The Holy Experience
by Neale Donald Walsch
Chapter Four
I had the Holy Experience today. I had it this morning. I am still having it as I write this.
The experience feels interestingly like a new beginning. So many things are changing in our world, and so many things are presenting themselves for change in my life. I experienced this morning that I want to change how I am, becoming more loving, more patient, more compassion-ate, more giving.
Yes, much, much more giving.
This is wonderful, this feeling of willingness to change and to be-come a larger version of myself that I am having today. It is part of the continuing adventure, of the never-ending process, that is the expansion of my humanity and the evolution of my human soul.
Just when I think "the game is over," it never is! This is what is so extraordinary about Life. Even after what we imagine to be our death, life is not over. It never is and it never will be.
I don't know why I am feeling all this right now, why I am know-ing this as part of my experience today more than usual, but I am. It just feels like a new energy is coursing through me. And that feels good. I thank God for it. I thank God for letting me get up today with such revi-talized energy, even at my age. I am not a young man any more, but my heart feels young as ever.
I think that part of what is behind all of this may have to do with the fact that I spent the entire weekend going over the "script" of my life. No, I mean really, not figuratively. I had the screenwriter and the pro-ducer/director, and the director of photography of Conversations with God: The Movie at my house for the past three days going over the first draft of the script for the film, and that kind of experience can throw one into deep introspection, as you might imagine.
I haven't lived my life the way I would have liked to. I mean, I have made some choices that have been hurtful to others, and I so regret that. Yet I see now, as I review the entirety of my life, that certain things had to happen exactly as they have happened in order for me to be here now, just as I am. And I am clear that the God of my understanding forgives me completely and utterly for my offenses, holding me in the cradle of Her love, embracing me in the warmth of His compassion and deep under-standing, encouraging me now and giving me the strength to move for-ward with my mission in this life.
My mission is plain and it is simple: to give people back to them-selves. This is the mission of all of us, and each of us is playing it out in the way that is natural and perfect for us.
We have been sent here to experience and to express ourselves in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are, that we might know ourelves as God would have us know us--as part of the Everlasting Divine. We have been given the gift of God's joy and God's peace in our heart, and offered an invitation to share it with everyone whose life we touch--regardless of exterior appearances that sometimes seem to make it impossible to do so.
I have come to see that all of life's circumstances, conditions, events, and experiences have been sent to me as gifts, creating a Contex-tual Field within which I might choose how I wish to experience myself, and decide what part of that interior experience I shall now express in physical form. And so I thank God for each and every manifestation of life now producing that Contextual Field. I shall judge not, and neither con-demn.
This living without judgment is the hardest part for me, but it is the beginning of the Holy Experience, and as I have looked at the depth of my life these past three days it has been made clear to me that so many people would have to live without judgment of ME in order for me to feel the love that is all around me. And so, the least I can do in exchange for this unspeakable blessing is to offer the same in return, and to live without judgment of others. For who among us shall cast the first stone?
I was invigorated this morning by this freedom-giving thought: I am forgiven, by God and by all those who love me. I choose now to for-give myself as well, thus to dwell in the joyful place of enlivened creation. For nothing good is created from guilt, and all things wonderful emerge from joy.
What a joy this life is, with all its sadness and pain, its strife and travail, its tests and its obstacles. What a joy to be alive and experiencing all of it, and to be able to choose which part of it to internalize and call my own. Having this choice, and exercising it, is the Holy Experience.
The end is the beginning
I said in the last chapter that each moment in life is truly holy be-cause each moment ends. This is not something that everyone knows. Everyone knows that each moment ends, but everyone does not know that for this reason each moment is holy.
And even while everyone knows that each moment ends, many people hope that no really wonderful experience ends. This is a contradic-tion in terms, yet people still engage in this wishing. They hope that their perfect relationship will never end, or that their perfect job will never end, or that their particular and present happiness, however it is showing up, will never end - but it always does. This does not mean that it will not or cannot be replaced by a new happiness, but the present happiness will always end.
