The New Paradigm
vol. II, Number 14

Dear Friends,

This is going to be an attempt at drawing together a number of different lines of thought, with references to at least a few "outside sources;" and my previous essay on "Sex" [tnp vol. II #8, 26 March 1999]. I would particularly like to draw your attention to the three-volume series, Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch, Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc., Charlottesville, Virginia, 1995, 1997, 1998. I suspect many tnp Readers are already familiar with Conversations with God; but for those who are not, let me say that the "God" Who speaks to Neale Walsch is the same "God" Who speaks to Me. I'd recognize that Voice anywhere! Certainly it comes closer to articulating My inmost idea of "new paradigm" thought than anything I have yet encountered in print - including, I must admit, even The New Paradigm itself.

Walsch's "God" (i.e. that manifestation of Source, or All-That-Is Who speaks through Walsch) has much of interest to say about a great many things; but in My estimation some of Shim's most interesting and provocative observations have to do with love, sex, marriage, male / female relations, family and community. Indeed, these particular issues cut very near the bone of the Human experience of Life, do they not? And a fundamental re-thinking of conventional patterns in these areas might have a disproportionate impact upon a much broader spectrum of concerns and Human experiences. Upon examination it appears (at least to me) that these very issues impinge upon virtually every aspect of Human endeavor, and if we could once get these close, intimate details right in our individual lives, all else would fall into place. The Human Race seems to be largely very far away from "getting it right" at the moment; but books like Conversations with God and their widespread popularity indicate a significant shift in the wind; indicate the possibility of many surprising developments in the near-term future.

The crux of "Walsch / God's" message is very similar to the crux of "My / God's" message: We are All One: eternal, indivisible, indestructible; and Our essence is limitless, boundless LOVE. We agree that there is nothing to fear, because there is no possibility of "death," because there is no way to "not be." Actually, I feel pretty good about having had this insight long before I ever encountered Conversations with God;" and I feel even better about its eloquent confirmation by "Walsch / God." This confirms to me what I have been saying for quite some time: that a Great Awakening is in progress, a global consciousness-raising which is taking place quite outside the "normal" channels of communication, such as audio / video and the written and spoken word. "It's in the air." It isn't "so" because "Walsch / God," or "Harmon / God," or "Jesus / God," or anybody else says so, but simply "because."

"Walsch / God" goes on to observe that "In the absence of that which You Are Not, that Which You ARE, is NOT." That is the purpose of relativity, of "up / down," "hot / cold," "female / male," "this / that," "good / evil," "etc. / so forth." All Are One; but if One-ness is the only possible experience, then no experience is possible. Hence, the willful, purposeful, divinely intentional shattering of the One-ness into Many-ness, into contrasting, diverse "elements." Each "element" is at once a piece of, and the Totality of, the Whole, the One; but with the experience of "separateness," "particularity," "this-but-not-thatness." And so each of Us is endowed with the creative ability at every moment to decide "What I AM" in contrast to "what I Am Not." That, in a very snug nutshell, is "what it's all about:" "Life, the Universe and Everything!" (In My opinion.)

If so, then relationships (e.g. between "you" and "me," "this" and "that," "man" and "woman," ...etc.) are the crucial means of discovery / creation / experience of Who I AM for each of Us. In that view - and "Walsch / God" is very clear and persistent on this, and "I / God" whole-heartedly concur - there is no "right" or "wrong" way to be; there is no "good" or "evil," no "sin" or "salvation" beyond what You or I decide We ARE at any moment; for everything is of the One, and there is nothing that is not holy, sacred and perfect.

That may raise a few hackles, for there is surely much in this world that a lot of people (including myself) don't like; and calling it "holy, sacred and perfect" may be a bit hard to take. Okay, so supposing all the stuff we "don't like" wasn't there - anywhere in the universe? Only stuff we "do like" exists: what then? Would we really like that? What if the temperature of everything - everything - were exactly 75 degrees? Or 200 degrees? Or 12 degrees? Would it be "hot," or "cold," or what? Celsius or Fahrenheit, it doesn't much matter, does it? Because something can be "cold" only in relation to something else that is "hot." And stuff that we "like" can only be appreciated in relation to other stuff that we "don't like." Or in other words, that which is "good" can only be so relative to that which is "evil." Yes? So that which I AM can only be in contrast to that which I Am Not. Hence, "In the absence of that which I Am Not, that Which I AM, is NOT."

