Excerpt from the book:Right and Wrong are Relative Terms
There’s nothing “wrong” with anything. “Wrong” is a relative term, indicating the opposite of that which you call “right.”
Yet, what is “right”? Can you be truly objective in these matters? Or are “right” and “wrong” simply descriptions overlaid on events and circumstances by you, out of your decision about them?
And what, pray tell, forms the basis of your decision? Your own experience? No. In most cases, you’ve chosen to accept someone else’s decision. Someone who came before you and, presumably, knows better. Very few of your daily decisions about what is “right” and “wrong” are being made by you, based on your understanding.
This is especially true on important matters. In fact, the more important the matter, the less you are likely to listen to your own experience, and the more ready you seem to be to make someone else’s ideas your own.
This explains why you've given up virtually total control over certain areas of your life, and certain questions that arise within the human experience.
These areas and questions very often include the subjects most vital for your soul: the nature of God; the nature of true morality; the question of ultimate reality; the issues of life and death surrounding war, medicine, abortion euthanasia, the whole sum and substance of personal values, structures, judgments. These most of you have abrogated, assigned to others. You don't want to make your own decisions about them.
“Someone else decide! I’ll go along, I’ll go along!” you shout. “Someone else just tell me what’s right and wrong!”
This is why, by the way, human religions are so popular. It almost doesn’t matter what the belief system is, as long as it’s firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who will believe in almost anything. The strangest behavior and belief can be—has been—attributed to God. It’s God’s way, they say. God’s word.
And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think.
Thinking is hard. Making value judgments is difficult. It places you at pure creation, because there are so many times you’ll have to say, “I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Yet still you have to decide. And so you’ll have to choose. You’ll have to make an arbitrary choice.
Such a choice—a decision coming from no previous personal knowledge—is called pure creation. And the individual is aware, deeply aware, that in the making of such decisions is the Self created.
Most of you are not interested in such important work. Most of you would rather leave that to others. And so most of you are not self-created, but creatures of habit—other-created creatures.
Then when others have told you how you should feel, and it runs directly counter to how you do feel—you experience a deep inner conflict. Something deep inside you tells you that what others have told you is not Who You Are. Now where to go with that? What to do?
The first place you go to is your religionists—the people who put you there in the first place. You go to your priests and your rabbis and your ministers and your teachers, and they tell you to stop listening to your Self. The worst of them will try to scare you away from it; scare you away from what you intuitively know.
They’ll tell you about the devil, about Satan, about demons and evils spirits and hell and damnation and every frightening thing they can think of to get you to see how what you were intuitively knowing and feeling was wrong, and how they only place you’ll find any comfort is in their thought, their idea, their theology, their definitions of right and wrong, and their concept of Who You Are.
The seduction here is that all you have to do to get instant approval is to agree. Agree and you have instant approval. Some will even sing and shout and dance and wave their arms in hallelujah! That’s hard to resist. Such approval, such rejoicing that you have seen the light; that you’ve been saved!
Approvals and demonstrations seldom accompany inner decisions. Celebrations rarely surround choices to follow personal truth. In fact, quite the contrary. Not only may others fail to celebrate, they may actually subject you to ridicule. What? You’re thinking for yourself? You’re deciding on your own? You’re applying your own yardsticks, your own judgments, your own values? Who do you think you are, anyway? And indeed, that is precisely the question you are answering.
My take on it:
This book is perfect for those who are open minded and don't come to books (and life in general) with the attitude that you already have all the answers. Most people who swear by the bible haven't even read that much of it. Why? because society has ingrained and brainwashed and created their belief systems and then anything that contradicts their paradigm of the way the world is must be wrong and blasphemy.
This book is highly logical, very fair, many of the ideas are sound, interesting and make sense if thought about carefully. Many of the words don't just resonate as being true in the logical mind but in my soul. It covers deep topics with simple words that explain quite effectively the concepts. A combination most readers want. It emphasizes love over judgment and punishment which I believe God should be about.
If I were God would I set up a system by which it would be possible for my beloved children and created beings to suffer eternally? Would I not give them free will and in addition when they make mistakes always be forgiving and loving? Would I not make all my creations perfect? A perfect being cannot do imperfect things otherwise it would not be perfect. These concepts are covered in this book. I am not saying to accept everything Neale says as literal truth (nor does Neale actually), all I am saying is to think about the teachings and concepts in the book and even put them in to practice to see whether they work or not. Whether this book comes from God or not it is profound and interesting if you are a deep thinker and open-minded.
In the spiritual realm, according to this book and many other teachings, time does not exist. Everything is literally happening at once. Life, such as this one wherein we experience the passage of time, is simply the way we experience eternity in little bite sized chunks to examine and experience in minute detail. When we die, we simply return to the realm where time does not exist, and we can start over again if we choose. Upon reading this explanation I seem to have lost my fear of death, for it was so completely convincing when added to my current level of spiritual knowledge.
This book is a MUST read. It is literally the experience of a lifetime. I can't even put into words how much this book changed my life. It will answer any questions you've ever had regarding, God, love, life, death, afterlife, work, money, politics, etc. I have bought several copies and given them out to everyone I know. I guarantee that anyone who reads this will be touched.
In this book, I have found the answers that my soul longed for, leading to a complete and absolute epiphany. Walsch wrote the words I have always thought, but never dared to mutter, not even to my most trusted friends.
At first I found his context, an actual conversation with God, to be unsettling. After recovering from this shock, I found this work to be the best book I have ever read, and re-read.
Excess:
I warn you, unless you are genuinely looking for answers, unless you are prepared to view your existence in an unfamiliar manner and unless you want to be liberated from the plague of this planet disguised as the dogma of organized religion, don't buy this book!
