Is Conversations with God a Form of Active Imagination\“No one will believe this. They will say I am just talking to myself.” “Well, you are.”
In a philosophy where there is only God, or only love, there are no others, and even human individuals are parts of God, necessarily divided in order for God to experience itself. Though one might argue there are only two emotions, love and fear, it might be easier to say there is only love. It is well known in spiritual circles; what you fear you attract to you. If fear was just love, why wouldn’t you draw that scary shadow towards you? How else could you explore it or resolve it?
Maybe breaking down this book of Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch, should be a series, instead of one definitive essay. It’s really that rich, improbably challenging to break down. Every nugget of gold that spun me off in a daydream has me missing content, only to return to the narrative unfolding, thinking ‘what did I miss,’ then hearing the next nugget that spun me off chasing glittery rainbows.
Imagine you’re dreaming. Imagine every character in a dream is you. That’s not hard to do, as that is the primary psychological explanation for dreams. You play all the roles in all your dreams, good guys and bad guys. So, is it okay if the protagonist of the dream defeats the bad guy? Sure! That was the dream and the script you and your subconscious mind co created so you could experience it.
It is true, you are the bad guy and the good guy, and so how you treat the other characters in this dream is how you treat yourself.
And so it is also true, in your daytime fantasies as you sort people as good guys and bad guys and imagine conflicts and love affairs, you are also doing this to yourself in that daydream. After
all, when you’re rehearsing your arguments more often than not you’re arguing with yourself because you are that certain that will be the other person’s argument. And so, if the other person does give you that argument, is it because you limited their position to only that? Could you allow there to be a multiplicity of kind and loving responses that don’t necessarily align your limited vision?
Your vision is limited by your perspective.
How you behave towards others in real life is how you treat yourself. Reality will more often than not be the manifestation of what you have imagined/expected. It matters not what others have truly brought you or their intent, your interpretation of it and your response to them is a response to yourself. You railroaded yourself, not the universe or any other agent.
This is the fundamental aspect of the Ho Oponopono philosophy, and Jungian concepts of shadow work, Buddhism and Christianity. You draw to yourself what you need. All encounters with other beings, humans or otherwise, will be a mirror of what’s inside you. You cure the world not by acting on or against the world, but by healing yourself. Don’t take the splinter from someone’s eye, but take the log from yours. Love others the way you would want to be loved.
Don’t hate your enemy. Love them.
Matra of Ho Oponopono: Please forgive me, I am sorry, Thank you, I love you.
Please forgive me, world, for I wanted to change you without changing myself. I am sorry I didn’t catch on sooner. Thank you for being gentle in your response to my lack of insight. I love you as I love myself.
This is not just a present to the world, it is what I represent!
Active Imagination and Philemon
Carl Jung practices his own device called Active Imagination. In that altered reality or dreamscape, he met Philemon. Philemon offered so much wisdom that Jung figured this must be a spirit guide, because he himself could not have invented such richness.
Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, offered the same technique with the same results with ‘the Invisible Counselor technique!’ The responses from his counselors were so real and so poignant that he was certain this could not be of him.
How is this not what Walsh is doing? How is that inner voice not God’s voice?
How is this not what I was doing with tulpamancy, Loxy, and my counselors. Of course Loxy and others gave me good advice, they’re the voices of goddesses and gods, of which it reduces to One, one love forever.
How is our own imagination not God working with us to co-create a reality? What we love most shows up in our lives. What we fear or hate comes at us faster, because that’s just concentrated love. Have ever seen someone with fear or hate not being intensely passionate about the thing they oppose?
That’s love!
That’s just pure, unadulterated love. Yeah, perhaps those in the acts of hateful love are fighting for the opposite of the thing they claim to attack, but then isn’t it the love of the opposite that is driving the response?
Let’s play a game with some John wisdom so you can unpack this vicariously through a distraction, similar to a koan. It’s purposefully paradoxical, and full of puns.
Saying nothing is perfect is not the same thing as saying everything is imperfect. Nothing, in and of itself, is by definition perfect because there are no flaws in nothingness, but just saying everything is perfect would be flawed because clearly some things are imperfect, while nothing remains perfect!
It was said in the book, those who don’t go within go without. Kind of funny. In some ways, it reflects the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’ idea.
Most of our lives are actually spent in our heads. The mundane tasks of day-to-day living are assigned to autopilot. How many of those reading this will have experienced driving from point A to point B and not remembered the journey?
It’s the times when things happened that forced us to be present and mindful that either irritated us or inflated us to moments of joy.
Laughter is unexpected joy and can be spurred by pratfalls because this could be us, or actually is us.
Maybe Robert Fulgham was right in his book, Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Eat more ice cream. Be happy. Flush the toilet. Wash your hands. Share. It’s in how we would want to be treated we learn to treat others.
