duly informed Jamir. I'm out of the loop of the new age writers.
The only book I read by him was his first, back in the late 90's. I found that book very uplifting and inspiring, though probably not to the degree that others did. In this area, "Conversations With God" study groups popped up, in the same light and with the same frequency as "Course in Miracles" groups did. I did come into his subsequent books, but gave them away.
All that being said, I watched a friend of mine back then become transformed and excited from reading "Conversations". I have no idea if Walsch plagiarized his books or not, but he did get through to a few folks. The one friend I witnessed become transformed was as stubborn as a mule.
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All that being said, I watched a friend of mine back then become transformed and excited from reading "Conversations". I have no idea if Walsch plagiarized his books or not, but he did get through to a few folks. The one friend I witnessed become transformed was as stubborn as a mule.
;D
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Sorry, it was never my thing. I think the title put me off.
Course in Miracles is still big I think. That was a fashion around here many years ago, and I did read some of it. I didn't find anything to object to in what I read, but I did hear some unpleasant stories about the groups who followed it.
I also read the Mormon's book, but found it a bit silly.
Still if something can get people out of their material slumber, then it's got some value. Except if it then seals them against further awakening.
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I don't have strong feelings about NDW, one way or the other. I liked the quote I shared, but he is apparently a can of worms. I can't defend or attack him.
I will say this: I read his first book, and I could see its uplifting aspects, especially if one was dealing with feelings of worthlessness and woundedness. The book helped my friend back in the day, so that seemed to speak for the book. Whether the friend returned to a "slumber" or not I have no idea.
But it has been my observation that timing is everything. My friend stumbled into that book when the time was ripe for him. Who knows, though, it could have been any book for him. He also included a couple of Castaneda books in his searching. I think we "stumble" into the message we most need when the time is right, in the peccadilloes of our own travels.
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I think we "stumble" into the message we most need when the time is right, in the peccadilloes of our own travels.
yep
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Right. But do not mix what can be useful with what is clean and straight.
Ravens go for the core in energy and if they do not recognize that core it is of little interest.
Very often, the softed versions that attract the masses have very little core. The core is not only love, peace and understanding. God is not a nice uncle sitting in a chair he is more like one-eyed Odin driving a Harley Davidsson and being an expert on computers. Heh, pressing the belief system.
Jesus did the right thing, trying to bring love to this world, and I have met him. But on the other hand he was close to be a fool too. Really testing the limits of what that could be done back then.
Do they (Walsh, the church, the Pope etc.) know Jesus, the crucified man that challenged the Jews? No. The Son of God then, how big are the chances that they know him? Of course not they do not know him as we might do, the Son of God is impossible to manifest, that is their misperception. They will never give him the credit he claimed.
- But the Raven knows, every tiny detail that is worth to know he or she knows about "Messiah". How come? Because the Raven search the core.
~.~
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No argument on this end, Jamir!
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As I've said before, it is important to distinguish between the Short and the Long Path.
We have an obligation to seek out the teachings of the Short Path, but also an obligation to recognise and understand the teachings of the Long Path. This, because we have to survive in the world, but more because we have to play a role in the world and the wisdoms of the Short Path are not applicable to those who come under the command of the Long Path.
There is always a battle raging over the direction of evolution of the human species. You only have to look in the newspapers or watch films and television, to see the contest of influence between the upward and downward spiralling impulses.
In fact they seem to be locked into a duet under some law of influences. Last night I saw on the History of America doco how at the same time that the Statue of Liberty was being dedicated with that amazing inscription from some poem, on the other side of the continent the Chinese were being lynched and driven out of towns, like some place called Truckee. After the Chinese had built the transcontinental railway under the most appalling conditions (no one else but the Chinese would work in such freezing temperatures). The guy made an interesting comment, that if you consider how it is often said that the transcontinental railway made modern America, then it was the Chinese that made modern America.
So the Long Path influences have always had good and bad intertwined - one impulse awakens while at the same time closes off further awakening. We watch and accept that, as someone was quoted on the radio yesterday, "You can only know someone, if you love without hope."
The religions are not the only source of Long Path knowledge, it has broken out now and you can see it everywhere - anything which calls for the better side of our nature is working towards the long evolutionary path that slowly leads to higher and higher ground.
But we who have studied the Short Path, can find good nuggets of useful wisdom in the Long Path teachings. Just because they lack the inner core of knowledge that we associate with the Short Path, doesn't mean they don't capture something worthwhile - like in a poem or a song, occasionally a jewel of wisdom pops out of nowhere. We have to be ready to grab these and apply them, without disdain for the messenger.
Spirit is not contained in its use of opportunities to gift us with moments of power - Spirit utilises anything and everything. It is we who have to bring these jewels into our own Short Path commitment.
For those who are not ready, the Short Path is dangerous. It is dangerous for everyone, but for those who are destined to remain cocooned within the Long Path, books like CC's they immediately shrink from as they rightly recognise them as poison. And we should not be offering them poison when they need healing, we should be offering the right medicine for the right person.