Therefore: I submit to your consideration the proposition that every aspect, down to the most intimate details of Human relationship - especially the most intimate details of Human relationship - is due a serious and in-depth re-evaluation. For if the idea that "'evil' is no less 'holy, sacred and perfect' than 'good'" is "socially unacceptable," or an "unthinkable blasphemy," then there's a lot of ground yet to be covered; for it is simply an undeniable and elementary Cosmic Fact that the one cannot possibly exist without the other. Or to put it another way, which amounts to the same thing: You can't have what You "like" in the absolute absence of what You "don't like."

In discussing what He calls "HEBs" ("Highly Evolved Beings") "Walsch / God" draws attention to three distinguishing characteristics (of HEBs) in contrast to the majority of contemporary Human residents of Earth:

1. They observe fully: they see "what works."

2. They communicate truthfully: they say "what's so."

3. They take full responsibility, Individually, for what they do. If what they do ("what's so") does not produce desirable results ("what works") they simply correct what they do until it does. Since the Cosmic Fact that "All Are One" is universally understood among all HEBs, "what works" for One cannot possibly be at variance with "what works" for All.

The consequence is that in Highly Evolved Societies (i.e. societies composed of HEBs) there is no counterpart to what Humans call "governments," "nations," "laws" or "morality." Each Individual is at sovereign liberty to decide "what works" for Shim. If it develops that through ignorance or oversight a given action "doesn't work" for All, such condition is clearly observable by One and All, and easily corrected. There is no question of "legality" or "moral suasion." If it "doesn't work" for All, it "doesn't work" for any One; so change it; full stop.

The implications for our (primitive) Human societies are profound - if we perceive the description of Highly Evolved Societies as a desirable aspiration for Human societies on Earth. It certainly rings My bell! But "getting there" from "here" requires a fundamental course change for anybody with such an aspiration, wouldn't you agree? And such a course change can only be negotiated by an Individual, for nobody can change course for or of anybody else. It simply "doesn't work" and cannot be done; which is why "governments," "nations," "laws" and "morality" are certain indicators of primitive societies. They are irrevocably contrary to "what works" for bringing about free, open, joyful communities and societies; and all claims for their so-called "benefits" for such purposes are contrary to "what's so."

What it comes to is this: all the huge, Cosmic issues finally and inescapably boil down to the "little" issues of Your (and My) moment-to-moment decisions in Our daily lives: the intimate details of Our relationships with One another, with Our Selves and with every item with which We come in contact every moment of every day. It's one thing to rail about "corrupt politicians," counterproductive "laws," "crime," "injustice," "immorality," and on and on. But if it's a "better world" You really want, are Your daily decisions, right here, right now, taking You - YOU - where You want to go?

For instance, do you want your children to grow up to be loving, honest, fearless, intelligent, well informed, free? Do you send them to school? Do you encourage them to participate in competitive sports? Do you condone their watching television an average of four hours or more every day? Do you see anything "wrong" with this picture?

Actually, there's nothing "wrong" - if you're perfectly satisfied with the course of contemporary Human events; if you "like it." If you "don't like it," however, then hadn't you (and I) best start doing things a bit differently than we have been? Isn't it reasonable to imagine that if we're not pointed in the direction we want to go, we might not get there?

"Walsch / God" made some interesting observations about sexuality, families and communities in Conversations which had frankly never occurred to me before; but which struck me immediately as so sensible - and once "conventional wisdom" is pushed aside, obvious - that I think it good to bring them to your attention.

