Conversations with god

[pedro]

Ive been reading with enormous interst these books. Despite what you may or may not think about them, they are filled with what seems too convincing to be discarded type of truths. I dont value any knowledge but by the benefit it brings to my understanding, of how much it helps me remember what I already know, and these books have done this, as did the course in miracles

anyway, I think Im not breaking any rules by letting you all know you can download all these books online right here. Start with conversations with god 1, 2 & 3, plus "friendship..", "communion.." and "meditations.." if you want the whole lot, and absolutely IGNORE the rest of the site. The files seem generated by OCR and have many typos, but thats a small price to pay for the insight they bring

And its nice to know that God has a sense of humour (he invented humour, he says quite convincingly

)

 

[candid]

These are interesting books for sure, Pedro. Amazon sells them new for around $22 and used for $1.40-$4.95 USD. I have "Friendship with God" on its way, a gift from a friend. I've spoken of "Communion with God" here before more than once.

 

[pedro]

Hey Candid

I didnt just take your word for it, and I searched for threads on "Communion with God" for the last half hour, only to find some really great thoughts from you and others

Im still, as you say similarly at some point, slowly digesting it, but it is indeed very inspiring, so much as to render its detractors almost ridicule in their arguments

 

[candid]

Pedro, I've only read the one thus far, but since this other is coming to me from someone else, unsolicited or even spoken of, just as the first one did, I'm expecting to receive something substantial from it. Yeah, it doesn't seem to be the kind of thing to completely digest, more like something that grows on you or in you. This idea that need is a perception resulting from disunity with complete sufficiency can be really empowering. It also changes my view of what life is, and what is not.

 

[pedro]

When will I learn enough about relationships to be able to have them go smoothly? Is there a way to be happy in relationships? Must they be constantly challenging?

You have nothing to learn about relationships. You have only to demonstrate what you already know.
There is a way to be happy in relationships, and that is to use relationships for their intended purpose, not the purpose you have designed.
Relationships are constantly challenging; constantly calling you to create, express, and experience higher and higher aspects of yourself, grander and grander visions of yourself, ever more magnificent versions of yourself. Nowhere can you do this more immediately, impactfully, and immaculately than in relationships. In fact, without relationships, you cannot do it at all.
It is only through your relationship with other people, places, and events that you can even exist (as a knowable quantity, as an identifiable something) in the universe. Remember, absent everything else, you are not. You only are what you are relative to another thing that is not. That is how it is in the world of the relative, as opposed to the world of the absolute?where I reside.
Once you clearly understand this, once you deeply grasp it, then you intuitively bless each and every experience, all human encounter, and especially personal human relationships, for you see them as constructive, in the highest sense. You see that they can be used, must be used, are being used (whether you want them to be or not) to construct Who You Really Are.

That construction can be a magnificent creation of your own conscious design, or a strictly happenstance configuration. You can choose to be a person who has resulted simply from what has happened, or from what you?ve chosen to be and do about what has happened. It is in the latter form that creation of Self becomes conscious. It is in the second experience that Self becomes realized.
Bless, therefore, every relationship, and hold each as special and formative of Who You Are?and now choose to be.
Now your inquiry has to do with individual human relationships of the romantic sort, and I understand that. So let Me address Myself specifically, and at length, to human love relationships?these things which continue to give you such trouble!
When human love relationships fail (relationships never truly fail, except in the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want), they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason.

(?Wrong,? of course, is a relative term, meaning something measured against that which is ?right?
?whatever that is! It would be more accurate in your language to say ?relationships fail?change?most often when they are entered into for reasons not wholly beneficial or conducive to their survival.?)
Most people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out of them, rather than what they can put into them.
The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you?d like to see ?show up,? not what part of another you can capture and hold.
There can be only one purpose for relationships?and for all of life: to be and to decide Who You Really Are.
It is very romantic to say that you were ?nothing? until that special other came along, but it is not true. Worse, it puts an incredible pressure on the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not.

Not wanting to ?let you down,? they try very hard to be and do these things until they cannot anymore. They can no longer complete your picture of them. They can no longer fill the roles to which they have been assigned. Resentment builds. Anger follows.
Finally, in order to save themselves (and the relationship), these special others begin to reclaim their real selves, acting more in accordance with Who They Really Are. It is about this time that you say they?ve ?really changed.?

It is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.
Here is the paradox of all human relationships: You have no need for a particular other in order for you to experience, fully, Who You Are, and. . .without another, you are nothing.
This is both the mystery and the wonder, the frustration and the joy of the human experience. It requires deep understanding and total willingness to live within this paradox in a way which makes sense. I observe that very few people do.
Most of you enter your relationship-forming years
ripe with anticipation, full of sexual energy, a wide-open heart, and a joyful, if eager, soul.