But we should also be watching and trying to understand what the guides of the Long Path are working towards - it is by no means transparent. We have to rise above our frustration and impatience with the tedious superficiality and slowness of popular wisdoms.
I know of what I speak because for so many years it drove me up the wall. Now I just smile and enjoy it all if its pointing in the right direction, even at face value. Now I just try to love without hope.
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I think we "stumble" into the message we most need when the time is right, in the peccadilloes of our own travels.
That is so true, and has happened to me so often, that it almost makes me a believer! ;)
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We have an obligation to seek out the teachings of the Short Path, but also an obligation to recognise and understand the teachings of the Long Path. This, because we have to survive in the world, but more because we have to play a role in the world and the wisdoms of the Short Path are not applicable to those who come under the command of the Long Path.
Absolutely, we have been talking about this before. When I contemplated my post I found out that what I was about to recognize about different approaches was that in the tradition that is built on Christ there are two paths. One is impersonal and perhaps what you would call the long path approach while the other has drama and is more focused on the true teachings of Jesus.
He actually said "I am the path". But that is not really my point, even if it has a core element. The point is the surrender that he manifest. (Now this IE refuse to show what i write so I drop it here).
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In the impersonal way you rely on the dogma and try to be a good guy. That is nice, but much without a vein.
The complete opposite is to live the transformation and the crucification and the drama it all was when Jesus took on our sins. For warriors the way to God and alignment through the experiences of Jesus Christ is not what we seek in the first place but it is a part of our history and social context to deal with the task. Tommy2F for instance found peace in the connection with JC.
I see more but am not able to structure these seeings into words. In our core we have the unlimited connection in time and space to everything that has happened and will happen. My ideas comes from a visit in the core ...
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Tommy2F for instance found peace in the connection with JC.
Did he? That's what he was determined to convince everyone of, but not what I see.
the other has drama and is more focused on the true teachings of Jesus.
On my long walk upon this road, I have come to recognise three salient things about the path of bhakti: exclusivity, context and pride. This has been on my mind recently, so I'll use this thread to pop these thought down - some may agree and some not.
Exclusivity.
It appears to me that the pure devotional path has exclusivity unavoidably embedded into it. Tommy was a classic example of this: he began gradually, with a high degree of tolerance and acceptance of the 'many paths', but soon there was only one - his - and all the rest were wrong (evil in fact).
That to me is inevitable, because if you are going to commit your desire engine to one object with the intensity and absoluteness that bhakti demands, then finally there can be only one correct way. Tolerance of alternatives becomes unacceptable, and due to the intensely personal nature of bhakti, other people become right or wrong in alignment with that 'correct way'.
Context.
This never ceases to amaze me. Despite what bhakti devotees loudly proclaim, that their relationship with their god is unique, individual and personal, nonetheless they demonstrate blatantly their relationship is populated by all the items of their social context.
The Christian variety say for example that their soul is in a one-to-one relationship with Jesus, exclusive to and uninfluenced by anything else whatsoever: they are 'alone with Jesus'. But then you see them loudly upholding all the beliefs and attitudes of every other evangelical Christian - anti-drug, anti-abortion, anti-government, anti-sharmanic, anti-liberal views and on and on.
Again I have come to see this as a natural consequence of the intensely personal nature of bhakti, that without their realising it, devotionals absorb all the 'value' judgements of their identified social group-context. It is a consequence of shifting the centre of gravity to the emotions - the doors open to every intense emotion, especially 'belonging'.
Pride
Most (not all) bhakti followers are actually simply projecting their self-importance onto the personage of their devotion. Where once if you insulted them, they would be offended, now if you insult their god they will be even more offended. They have simply succeeded in transferring an exaggerated version of their pride to a deity, which you will note is their 'personal saviour' and then hopefully the world's 'personal saviour'.
The result I have noticed is that once the flames of excitation exhaust themselves, and the person feels a little silly for having told everyone 'you are wrong and I am right', for having made such fuss and drama - once real life in all it's mundanity returns to the fore in buckets - they can't pull out. Because their pride is invested.
They can't return to all their old friends and say, 'sorry guys, I just had a little flip out', because from the start it was a matter of pride, and they will go to their grave defending that against humiliation.
Having said all that, I should add that any path without passion is a dead path.
And let me stress - not all bhakti devotees fall into the traps I sketched above.
I recall one friend of Ram Dass - he studied advanced Hindu techniques of breathing and meditation with Dass. Eventually he went to a small cave in the desert somewhere in the US, and took LSD while focusing all his love and attention on Jesus Christ, who was his personal beloved. Employing all these techniques, he stayed there and died there. When Dass asked his guru, Neem Kaoli Baba if this man was alright, Neem went into meditation for a little while. Then he began to cry. He told Dass that his friend had made it - he was one with his beloved.
Just a little story to indicate that bhakti followers come in all shapes and sizes.