That is something that is very important to remember. It is also im-portant to know that the end of our present happiness is the beginning of our new happiness. Now if one's happiness is tied to present and particu-lar circumstances, one's happiness is always and forever in jeopardy. Yet if one's happiness rides the tide of all events, and, indeed, creates them, then one has discovered and embraced the Holy Experience
It is the very fact that each moment is like a snowflake, breath-takingly beautiful, awesomely perfect in its design, absolutely individual and unlike any other, that makes it so remarkable, and renders it holy.
Do we not fall in love with people for this exact reason? Why not, then, fall in love with moments in precisely the same way? Deciding to do that is the beginning of the Holy Experience. It is the Choice Point of Sacred Creation.
The power and the inspiration
There is nothing more profoundly inspiring and absolutely em-powering than this fact that each moment is new. It is born, it lives, and dies, in NOW.
Right here, right Now, is each moment born. Right here, right Now, is each moment lived. Right here, right Now, is each moment ended. It is all happening at one Time, in this moment, right Now.
The wonder of all this is that This Moment can be recreated from moment to moment, or created in a new way, with whatever modifica-tions, enhancements, alterations, or adjustments that we choose.
We are not who we were yesterday. We are not even who we were a moment ago. Nothing is. And yet it can be, if we choose for it to be. All we need do is recreate it.
In life we can recreate ourselves as we just were, or we can recreate ourselves anew, in the next moment. We are always remaking ourselves. It is never a question of whether, but of how. Are we recreating ourselves as we were before, or in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are?
The Holy Experience is the experience of recreation. It is the experi-ence of Total Knowing that the Totality of You is Never Known. It cannot be, because it has not yet been created.
Understanding infinity
Everything that ever was, is now, and ever will be, is now. And so, in the language of the Realm of the Absolute, there is nothing that has not been created. Only in the language of the Realm of the Relative could the statement be made that the Totality of You cannot be known because it has not yet been created.
In truth, all of You has been created. Yet all of You has not yet been experienced by the individuated part of You that is the localized expression of the Universal Self.
The only way for the individuated part of You that is the localized expression of the Universal Self to experience all of You is to recreate parts of You until all of You has been Known. Yet the All of You is infinite and eternal. Therefore, it cannot be known or experienced in any relative sense, but only in an Absolute Way. Since the Local You does not know that it is the Universal You, it imagines that it is creating, rather than recre-ating, itself in each moment. This is its conceit.
The Holy Experience is the dropping of this conceit. It is the shed-ding of this illusion. It is the lowering of this veil. This happens when we come to know that we are not who we thought we were. It occurs when we understand that we are nothing at all, except exactly what we are right here, right now. And that we can change that at our absolute discretion.
Who are you right now? What are you? Are you confused? Are you frustrated, finding all this difficult to follow? Are you annoyed that you are not ”getting it,” or overjoyed that you are?
You are none of these things unless you say that you are. And you cease to be these things the moment that you say you are not. That moment is the holy moment. That experience is the Holy Experience.
When you understand the truth of Who You Are, you understand infinity. You can actually experience this understanding. That is, you can embrace it not only intellectually, but experientially.
There are at least five areas in which you can do so. Many more, I am sure, but five that I can immediately think of. You can experience in-finity in:
Love
Wisdom
Abundance
Energy
Divinity
These five areas of life expression have, in my mind as I think of them, several sub-areas. And so the complete listing looks to me like this:
Love/Relationship/Sexuality
Wisdom/Awareness/Consciousness
Abundance/Wealth/Health
Energy/Creativity/Aliveness
Divinity/Joy/Peace
These are the areas of life expression in which it is possible to en-counter or create the Holy Experience. But before we get into that, let me see if I can more closely describe the Holy Experience by more broadly de-fining it.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
I have already given several indications in this manuscript of what I believe the Holy Experience is. Now let me say, please, that it is all of this—and more.
The Holy Experience is as varied and as infinite as Life. It is a par-ticular aspect of Life that explains life TO life through the process of life itself.