Somewhere between 40 and 60 (and for most it is sooner rather than later) you?ve given up on your grandest dream, set aside your highest hope, and settled for your lowest expectation-or nothing at all.
The problem is so basic, so simple, and yet so tragically misunderstood: your grandest dream, your highest idea, and your fondest hope has had to do with your beloved other rather than your beloved Self. The test of your relationships has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas, and how well you saw yourself living up to his or hers. Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to yours.

Relationships are sacred because they provide life?s grandest opportunity?indeed, its only opportunity?to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of Self. Relationships fail when you see them as life?s grandest opportunity to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of another.
Let each person in relationship worry about Self?what Self is being, doing, and having; what Self is wanting, asking, giving; what Self is seeking, creating, experiencing, and all relationships would magnificently serve their purpose?and their participants!
Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only, only about Self.
This seems a strange teaching, for you have been told that in the highest form of relationship, one worries only about the other. Yet I tell you this: your focus upon the other?your obsession with the other?is what causes relationships to fail.
What is the other being? What is the other doing?
What is the other having? What is the other saying?
Wanting? Demanding? What is the other thinking?
Expecting? Planning?
The Master understands that it doesn?t matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn?t matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you are being in relationship to that.
The most loving person is the person who is Self-centered.

That is a radical teaching. [actually unless we love ourselves, there?s little love we can spare to others... pedro]

Not if you look at it carefully. If you cannot love your Self, you cannot love another. Many people make the mistake of seeking love of Self through love for another. Of course, they don?t realize they are doing this. It is not a conscious effort. It?s what?s going on in the mind. Deep in the mind. In what you call the subconscious.

They think: ?If I can just love others, they will love me. Then I will be lovable, and I can love me.?
The reverse of this is that so many people hate themselves because they feel there is not another who loves them. This is a sickness?it?s when people are truly ?lovesick? because the truth is, other people do love them, but it doesn?t matter. No matter how many people profess their love for them, it is not enough.
First, they don?t believe you. They think you are trying to manipulate them?trying to get something. (How could you love them for who they truly are? No. There must be some mistake. You must want something! Now what do you want?)
They sit around trying to figure out how anyone could actually love them. So they don?t believe you, and embark on a campaign to make you prove it. You have to prove that you love them. To do this, they may ask you to start altering your behavior.
Second, if they finally come to a place where they can believe you love them, they begin at once to worry about how long they can keep your love. So, in order to hold onto your love, they start altering their behavior.
Thus, two people literally lose themselves in a relationship. They get into the relationship hoping to find themselves, and they lose themselves instead.
This losing of the Self in a relationship is what causes most of the bitterness in such couplings.
Two people join together in a partnership hoping that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts, only to find that it?s less. They feel less than when they were single. Less capable, less able, less exciting, less attractive, less joyful, less content.
This is because they are less. They?ve given up most of who they are in order to be?and to stay?in their relationship.
Relationships were never meant to be this way. Yet this is how they are experienced by more people than you could ever know.


Why? Why?

It is because people have lost touch with (if they ever were in touch with) the purpose of relationships.
When you lose sight of each other as sacred souls on a sacred journey, then you cannot see the purpose, the reason, behind all relationships.
The soul has come to the body, and the body to life, for the purpose of evolution. You are evolving, you are becoming. And you are using your relationship with everything to decide what you are becoming.
This is the job you came here to do. This is the joy of creating Self. Of knowing Self. Of becoming, consciously, what you wish to be. It is what is meant by being Self conscious.
You have brought your Self to the relative world so that you might have the tools with which to know and experience Who You Really Are. Who You Are is who you create yourself to be in relationship to all the rest of it.
Your personal relationships are the most important elements in this process. Your personal relationships are therefore holy ground. They have virtually nothing to do with the other, yet, because they involve another, they have everything to do with the other.
This is the divine dichotomy. This is the closed circle. So it is not such a radical teaching to say, ?Blessed are the Self-centered, for they shall know God.? It might not be a bad goal in your life to know the highest part of your Self, and to stay centered in that.
Your first relationship, therefore, must be with your Self. You must first learn to honor and cherish and love your Self.
You must first see your Self as worthy before you can see another as worthy. You must first see your Self as blessed before you can see another as blessed. You must first know your Self to be holy before you can acknowledge holiness in another.
If you put the cart before the horse?as most religions ask you to do?and acknowledge another as holy before you acknowledge yourself, you will one day resent it. If there is one thing none of you can tolerate, it is someone being holier than thou. Yet your religions force you to call others holier than thou. And so you do it?for a while. Then you crucify them.
You have crucified (in one way or another) all of My teachers, not just One. And you did so not because they were holier than thou, but because you made them out to be.
My teachers have all come with the same message. Not ?I am holier than thou,? but ?You are as holy as am I.,,
This is the message you have not been able to hear; this is the truth you have not been able to accept. And that is why you can never truly, purely, fall in love with another. You have never truly, purely fallen in love with your Self.
And so I tell you this: be now and forever centered upon your Self. Look to see what you are being, doing, and having in any given moment, not what?s going on with another.
It is not in the action of another, but in your re-action, that your salvation will be found.

