War
"But isn't going to war incompatible with God's Truth?" Zac asked. "I thought God said I should make the most loving choice. War isn't love. War is brutal and violent."
"But sometimes war is the most loving choice," I replied. "Listen to this…"
Now we come upon a very delicate point of interpretation, for this principle of love-sponsored action has been widely misunderstood — and it is this misunderstanding which has led to the resentments and angers of life — which, in turn, have caused so many to stray from the path.
For centuries you have been taught that love-sponsored action arises out of the choice to be, do, and have whatever produces the highest good for another.
Yet I tell you this: the highest choice is that which produces the highest good for you.
As with all profound spiritual truth, this statement opens itself to immediate misinterpretation. The mystery clears a bit the moment one decides what is the highest “good” one could do for oneself. And when the absolute highest choice is made, the mystery dissolves, the circle completes itself, and the highest good for you becomes the highest good for another.
It may take lifetimes to understand this — and even more lifetimes to implement — for this truth revolves around an even greater one: What you do for your Self, you do for another. What you do for another, you do for the Self.
This is because you and the other are one.
And this is because…
There is naught but You.
All the Masters who have walked your planet have taught this. (“Verily, verily, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”) Yet this has remained for most people merely a grand esoteric truth, with little practical application. In fact, it is the most practically applicable “esoteric” truth of all time.
It is important in relationships to remember this truth, for without it relationships will be very difficult.
Let’s go back to the practical applications of this wisdom and step away from the purely spiritual, esoteric aspect of it for now.
So often, under the old understandings, people — well-meaning and well-intentioned and many very religious — did what they thought would be best for the other person in their relationships. Sadly, all this produced in many cases (in most cases) was continued abuse by the other. Continued mistreatment. Continued dysfunction in the relationship.
Ultimately, the person trying to “do what is right” by the other — to be quick to forgive, to show compassion, to continually look past certain problems and behaviors — becomes resentful, angry, and mistrusting, even of God. For how can a just God demand such unending suffering, joylessness, and sacrifice, even in the name of love?
The answer is, God does not. God asks only that you include yourself among those you love.
God goes further. God suggests — recommends — that you put yourself first.
I do this knowing full well that some of you will call this blasphemy, and therefore not My word, and that others of you will do what might be even worse: accept it as My word and misinterpret or distort it to suit your own purposes; to justify unGodly acts.
I tell you this — putting yourself first in the highest sense never leads to an unGodly act.
If, therefore, you have caught yourself in an unGodly act as a result of doing what is best for you, the confusion is not in having put yourself first, but rather in misunderstanding what is best for you.
Of course, determining what is best for you will require you to also determine what it is you are trying to do. This is an important step that many people ignore. What are you “up to”? What is your purpose in life? Without answers to these questions, the matter of what is “best” in any given circumstances will remain a mystery.
As a practical matter — again leaving esoterics aside — if you look to what is best for you in these situations where you are being abused, at the very least what you will do is stop the abuse. And that will be good for both you and your abuser. For even an abuser is abused when his abuse is allowed to continue.
This is not healing to the abuser, but damaging. For if the abuser finds that his abuse is acceptable, what has he learned? Yet if the abuser finds that his abuse will be accepted no more, what has he been allowed to discover?
Therefore, treating others with love does not necessarily mean allowing others to do as they wish.
Parents learn this early with children. Adults are not so quick to learn it with other adults, nor nation with nation.
Yet despots cannot be allowed to flourish, but must be stopped in their despotism. Love of Self, and love of the despot, demands it. This is the answer to your question, “If love is all there is, how can man ever justify war?”
Sometimes man must go to war to make the grandest statement about who man truly is: he who abhors war.
There are times when you may have to give up Who You Are in order to be Who You Are.
There are Masters who have taught: you cannot have it all until you are willing to give it all up.
Thus, in order to “have” yourself as a man of peace, you may have to give up the idea of yourself as a man who never goes to war. History has called upon men for such decisions.
The same is true in the most individual and the most personal relationships. Life may more than once call upon you to prove Who You Are by demonstrating an aspect of Who You Are Not.
This is not so difficult to understand if you have lived a few years, though for the idealistically young it may seem the ultimate contradiction. In more mature retrospection it seems more divine dichotomy.
This does not mean in human relationships that if you are being hurt, you have to “hurt back.” (Nor does it mean so in relationships between nations.) It simply means that to allow another to continually inflict damage may not be the most loving thing to do — for your Self or the other.
This should put to rest some pacifist theories that highest love requires no forceful response to what you consider evil.
The discussion here turns esoteric once more, because no serious exploration of this statement can ignore the word “evil,” and the value judgments it invites. In truth, there is nothing evil, only objective phenomena and experience. Yet your very purpose in life requires you to select from the growing collection of endless phenomena a scattered few which you call evil — for unless you do, you cannot call yourself, nor anything else, good — and thus cannot know, or create, your Self.
By that which you call evil do you define yourself — and by that which you call good.
The biggest evil would therefore be to declare nothing evil at all.
You exist in this life in the world of the relative, where one thing can exist only insofar as it relates to another. This is at one and the same time both the function and the purpose of relationship: to provide a field of experience within which you find yourself, define yourself, and — if you choose — constantly recreate Who You Are.
Choosing to be God-like does not mean you choose to be a martyr. And it certainly does not mean you choose to be a victim.
On your way to mastery — when all possibility of hurt, damage, and loss is eliminated — it would be well to recognize hurt, damage, and loss as part of your experience, and decide Who You Are in relationship to it.
Neale Donald Walsch
"This has been a hard lesson for me," I said. "I value peace and harmony in my life, but I also value the truth. When I encounter someone who threatens the truth with their illogical dogma, I can mentally draw my sword and gut their faulty logic in a second. It's easy to enforce my value of truth in the confines of my own mind. I can battle someone internally in an instant and walk away, without engaging them in a long, drawn-out linear war that takes place in dense, physical reality. Thus, I maintain my personal boundary around truth while maintaining peace and harmony in my life.
I've only recently realized that I value truth more than peace and harmony. If I want to be a true Queen, I have to go to war and fight for truth in the realm of the relative. I need to stand for truth, speak the truth, and draw my sword on anything that threatens the truth. In doing this, I don't allow despots to flourish. Ironically, I have to give up an aspect of Who I Am to fully be Who I Am. I'm still learning how to do this."