The Holy Experience is the experience of knowing, and of knowing that you know. It is the experience of being, and of being what you are be-ing. It is the experience of having, and of having what you have.
I know that all of this may sound like just so much gobbledegook—circular talk getting nowhere—but if you will have a little patience, I think you will be well rewarded.
When I speak of the experience not only of "knowing," but of "knowing that you know," I am speaking of two distinctly different en-counters with life.
CwG tells us that there are those who...
...do not know, and do not know that they do not know.
...do not know, and know that they do not know.
...do not know, but think that they know.
...know, but do not know that they know.
...know, but pretend that they do not know.
...know, and know that they know.
All of us fall into one of these six categories. So it is one thing to know, and another thing to know that you know.
Now the truth is that all of us know all that there is to know. Yet not all of us remember this, and so we have the experience of not knowing, or of knowing, but of not knowing that we know. In the moment that we know, and know that we know, we have had the Holy Experience.
Because this experience is so vast, it is almost more difficult not to have it than to have it. Yet most people still manage to not have it—even though half the world is yearning for it. That is because half the world does not understand that it is yearning for that which it already has.
For instance, peace.
The world's people yearn for peace, yet they do not experience it, nor do they demonstrate it. That is because they do not understand that they are peace. And in denying that which they intrinsically are, they deny themselves the experience of it.
This is what I meant when I said, just a bit ago, that the Holy Ex-perience is being, and of being what you are being. To give you an exam-ple of what this means, or of how this could "show up" in real life, I can remember my father raising his voice at me in frustration when I was in high school because of the poor grades I kept bringing home.
"You're smarter than this," he would say, waving my report card at me. He was right. It was one thing for me to "be" smart (I was), but quite another for me to be being smart in my daily life - that is, to be acting like that. I was not demonstrating what I was, I was not demonstrating what my father knew me to be. I was IT, but I was not being IT.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Similarly, it is one thing to have everything in life, but if you are "having none of it" (that is, if you do not believe that you have it, or cannot acknowledge that you have it), then you may as well not have it at all. You will not experience having it because you are not willing to "have" what you have. You are not willing to hold what you have been given.
That is why the marriage vow says "to have and to hold." You can have something, but if you do not hold it, it is just the same as not having it at all. It is as if someone had given you a great gift, but you dropped it the moment you got your hands on it. You let go of it. You still have it. It is still in your possession. The person who gave it to you has long since disappeared. But you will not pick it up and hold it. And so it lies there at your feet, as useless as if you did not have it at all.
I cannot tell you how many people I have seen ignoring their tal-ents in exactly this way. They have been given great gifts, but they will not pick them up, they will not use them.
And so the Holy Experience is knowing that you know, being what you are, and having what you have. It is a large experience. It is a huge experience. It is the experience of who you are, writ large.
Is the Holy Experience something you create?
Okay, now I said earlier that there are five areas in which it is pos-sible to encounter or create the Holy Experience. You may have read that sentence and glossed over the word "create." You may not have given it a second thought. But let's think about it now.
Is the Holy Experience something that we create? Whoa. For many, many people that would be a new thought. A whole new thought. Because many people think of the Holy Experience as something that comes over us, or something that we encounter along the way. It is something we stumble on, or open ourselves to through prayer or meditation or fasting or the like. But it is not something that we consciously create.
Yet it can be. It is true, we can encounter the Holy Experience or we can create it. If we wait to encounter it, it might be years, perhaps a life-time, before we do so - IF we do so. Yet if we choose to create it, we do not have to wait one moment longer. We can have it right here, right now.
I know of five steps to creating the Holy Experience:
Believing that it is possible for you to have it
Understanding that you are worthy of having it
Knowing that you are having it
Declaring that you are having it
Sharing it with others, so that they may have it
We will explore each of these steps in the next five chapters, and in the five chapters following that we will look at the areas of life expression in which you can create the Holy Experience if you now choose to.