A key point, of course, upon which all else rests, is that "God," Source, All-That-Is, is not a Being of "judgment," of "hell and damnation," of "sin and salvation." This we have covered before, and those are all "old paradigm" Human inventions tailored for political control, enslavement and spiritual paralysis of "the many" by "the few;" of the "Commoners" by the "Aristocracy;" of the "Flock" by the "Priesthood." "Walsch / God" (the "God" Who speaks through Walsch, remember) makes it clear that Shim is no such "God;" has no preferences whatsoever; cannot be "angered" or "defied" by any Human action of any kind; but Who's will is the will at each moment of each Individual; nothing more, nothing less. Okay; that's clear enough, I hope, and there is no obstacle, from "God" anyway, to saying "what's so," and observing "what works."

Now, about Human sexuality: the foundation, among other things, of Human (and with some exceptions, non-Human) reproduction, family, relationships, culture: as I've mentioned before, [tnp vol. II #8] "'God' invented sex;" so there can hardly be anything Cosmically "wrong" with any form of sexual expression or practice. The only thing that might be "wrong" with any sexual (or other) practice is so defined by the Individual(s) involved: what they "like" or "don't like;" or more broadly, "what works" or "doesn't work," in taking them where they want to go. As "Walsch / God" puts it,

"...I have said, play, play, play with sex - and with all life!

"Mix what you call sacred with the sacrilegious, for until you see your altars as the ultimate place for love, and your bedrooms as the ultimate place for worship, you see nothing at all.

"You think 'sex' is separate from God? I tell you this: I am in your bedroom every night!

"So go ahead! Mix what you call the profane and the profound - so that you can see that there is no difference, and experience All as One. Then when you continue to evolve, you will not see yourself as letting go of sex, but simply enjoying it at a higher level. For all of life is S.E.X. - Synergistic Energy eXchange."
[Conversations Book 3, p. 56.]

Or again,

"There is nothing ignoble, or unholy, about having sex. You have got to get that idea out of your mind, and out of your culture.

"There is nothing base, or gross, or 'less than dignified' (much less sanctified), about a passionate, desire-filled sexual experience. Physical urges are not manifestations of 'animalistic behavior.' Those physical urges were built into the system - by Me.

"Who do you suppose created it that way?

"Yet physical urges are but one ingredient in a complex mixture of responses that you all have to each other. Remember, you are a three-part being, with seven chakra centers. When you respond to one another from all three parts, and all seven centers, at the same time, then you have the peak experience you are looking for - that you have been created for!

"And there is nothing unholy about any of these energies - yet if you choose just one of them, that is "un-whole-y." It is not being whole!

"When you are not being whole, you are being less than yourself. That is what is meant by 'unholy.'"
[Ibid. p. 155.]

Now my (personal) observation of "what's so" tells me that Homo sapiens is not an inherently monogamous species. Some species are; some species aren't; all are creations of "God." I understand that Canada Geese, for example, "mate for life," but Dogs and Cats manifestly do not: one is not therefore more "virtuous" than the other. Divorce statistics and various studies of "marital fidelity" disclose that Humans are actually about as "promiscuous" as Cats; which is neither here nor there, except in relation to what many people think they're "supposed" to be, and therefore pretend (falsely) to be; or require themselves and one another (falsely, coercively, unnaturally) to be. "That's so." But is it "what works?"

"Marriage [observes the "God" Who speaks through Walsch], as most of you have practiced it, is not particularly beautiful. For it violates two of the three aspects of what is true about each human being by nature.

"...Who You Are is love.

"What love is, is unlimited, eternal, and free.

"Therefore, that is what you are. That is the nature of Who You Are. You are unlimited, eternal, and free, by nature.

"Now any artificial social, moral, religious, philosophical, economic, or political construction which violates or subordinates your nature is an impingement upon your very Self - and you will rail against it.

"What do you suppose gave birth to your own country? Was it not 'Give me liberty, or give me death'?

"Well, you've given up that liberty in your country, and you've given it up in your lives. And all for the same thing. Security.

"You are so afraid to live - so afraid of life itself - that you've given up the very nature of your being in trade for security.

"The institution you call marriage is your attempt to create security, as is the institution called government. Actually, they are both forms of the same thing - artificial social constructions designed to govern each other's behavior.

