Conversations with God

Can I be honest with you today?  Will you indulge me a little?  You’ve been good enough to come on this journey with me so far, and I wanted to tell you a little of some of the reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing.  Because maybe I’ve not given you the whole story so far….and in particular you may be asking the question… “Why Oregon?”

Well, this adventure plays to so many of my personal values: I took a look recently at what’s important to me and came up with this list:

• Love & Compassion
• Adventure
• Freedom
• Joy & Fun
• Learning and Growth
• Spirituality
• Health & Vitality
• Achievement & Success
• Peace
• Wealth and Prosperity
• Courage
• Truth and Integrity

So maybe some of those are obvious – how this supports my love of adventure, freedom, joy & fun, achievement, learning, growth, courage… but what about the rest?

For those of you who know me well, it makes so much sense that I would want to go off and do this – and yet there is something deeper going on.  You see, for me this is a real voyage of self discovery – an opportunity to really understand who I am, and why I am here.  The last couple of weeks have been very significant in preparing the ground for that, and I’ve shared a couple of those stories with you.

There are four big questions that we all need to answer.

• Who am I?
• Where am I?
• Why am I where I am?
• What am I going to do about where I am?

I’m beginning to see answers to those questions… and I promise I will share them at some point.  But I think that most of you know that I am deeply, deeply motivated by something else – call it love, call it compassion, call it God, call it what you will – but enough of you have been kind enough to notice that there is something ‘different’ about me.

So one of the reasons for me being over in the US was to do the Huna workshop.  The other was to attend a retreat with Neale Donald Walsch.  I’ve attended his retreats in the UK a couple of times – and I know that some of you reading this are friends I’ve made on those retreats (you know who you are!)

I have a feeling, though, that this event will be very significant in my life, and will be another part in the major shift around who I am, and what my reason for being here is.  And I mean here on this planet, by the way – here living this life.

Neale is the author of the Conversations With God books – probably the books that have made the most sense to me about life, about God, about the world we live in.  You could do a lot worse than read ‘Conversations with God’ or ‘Happier than God’.  Borrow it out of the library.  Go into Waterstones and read it there.  Or not, it’s entirely up to you.  For many people, including some very influential world leaders, it has been very important.  It may well resonate with you too.

I have not seen many people deal with a room of people with such compassion and such insight – with such understanding of what’s going on for them.

Yet today I have been particularly moved – firstly by em claire’s reading of her poem ‘Shine’ which I have published before

Shine

God says for me to tell You This:

nothing needs fixing;

everything desires

a

Celebration.

You were made to bend

so that you could find

all of the many miracles at your feet.

You were made to stretch

so that you would discover,

your own beautiful face of Heaven

just above

all that you think you must shoulder.

When I appeal to God to speak to me,

I’m feeling just as small and alone as you might feel.

But this is when, for no particular reason at all,

I begin to

shine

For various reasons, that poem meant more to me today than ever before – as I said to em on the way out – “I came here to hear you read that poem.  I can go home now”.

But the reason we are all here is simply to become the next grandest version of the greatest vision of who we are.  We are, each of us, an individuation of Divinity, an expression of God – an opportunity for God’s nature to be expressed on earth.  And the time that we will feel that the most clearly is when we are giving to others.  So life is not about how much money we make, or how influential we are, or even how much fun we have – although all those things are important – life is about how much we give.

And so I find myself challenged – how much can I give to others while I am travelling… and how much can I bring back to allow me to be even more compassionate, even more caring, even more inspiring.

I have much to think about in order to answer the question “Why Am I Here?”