Send this chapter to a friend - Marek Dariusz Podsiadlo: I already did.., haha
by Neale Donald Walsch
Chapter Four
I had the Holy Experience today. I had it this morning. I am still having it as I write this.
The experience feels interestingly like a new beginning. So many things are changing in our world, and so many things are presenting themselves for change in my life. I experienced this morning that I want to change how I am, becoming more loving, more patient, more compassion-ate, more giving.
Yes, much, much more giving.
This is wonderful, this feeling of willingness to change and to be-come a larger version of myself that I am having today. It is part of the continuing adventure, of the never-ending process, that is the expansion of my humanity and the evolution of my human soul.
Just when I think "the game is over," it never is! This is what is so extraordinary about Life. Even after what we imagine to be our death, life is not over. It never is and it never will be.
I don't know why I am feeling all this right now, why I am know-ing this as part of my experience today more than usual, but I am. It just feels like a new energy is coursing through me. And that feels good. I thank God for it. I thank God for letting me get up today with such revi-talized energy, even at my age. I am not a young man any more, but my heart feels young as ever.
I think that part of what is behind all of this may have to do with the fact that I spent the entire weekend going over the "script" of my life. No, I mean really, not figuratively. I had the screenwriter and the pro-ducer/director, and the director of photography of Conversations with God: The Movie at my house for the past three days going over the first draft of the script for the film, and that kind of experience can throw one into deep introspection, as you might imagine.
I haven't lived my life the way I would have liked to. I mean, I have made some choices that have been hurtful to others, and I so regret that. Yet I see now, as I review the entirety of my life, that certain things had to happen exactly as they have happened in order for me to be here now, just as I am. And I am clear that the God of my understanding forgives me completely and utterly for my offenses, holding me in the cradle of Her love, embracing me in the warmth of His compassion and deep under-standing, encouraging me now and giving me the strength to move for-ward with my mission in this life.
My mission is plain and it is simple: to give people back to them-selves. This is the mission of all of us, and each of us is playing it out in the way that is natural and perfect for us.
We have been sent here to experience and to express ourselves in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are, that we might know ourelves as God would have us know us--as part of the Everlasting Divine. We have been given the gift of God's joy and God's peace in our heart, and offered an invitation to share it with everyone whose life we touch--regardless of exterior appearances that sometimes seem to make it impossible to do so.
I have come to see that all of life's circumstances, conditions, events, and experiences have been sent to me as gifts, creating a Contex-tual Field within which I might choose how I wish to experience myself, and decide what part of that interior experience I shall now express in physical form. And so I thank God for each and every manifestation of life now producing that Contextual Field. I shall judge not, and neither con-demn.
This living without judgment is the hardest part for me, but it is the beginning of the Holy Experience, and as I have looked at the depth of my life these past three days it has been made clear to me that so many people would have to live without judgment of ME in order for me to feel the love that is all around me. And so, the least I can do in exchange for this unspeakable blessing is to offer the same in return, and to live without judgment of others. For who among us shall cast the first stone?
I was invigorated this morning by this freedom-giving thought: I am forgiven, by God and by all those who love me. I choose now to for-give myself as well, thus to dwell in the joyful place of enlivened creation. For nothing good is created from guilt, and all things wonderful emerge from joy.
What a joy this life is, with all its sadness and pain, its strife and travail, its tests and its obstacles. What a joy to be alive and experiencing all of it, and to be able to choose which part of it to internalize and call my own. Having this choice, and exercising it, is the Holy Experience.
The end is the beginning
I said in the last chapter that each moment in life is truly holy be-cause each moment ends. This is not something that everyone knows. Everyone knows that each moment ends, but everyone does not know that for this reason each moment is holy.
And even while everyone knows that each moment ends, many people hope that no really wonderful experience ends. This is a contradic-tion in terms, yet people still engage in this wishing. They hope that their perfect relationship will never end, or that their perfect job will never end, or that their particular and present happiness, however it is showing up, will never end - but it always does. This does not mean that it will not or cannot be replaced by a new happiness, but the present happiness will always end.
