Statement — September 11, 2001

Dear friends around the world…

The events of this day cause every thinking person to stop their daily lives, whatever is going on in them, and to ponder deeply the larger questions of life. We search again for not only the meaning of life, but the purpose of our individual and collective experience as we have created it-and we look earnestly for ways in which we might recreate ourselves anew as a human species, so that we will never treat each other this way again.

The hour has come for us to demonstrate at the highest level our most extraordinary thought about Who We Really Are.

There are two possible responses to what has occurred today. The first comes from love, the second from fear.

If we come from fear we may panic and do things — as individuals and as nations — that could only cause further damage. If we come from love we will find refuge and strength, even as we provide it to others.

A central teaching of Conversations with God is: What you wish to experience, provide for another.

Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience-in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that.

If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another.

If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are safe.

If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand.

If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another.

Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.

This is the moment of your ministry. This is the time of teaching. What you teach at this time, through your every word and action right now, will remain as indelible lessons in the hearts and minds of those whose lives you touch, both now, and for years to come.

We will set the course for tomorrow, today. At this hour. In this moment.

There is much we can do, but there is one thing we cannot do. We cannot continue to co-create our lives together on this planet as we have in the past. We cannot, except at our peril, ignore the events of this day, or their implications.

It is tempting at times like this to give in to rage. Anger is fear announced, and rage is anger that is repressed, and then, when it is released, that is often misdirected. Right now, anger is not inappropriate. It is, in fact, natural-and can be a blessing. If we use our anger about this day not to pinpoint where the blame falls, but where the cause lies, we can lead the way to healing.

Let us seek not to pinpoint blame, but to pinpoint cause.

Unless we take this time to look at the cause of our experience, we will never remove ourselves from the experiences it creates. Instead, we will forever live in fear of retribution from those within the human family who feel aggrieved, and, likewise, seek retribution from them.

So at this time it is important for us to direct our anger toward the cause of our present experience. And that is not only individuals or groups who have attacked others, but also the reasons they have done so. Unless we look at these reasons, we will never be able to eliminate these attacks.

To me the reasons are clear. We have not learned the most basic human lessons. We have not remembered the most basic human truths. We have not understood the most basic spiritual wisdom. In short, we have not been listening to God, and because we have not, we watch ourselves do ungodly things.

The message of Conversations with God is clear: we are all one. That is a message the human race has largely ignored. Our separation mentality has underscored all of our human creations.

Our religions, our political structures, our economic systems, our educational institutions, and our whole approach to life have been based on the idea that we are separate from each other. This has caused us to inflict all manner of injury, one upon the other. And this injury causes other injury, for like begets like and negativity only breeds negativity.

It is as easy to understand as that. And so now let us pray that all of us in this human family will find the courage and the strength to turn inward and to ask a simple, soaring question: what would love do now?

If we could love even those who have attacked us, and seek to understand why they have done so, what then would be our response? Yet if we meet negativity with negativity, rage with rage, attack with attack, what then will be the outcome?

These are the questions that are placed before the human race today. They are questions that we have failed to answer for thousands of years. Failure to answer them now could eliminate the need to answer them at all.

We should make no mistake about this. The human race has the power to annihilate itself. We can end life as we know it on this planet in one afternoon.

This is the first time in human history that we have been able to say this. And so now we must direct our attention to the questions that such power places before us. And we must answer these questions from a spiritual perspective, not a political perspective, and not an economic perspective.

We must have our own conversation with God, for only the grandest wisdom and the grandest truth can address the greatest problems, and we are now facing the greatest problems and the greatest challenges in the history of our species.

If we want the beauty of the world that we have co-created to be experienced by our children and our children's children, we will have to become spiritual activists right here, right now, and cause that to happen. We must choose to be at cause in the matter.

So, talk with God today. Ask God for help, for counsel and advice, for insight and for strength and for inner peace and for deep wisdom. Ask God on this day to show us how to show up in the world in a way that will cause the world itself to change.

That is the challenge that is placed before every thinking person today. Today the human soul asks the question: What can I do to preserve the beauty and the wonder of our world and to eliminate the anger and hatred-and the disparity that inevitably causes it — in that part of the world which I touch?

Please seek to answer that question today, with all the magnificence that is You.

I love you, and I send you my deepest thoughts of peace.

Neale Donald Walsch

(website is www.conversationswithgod.org)