"...Marriage is an effort to guarantee that 'what is so' now will always be so. If you didn't need this guarantee, you would not need marriage. And how do you use this guarantee? First, as a means of creating security (instead of creating security from that which is inside of you), and second, if that security is not forever forthcoming, as a means of punishing each other, for the marriage promise which has been broken can now form the basis of the law-suit which has been opened.

"You have thus found marriage very useful - even if it is for all the wrong reasons.

"Marriage is also your attempt to guarantee that the feelings you have for each other, you will never have for another. Or, at least, that you will never express them with another in the same way [i.e. sexually].

"...If Who You Really Are is a being who says, 'This one relationship - this single one, right over here - is more special than any other,' then your construction of marriage allows you to do that perfectly. Yet you might find it interesting to notice that almost no one who is, or has been recognized as a spiritual master is married...because masters cannot truthfully make the statement that your present construction of marriage seeks to make: that one person is more special to them than another.

"This is not a statement that a master makes, and it is not a statement that God makes.

"The fact is that your marriage vows, as you presently construct them, have you making a very un-Godly statement. It is the height of irony that you feel this is the holiest of holy promises, for it is a promise that God would never make.

"Yet, in order to justify your human fears, you have imagined a God who acts just like you. Therefore, you speak of God's 'promise' to his 'Chosen People,' and of covenants between God and those God loves, in a special way.

"You cannot stand the thought of a God who loves no one in a way which is more special than any other, and so you create fictions about a God who only loves certain people for certain reasons. And you call these fictions Religions. I call them blasphemies. For any thought that God loves one more than another is false - and any ritual which asks you to make the same statement is not a sacrament, but a sacrilege."
[Ibid. pp. 221-223.]

"Within the context of marriage...there is an exchange of vows that love does not require. Yet you require them, because you do not know what love is. And so you make each other promise what love would never ask."
[Ibid. p. 230.]

So sayeth the "God" Who speaks through Neale Donald Walsch in 1998. If you would like an "earlier" slant on all this, read the passionate 1911 essay, "Marriage and Love" by Emma Goldman (1869-1940), included in her Anarchism and Other Essays.

Now to round out this part of the discussion I am going to share with you, at Your discretion, an erotic story involving so-called "adultery" - which you may read, if you wish, at a URL I will include in a moment. I just want to "caution" you in advance that it is a highly explicit story, among innumerable others, containing detailed descriptions of various sexual (and in this instance "adulterous") practices. If for any reason you do not wish to read such explicit sexual content, then do not visit the URL below.

Myself, I find such stories of interest on a number of different levels. For one thing, they (or some of them) "turn me on," as they are intended to do. More broadly, whether fact or fiction, they disclose a vast smorgasbord of "sexual tastes" which, I must confess, I find rather eye-opening - and "educational" in a sense not to be found in any "conventional" curriculum. They range in style and execution from the almost inarticulate to the quite well crafted; from total fantasy to credible descriptions of actual experiences. I think what I like about them most is that they liberate my imagination in a traditionally taboo province of Human Life, and aid me in considering Who I AM and Am Not, what I "like" and "don't like," in sexual terms; and I think this is important. Anyway, it's important to Me.

I share this with You (if You wish to share it with Me) because it is possibly a way of penetrating in a more than conceptual way to the core of What We Are as biological Human Beings. If We agree that We need to "change direction" if We want to "go to a different place" than where We're headed now; and if We agree that nobody but each One of Us can make such change(s), then it is more than probable, it seems to me, that "conventional" sexual attitudes and practices do not, and cannot, serve our needs and desires. We "must" do something to break out of Our habitual patterns, and it may be that reading erotic stories could be a step for some along the path of doing exactly that.

Here, then, if you wish, is the story, "My Precious Neighbor"* by J. Edwins. It is, I think, one of the better crafted stories of the erotic genre.