That is something that is very important to remember. It is also im-portant to know that the end of our present happiness is the beginning of our new happiness. Now if one's happiness is tied to present and particu-lar circumstances, one's happiness is always and forever in jeopardy. Yet if one's happiness rides the tide of all events, and, indeed, creates them, then one has discovered and embraced the Holy Experience
It is the very fact that each moment is like a snowflake, breath-takingly beautiful, awesomely perfect in its design, absolutely individual and unlike any other, that makes it so remarkable, and renders it holy.
Do we not fall in love with people for this exact reason? Why not, then, fall in love with moments in precisely the same way? Deciding to do that is the beginning of the Holy Experience. It is the Choice Point of Sacred Creation.
The power and the inspiration
There is nothing more profoundly inspiring and absolutely em-powering than this fact that each moment is new. It is born, it lives, and dies, in NOW.
Right here, right Now, is each moment born. Right here, right Now, is each moment lived. Right here, right Now, is each moment ended. It is all happening at one Time, in this moment, right Now.
The wonder of all this is that This Moment can be recreated from moment to moment, or created in a new way, with whatever modifica-tions, enhancements, alterations, or adjustments that we choose.
We are not who we were yesterday. We are not even who we were a moment ago. Nothing is. And yet it can be, if we choose for it to be. All we need do is recreate it.
In life we can recreate ourselves as we just were, or we can recreate ourselves anew, in the next moment. We are always remaking ourselves. It is never a question of whether, but of how. Are we recreating ourselves as we were before, or in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are?
The Holy Experience is the experience of recreation. It is the experi-ence of Total Knowing that the Totality of You is Never Known. It cannot be, because it has not yet been created.
Understanding infinity
Everything that ever was, is now, and ever will be, is now. And so, in the language of the Realm of the Absolute, there is nothing that has not been created. Only in the language of the Realm of the Relative could the statement be made that the Totality of You cannot be known because it has not yet been created.
In truth, all of You has been created. Yet all of You has not yet been experienced by the individuated part of You that is the localized expression of the Universal Self.
The only way for the individuated part of You that is the localized expression of the Universal Self to experience all of You is to recreate parts of You until all of You has been Known. Yet the All of You is infinite and eternal. Therefore, it cannot be known or experienced in any relative sense, but only in an Absolute Way. Since the Local You does not know that it is the Universal You, it imagines that it is creating, rather than recre-ating, itself in each moment. This is its conceit.
The Holy Experience is the dropping of this conceit. It is the shed-ding of this illusion. It is the lowering of this veil. This happens when we come to know that we are not who we thought we were. It occurs when we understand that we are nothing at all, except exactly what we are right here, right now. And that we can change that at our absolute discretion.
Who are you right now? What are you? Are you confused? Are you frustrated, finding all this difficult to follow? Are you annoyed that you are not ”getting it,” or overjoyed that you are?
You are none of these things unless you say that you are. And you cease to be these things the moment that you say you are not. That moment is the holy moment. That experience is the Holy Experience.
When you understand the truth of Who You Are, you understand infinity. You can actually experience this understanding. That is, you can embrace it not only intellectually, but experientially.
There are at least five areas in which you can do so. Many more, I am sure, but five that I can immediately think of. You can experience in-finity in:
Love
Wisdom
Abundance
Energy
Divinity
These five areas of life expression have, in my mind as I think of them, several sub-areas. And so the complete listing looks to me like this:
Love/Relationship/Sexuality
Wisdom/Awareness/Consciousness
Abundance/Wealth/Health
Energy/Creativity/Aliveness
Divinity/Joy/Peace
These are the areas of life expression in which it is possible to en-counter or create the Holy Experience. But before we get into that, let me see if I can more closely describe the Holy Experience by more broadly de-fining it.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
I have already given several indications in this manuscript of what I believe the Holy Experience is. Now let me say, please, that it is all of this—and more.
The Holy Experience is as varied and as infinite as Life. It is a par-ticular aspect of Life that explains life TO life through the process of life itself.