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I'm not a bhakti devotee, of any kind. I have sought at times on my journey to be one. Nothing happens. I think I am too mental for Bhakti. I do recall though a dream in which Jesus gave me a passport to cross the border to another land. Always wondered about that dream.
I quite enjoyed the first Conversations with God. I read the book, and then also listened to the audio of the book. I found it interesting that there were parts of the book I did not recall reading, though I heard them on the audio. And vice-versa. I found that I enjoyed the audio more than the visual book. I don't usually do audio. The rest of the books, I started reading and then left. Was pretty much a repition of what went before and did not have the same impact on me. It sometimes seems that authors who suddenly find there book receptive (like the Celestine series, and the Kryon books and many other, too), then seem to have a need to go on and on with more books. There's a pattern. Once the "spiritual" aspect has been introduced, they all go on then to solve the social and political problems of the world.
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Interesting discussion of bhakti devotees. I always think of Lalla and Mirabai, wondering if they could have fit this motif of "pride". If they didn't, could it be that they didn't because there wasn't an evangelical component in their beliefs?
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could it be that they didn't because there wasn't am evangelical component in their beliefs?
That's interesting - hadn't thought about that. You could be right.
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I do recall though a dream in which Jesus gave me a passport to cross the border to another land.
I like that.
Once the "spiritual" aspect has been introduced, they all go on then to solve the social and political problems of the world.
:D
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This maybe a little offtopic, but still...
I've always found a little funny all this talk about Ravens. I mean, ravens are birds.
Why should someone with knowledge identify themselves with ravens? Do i have to be a "Raven" to be interested in the core?
It's just wierd to hear this kind of talk from a man who is supposed to have kownledge (as you claim to be). Anyway, it just interests me if you can explain this emphasis on ravens.
Right. But do not mix what can be useful with what is clean and straight.
Ravens go for the core in energy and if they do not recognize that core it is of little interest.
Very often, the softed versions that attract the masses have very little core. The core is not only love, peace and understanding. God is not a nice uncle sitting in a chair he is more like one-eyed Odin driving a Harley Davidsson and being an expert on computers. Heh, pressing the belief system.
Jesus did the right thing, trying to bring love to this world, and I have met him. But on the other hand he was close to be a fool too. Really testing the limits of what that could be done back then.
Do they (Walsh, the church, the Pope etc.) know Jesus, the crucified man that challenged the Jews? No. The Son of God then, how big are the chances that they know him? Of course not they do not know him as we might do, the Son of God is impossible to manifest, that is their misperception. They will never give him the credit he claimed.
- But the Raven knows, every tiny detail that is worth to know he or she knows about "Messiah". How come? Because the Raven search the core.
~.~
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That's interesting - hadn't thought about that. You could be right.
Then again, who knows how they were received by their contemporaries...
I imagine they were considered "prideful" in their time, each of them rebuking their husbands.
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Exclusivity.
It appears to me that the pure devotional path has exclusivity unavoidably embedded into it. Tommy was a classic example of this: he began gradually, with a high degree of tolerance and acceptance of the 'many paths', but soon there was only one - his - and all the rest were wrong (evil in fact).
The result I have noticed is that once the flames of excitation exhaust themselves, and the person feels a little silly for having told everyone 'you are wrong and I am right', for having made such fuss and drama - once real life in all it's mundanity returns to the fore in buckets - they can't pull out. Because their pride is invested.
You are absolutely right Michael but I am not into cases or how this way of JC has been distorted by mankind. I only saw two different approaches which of one path to alignment was through JC.
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This maybe a little offtopic, but still...
I've always found a little funny all this talk about Ravens. I mean, ravens are birds.
Why should someone with knowledge identify themselves with ravens? Do i have to be a "Raven" to be interested in the core?
It's just wierd to hear this kind of talk from a man who is supposed to have kownledge (as you claim to be). Anyway, it just interests me if you can explain this emphasis on ravens.
Splendid that you bring this topic up Taimyr.
For you the Raven might be just another bird but in the world of the Shaman the Raven hold the mystic. The Raven is a reflection of mans deepest connection to himself.
- “Ask the Raven” was a piece written by Edgar Allan Poe and that piece of art is only a reflection of the energy of the Raven. Odin had two Ravens, Hugin and Munin, as an extension of his seeing of what was going on in the world.
The names Hugin and Munin is best translated to Mind and Memory or to Spirit and Memory. It is a pair that each day flew out from Odin’s nest and then returned in the evening to report to him what they had seen.
The Core on the other hand is your spine alignment to life. In the Core lies the alignment to the Ravens and the infinity. The Ravens as a label or identity only serve a purpose to describe our frequency or dimension of knowledge, or rather knowingness, since knowledge is what you can read about. From the concept of understanding the nature of the Ravens and knowingness beyond, the label of Ravens is not necessary, but still today they are a good metaphor for us in this life and context to grasp the mystic and magic of life.