Statement — October 5, 2001

My dear friends,

Thank you for coming to this site! The world needs your help now. Now is the time, more than ever before, for all of us to put our spirituality into action.

We must acknowledge a painful truth. Religion has let us down. All the religions of all the world through all the centuries have not found a way to stop us from destroying ourselves. It is time to step away from Religions that divide and conquer and adopt a Spirituality that unites and strengthens. And you can help us do that.

You can help the world become ONE with itself, and you can provide that help right now, today. This minute, if you want to. You can help the world to know at last that difference does not have to mean division, that debate does not have to debase, and that disagreement does not have to lead to destruction. Our differences can produce contrast without producing conflict; they can produce character without producing character assassination.

Conversations with God has brought, through five books, a single, powerful message: We Are All One.

We need to get that message out.

Now.

Right now.

To all people everywhere.

If you believe in that message, if you have found in CWG a spirituality that has changed your life and that you believe can change the world, I am urging you, begging you, pleading with you now — do what you can to spread that message to everyone whose life you touch.

What we need is Oneness Now….everywhere. A consciousness of Oneness would not allow us to ever do to each other the kinds of things that we are doing to each other on this planet right now — no matter what our grievances.

You know that, and I know that. That is why I have created Oneness Now Everywhere (ONE), a new and vital outreach of the ReCreation Foundation. Through this program we hope to create in communities and locations around the nation and across the globe a new way of thinking, a new way of looking at things, a new way of living together that begins, step by step, to change the way we are being with each other. I want events such as those which are now occurring never to occur again.

It is fast becoming overworked to say that after September 11th nothing will ever be the same in our lives, yet that statement is true. Still, if we choose, there can be more good in that than bad. We could use this horrific event as a turning point in human history, a time when we turned from our separation mentality at last, and joined hands, finally, as one family of Earth Humans — looking out for each other’s good, protecting each other from harm, providing each other with ways to live happy, healthy, productive lives.

The choice will be ours.

Oneness Now Everywhere is forming very quickly as a spiritual-political-social movement, bringing chapters to every community and nation. We are looking for volunteers. We are asking for your help. Our intention, once organized, is to urge people in every location to form around this Larger Idea. We want to provide action-oriented groups for community-level explorations of how to create Oneness as an experience and not merely a concept, in our lives.

I see our ONE chapters calling together the clergy of every community, to join in Working Groups that will provide highly visible inspiration and leadership in healing our collective wounds, and in replacing disunity with unity in the human experience. The groups need to form now, while the spiritual crisis is at its peak, and people are looking for answers.

I also see these ONE chapters bringing together educators, business and political leaders, joining with the spiritual community, for dialogues and action programs aimed at rebuilding our society from the ground up, in the spirit of Oneness which is the highest message of all religions everywhere. It is time to put our spiritual truths, the truths that we all say we hold dear, into action in our lives.

CWG says, “politics is your spirituality, demonstrated.” So, too, is economics a demonstration of our spiritual truth. Are the politics and the economics of the world reflecting our highest commonly held spiritual values? I do not think so. No one that I know thinks so. Now, you can do something about this. Right now. Today.

Nothing in recent history has stopped the world in its tracks as coldly, as abruptly, as completely as the events of September 11, 2001. Every human being on the face of the earth has been impacted by this, and there cannot be many thinking, caring people who have failed to pause for at least a moment to ask the Common Soul some of life’s larger questions.

What, really, is going on here? Why, why, WHY can’t we all just learn to live together and to get along? Is there no way — just simply no way — that the human species can avoid destroying itself? Are we so ill-tempered, so unwilling to learn or to adjust anything, that we are truly doomed to the destructions of our own devise?

If there were a way out of our self-created hell, what would it be? What shift in our thinking, what change in our actions, would be required? Who or what can show us this and take us there?

What must or can I do as an individual to helping in that process? Do I have any role to play at all, or am I limited to being a hapless bystander, watching the human story unfold, with no input whatsoever?

These questions will not go away. We can brush them aside for a while, but they keep returning, forced to our mental agenda by the tide of human events, looming before us larger and larger, overshadowed only by the sheer size of the human tragedy. That tragedy is, of course, that we keep killing each other because we cannot find any other way to resolve our differences.

Even when the killing stops, it is rarely because we have resolved our differences, but usually because someone has simply been overpowered into ignoring them, setting aside their feelings until the next time anger and bitterness erupt.

We can’t go on like this. This cycle can no longer continue. Our species has reached a crossroad. There can no more be any doubt about that, nor any overstatement of it. It is now or never time for homo sapiens. We either “get it right” now, in the weeks and months and years immediately ahead, or there will be nothing further to discuss, because the world as we know it will cease to exist.

Everyone knows this. At some deep level it is obvious to all of us that this is no ordinary “critical moment,” but one of the most critical of “critical moments” we have faced on this planet. And we know, too, that the times call for extraordinary leadership. Not just from the few, but from the many.

And, I say again, religions have failed us. Why have not the religious leaders of all the world’s faith traditions called a joint press conference in a highly visible place and made a joint announcement &151; Muslims and Christians, Hindus and Jews, Buddhists and Shintoists standing arm-in-arm, shoulder-to-shoulder—denouncing the activities of radical factions within any of their ranks, renouncing violence in any form, challenging the world to resolve its conflicts peacefully, and calling upon the followers of all faiths to immediately withhold their support from any government, organization, or group which does not do so?

I will tell you why many spiritual teachers will not do this. They are afraid of losing their constituency. Our spiritual teachers, as our politicians, have forgotten how to lead, and now know only how to follow.

Yet what we need today are spiritual leaders, not merely spiritual teachers. Leaders offering deep insight, a new way of looking at things and another way of being with each other that will allow us all to live together on this planet in peace and harmony.

And so, it is up to us, individually and collectively, to lead ourselves out of hell.

That is why I am calling upon you now. Please become a spiritual leader. Please designate yourself a spiritual messenger. Join me in supporting and creating Oneness Now Everywhere (ONE), the outreach of CWG and the ReCreation Foundation. You can do this immediately. Right now, in the Present Moment. Just click on the words Oneness Now Everywhere in this sentence and you will be taken to a page which will allow you to lend us immediate support as a member of the ONE team.

There IS something you can do, each of you, right here, right now. It is not a question of whether you can play a role in changing the world, but of whether you will.

My deepest love,

Neale

Neale Donald Walsch