The Holy Experience is the experience of knowing, and of knowing that you know. It is the experience of being, and of being what you are be-ing. It is the experience of having, and of having what you have.
I know that all of this may sound like just so much gobbledegook—circular talk getting nowhere—but if you will have a little patience, I think you will be well rewarded.
When I speak of the experience not only of "knowing," but of "knowing that you know," I am speaking of two distinctly different en-counters with life.
CwG tells us that there are those who...
...do not know, and do not know that they do not know.
...do not know, and know that they do not know.
...do not know, but think that they know.
...know, but do not know that they know.
...know, but pretend that they do not know.
...know, and know that they know.
All of us fall into one of these six categories. So it is one thing to know, and another thing to know that you know.
Now the truth is that all of us know all that there is to know. Yet not all of us remember this, and so we have the experience of not knowing, or of knowing, but of not knowing that we know. In the moment that we know, and know that we know, we have had the Holy Experience.
Because this experience is so vast, it is almost more difficult not to have it than to have it. Yet most people still manage to not have it—even though half the world is yearning for it. That is because half the world does not understand that it is yearning for that which it already has.
For instance, peace.
The world's people yearn for peace, yet they do not experience it, nor do they demonstrate it. That is because they do not understand that they are peace. And in denying that which they intrinsically are, they deny themselves the experience of it.
This is what I meant when I said, just a bit ago, that the Holy Ex-perience is being, and of being what you are being. To give you an exam-ple of what this means, or of how this could "show up" in real life, I can remember my father raising his voice at me in frustration when I was in high school because of the poor grades I kept bringing home.
"You're smarter than this," he would say, waving my report card at me. He was right. It was one thing for me to "be" smart (I was), but quite another for me to be being smart in my daily life - that is, to be acting like that. I was not demonstrating what I was, I was not demonstrating what my father knew me to be. I was IT, but I was not being IT.
To be or not to be, that is the question.
Similarly, it is one thing to have everything in life, but if you are "having none of it" (that is, if you do not believe that you have it, or cannot acknowledge that you have it), then you may as well not have it at all. You will not experience having it because you are not willing to "have" what you have. You are not willing to hold what you have been given.
That is why the marriage vow says "to have and to hold." You can have something, but if you do not hold it, it is just the same as not having it at all. It is as if someone had given you a great gift, but you dropped it the moment you got your hands on it. You let go of it. You still have it. It is still in your possession. The person who gave it to you has long since disappeared. But you will not pick it up and hold it. And so it lies there at your feet, as useless as if you did not have it at all.
I cannot tell you how many people I have seen ignoring their tal-ents in exactly this way. They have been given great gifts, but they will not pick them up, they will not use them.
And so the Holy Experience is knowing that you know, being what you are, and having what you have. It is a large experience. It is a huge experience. It is the experience of who you are, writ large.
Is the Holy Experience something you create?
Okay, now I said earlier that there are five areas in which it is pos-sible to encounter or create the Holy Experience. You may have read that sentence and glossed over the word "create." You may not have given it a second thought. But let's think about it now.
Is the Holy Experience something that we create? Whoa. For many, many people that would be a new thought. A whole new thought. Because many people think of the Holy Experience as something that comes over us, or something that we encounter along the way. It is something we stumble on, or open ourselves to through prayer or meditation or fasting or the like. But it is not something that we consciously create.
Yet it can be. It is true, we can encounter the Holy Experience or we can create it. If we wait to encounter it, it might be years, perhaps a life-time, before we do so - IF we do so. Yet if we choose to create it, we do not have to wait one moment longer. We can have it right here, right now.
I know of five steps to creating the Holy Experience:
Believing that it is possible for you to have it
Understanding that you are worthy of having it
Knowing that you are having it
Declaring that you are having it
Sharing it with others, so that they may have it
We will explore each of these steps in the next five chapters, and in the five chapters following that we will look at the areas of life expression in which you can create the Holy Experience if you now choose to.
Send this chapter to a friend - Marek Dariusz Podsiadlo: I already did.., haha
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