This conversation with God began as a simple plea from one humble human being to the God of his understanding, in the way that works best for him. I asked God to reveal to us what we now need to know if we want to help change the self-destructive direction in which humanity is moving. This is [a part of] God's response:
There are five things you can choose now if changing your world, and the self-destructive direction in which it is moving, is what you wish to achieve.
1. You can choose to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about Life are no longer working.
2. You can choose to acknowledge that there is something you do not understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.
3. You can choose to be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be brought forth, an understanding that could produce a new way of life on your planet.
4. You can choose to be courageous enough to explore and examine this new understanding, and, if it aligns with your inner truth and knowing, to enlarge your belief system to include it.
5. You can choose to live your lives as demonstrations of your highest and grandest beliefs, rather than as denials of them.
These are the Five Steps to Peace, and if you take them, you can shift everything on your planet.
Why all this emphasis on God and our beliefs? Why are you not telling us to change our worldwide political or economic systems? Why are you not telling us to change our laws and stop our violence and share our resources and discontinue our discrimination and halt our oppression and redistribute our abundance and end our wars and live in peace?
Because those are all changes in behaviour.
Aren't our behaviours exactly what we need to change right now?
Yes. If what you decide you now desire is a world living in peace and harmony, the answer is yes.
Okay, you've got me. I don't understand. Why are You talking about beliefs when what we need to do is change behaviours?
Because beliefs create behaviours.
All behaviours are created by beliefs?
All behaviours.
Aren't there such things as ‘automatic reactions’?
Even those reactions are based on what you believe is occurring, is about to occur, or could occur. All behaviours are sponsored by beliefs. You cannot make a long-term change in behaviours without addressing the beliefs that underlie them. I'm going to repeat that, because the brevity of the statement belies its importance. I said:
You cannot make a long-term change in behaviours without addressing the beliefs that underlie them.
So it is on our beliefs that society needs to focus.
Exactly. And this is precisely where most of your societies have not been focusing – except those societies that are now causing, and have historically caused, the most upheaval.
But if we...
Listen to me. I am telling you something very important here.
What I just said was... those societies that are now causing, that have historically caused, the most upheaval in your world are those societies which have focused on beliefs. Most humans try to change things by focusing on behaviours. They keep thinking they can make things better by doing something. So, everyone is running around trying to figure out what they can do. The focus is on doing something, rather than on believing something.
But radical forces within your societies have always sought to change things by using the power of thought, not action, for they know that thought produces action. Get a person thinking a certain way and you can get a person to act a certain way. It is not easily done the other way around.
Take killing, for example. You can rarely get a person to go out and kill another person simply by telling him to do so. You have to give him a reason. And ‘reason' exists only in thought. And thought is always based in Belief. So, if you want to get one person to kill another, the fastest way to do that is to give him a belief that supports the action, and can sponsor it. And so, while most of the world is seeking to bring about change by telling people what to DO, those who truly know how to motivate people are bringing about change by telling people what to BELIEVE. Do you get it?
Wow. Yes.
Your world is facing enormous problems right now, and you must solve the problems at the level of belief. You cannot solve the problems at the level of behaviour. Seek to change beliefs, not behaviours. After you change a belief, the behaviour will change by itself.
But we are a very action-oriented society. The Western world, in particular, has always found its solutions in action, not in quiet contemplation or philosophy.
You can take whatever action you want to take to alter someone else's behaviour or to stop it, but unless you alter the beliefs that produced such behaviour, you will alter nothing and stop nothing. You can alter a belief in two ways. Either by enlarging upon it, or by changing it completely. But you must do one or the other or you will not alter behaviour. You will merely interrupt it.
In other words, the behaviour will return.
Is there any question about that? Do you not see your history repeating itself?
From The New Revelations, copyright 2002 by Neale Donald Walsch, published in the UK by Hodder Mobius.
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