I know better, but somehow this makes it sound as though we should not mind what others do to us in relationships. They can do anything, and so long as we hold our equilibrium, keep our Self centered, and all that good stuff, nothing can touch us. But others do touch us. Their actions do sometimes hurt us. It is when the hurt comes into relationships that I don?t know what to do. It?s all very well to say ?stand aside from it; cause it to mean nothing,? but that?s easier said than done. I do get hurt by the words and actions of others in relationships.

The day will come when you will not. That will be the day on which you realize?and actualize?the true meaning of relationships; the true reason for them.
It is because you have forgotten this that you react the way you do. But that is alright. That is part of the growth process. It is part of evolution. It is Soul Work you are up to in relationship, yet that is a grand understanding, a grand remembering. Until you remember this?and remember then also how to use relationship as a tool in the creation of Self?you must work at the level at which you are. The level of understanding, the level of willingness, the level of remembrance.
And so there are things you can do when you react with pain and hurt to what another is being, saying, or doing. The first is to admit honestly to yourself and to another exactly how you are feeling. This many of you are afraid to do, because you think it will make you ?look bad.? Somewhere, deep inside of you, you realize that it probably is ridiculous for you to ?feel that way.? It probably is small of you. You are ?bigger than that.? But you can?t help it. You still feel that way.

There is only one thing you can do. You must honor your feelings. For honoring your feelings means honoring your Self. And you must love your neighbor as you love yourself. How can you ever expect to understand and honor the feelings of another if you cannot honor the feelings within your Self?
The first question in any interactive process with another is: now Who Am I, and Who Do I Want to Be, in relationship to that?
Often you do not remember Who You Are, and do not know Who You Want to Be until you try out a few ways of being. That is why honoring your truest feelings is so important.
If your first feeling is a negative feeling, simply having the feeling is frequently all that is needed to step away from it. It is when you have the anger, have the upset, have the disgust, have the rage, own the feeling of wanting to ?hurt back,? that you can disown these first feelings as ?not Who You Want to Be.?
The Master is one who has lived through enough such experiences to know in advance what her final choices are. She does not need to ?try out? anything.
She?s worn these clothes before and knows they do not fit; they are not ?her.? And since a Master?s life is devoted to the constant realization of Self as one knows oneself to be, such ill-fitting feelings would never be entertained.
That is why Masters are imperturbable in the face of what others might call calamity. A Master blesses calamity, for the Master knows that from the seeds of disaster (and all experience) comes the growth of Self. And the Master?s second life purpose is always growth. For once one has fully Self realized, there is nothing left to do except be more of that.
It is at this stage that one moves from soul work to God work, for this is what I am up to!
I will assume for the purposes of this discussion that you are still up to soul work. You are still seeking to realize (make ?real?) Who You Truly Are. Life (I) will give you bountiful opportunities to create that (remember, life is not a process of discovery, life is a process of creation).
You can create Who You Are over and over again. Indeed, you do?every day. As things now stand, you do not always come up with the same answer, however. Given an identical outer experience, on day one you may choose to be patient, loving, and kind in relationship to it. On day two you may choose to be angry, ugly, and sad.
The Master is one who always comes up with the same answer?and that answer is always the highest choice.
In this the Master is imminently predictable. Conversely, the student is completely unpredictable. One can tell how one is doing on the road to mastery by simply noticing how predictably one makes the highest choice in responding or reacting to any situation.
Of course, this throws open the question, what choice is highest?
That is a question around which have revolved the philosophies and theologies of man since the beginning of time. If the question truly engages you, you are already on your way to mastery. For it is still true that most people continue to be engaged by another question altogether. Not, what is the highest choice, but, what is the most profitable? Or, how can I lose the least?
When life is lived from a standpoint of damage control or optimum advantage, the true benefit of life is forfeited. The opportunity is lost. The chance is missed. For a life lived thusly is a life lived from fear?and that life speaks a lie about you.
For you are not fear, you are love. Love that needs no protection, love that cannot be lost. Yet you will never know this in your experience if you continually answer the second question and not the first. For only a person who thinks there is something to gain or to lose asks the second question. And only a person who sees life in a different way; who sees Self as a higher being; who understands that winning or losing is not the test, but only loving or failing to love?only that person asks the first.
He who asks the second question says, ?I am my body.? She who asks the first says, ?I am my soul.?
Yea, let all those who have ears to hear, listen. For I tell you this: at the critical juncture in all human relationships, there is only one question:

What would love do now?

No other question is relevant, no other question is meaningful, no other question has any importance to your soul.

<BLOCKQUOTE>{From "conversations with God" Book I, Chapter 8</BLOCKQUOTE>