Finally, I want to get back to an idea in Conversations with God I mentioned earlier as striking me ("once 'conventional wisdom' is pushed aside") as being extraordinarily sensible and obvious (although until stated in Conversations it was not obvious to me). The idea is about youthful sexuality, parenting, child rearing and Highly Evolved Societies. "God" (through Neale Walsch) observed that since Humans have chosen to incarnate on Earth to discover / create / experience Who We ARE, We arrive (are "born") in a massive state of deliberate "forgetfulness." It takes us 50 years, or more or less, to achieve a state of more than "adolescent" maturity. (I've been in My present incarnation for 55 years now, and I can testify from personal experience, this is quite an accurate observation. Of course, I'm anticipating another 350 years at least, before I lose interest in this extraordinary game, so I consider Myself still a callow youth!) Anyway, children become sexually mature, or at least potentially involved, between the ages of 9 and 15; which is exactly what "God" intended. Shim did not intend, however, that children should be responsible for raising children, as our (primitive) "morality" insists. This results (for us) in generation after generation of bewildered children attempting to "raise" their progeny when they themselves have virtually no Life Experience, or an accumulated fund of wisdom upon which to draw. Talk about "the blind leading the blind!"

Highly Evolved Societies, in contrast, according to the "God" Who speaks through Walsch, are so arranged that sexually maturing youth are at full liberty to explore their sexuality at will; and any children that result are raised, not by the children who produced them, but by Elders of wisdom and Life experience. "Conventional morality," Earth-style, might be shocked at the notion, but think about it. If young people generally were not constrained to view their God-given sexuality as "unnatural lust" which must be bridled and controlled at all cost until they have performed some social rite committing them to "life-long partnership" with a single individual; if the children they produced were not "welcomed" into the world as crushing emotional and economic burdens resulting from "sinful indiscretions," but were instead greeted with joy and appreciation by wise and experienced Elders eager and able to raise them in a free and open atmosphere of love and enlightenment... do you really think that would be such a "Bad Thing?"

This one change in the social fabric, it seems to me upon reflection, would so profoundly improve every aspect of Human society that it is difficult to imagine the eventual extent of the positive repercussions. Elders would once again have a vital part to play in Human society, instead of being shunted to the sidelines, only to await "death." Children would be raised and "educated" by wise and experienced individuals who truly loved them, within the warm embrace of their own families and communities, instead of being bussed off to institutional concentration camps where they are indoctrinated and "broken to the harness" of joyless life-long servitude. Communities would consist of rich mixtures of individuals of all ages at every stage of Human development, in wholesome, loving and free relationship with one another, instead of festering archipelagos of insular houses and apartments with their backs to each other, inhabited by "neighbors" who are strangers by mutual agreement and reciprocal fear. In such a "new paradigm" world, I could sure imagine living 350, 400 years vigorously, joyfully and filled with interest in the endless adventures before Me. Couldn't You?

In my previous essay on "Sex" I wrote, "Could it be that our attitudes about sex are a significant factor in our attitudes about everything we experience; and that if we were to change the first, everything else would naturally 'fall into place?' I'm reluctant to press that idea too insistently, because I think we are a great deal else besides sexual Beings." Well, yes, we are. But the more I think about it, the more convinced I become that unless we do change our sexual attitudes massively, in some mighty significant ways, we're going to find it very difficult to make the other changes necessary to achieve a "new paradigm" society, or the Highly Evolved Society of Highly Evolved Beings.

Most likely, though, these changes are indeed taking place, in symphonic harmony with all the other changes we're going through, day by day, individual by individual. The result is an emerging realization that We are all indeed "only" One after all; and that "Eros and Agape" are too: not two, but the single combined essence of What We Are: LOVE. Is that "so?" I think so.

Love & Light,

-- Harmon
J. Harmon Grahn

_____________________

* It turns out upon re-examination the link does not take you to that exact story, but to the site at which the story may be found (if it's still there). This would require you to sort through an enormous volume of "pornographic material" in a possibly vain attempt to find that one story; therefore I've removed the link. If you wish, you may do what I did and just make a general Internet search on the word, "sex," and sort through what you "don't like" until you find, if possible, what you "do like." Maybe it's better that way anyway, for there's no certainty that what "I like," sexually or otherwise, will match what "you like." Good luck. [Click on the asterisk* to return to the paragraph in which it first appears.]

"Eros and Agape"
copyright 1999 by J. Harmon Grahn.
Verbatim copying and redistribution are permitted
in any medium provided this notice is preserved.