The Secret of Life
The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. . . . Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You merely need to remember what you already know, and act on it.
Work
Doing is a function of the body. Being is a function of the soul. The body is always doing something. . . . The soul is forever being. . . . Your soul doesn't care what you do for a living -- and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only what you're being while you're doing whatever you're doing.
Your life work is a statement of Who You Are. If it is not, then why are you doing it? . . . If "man who supports his family, at all costs, even his own happiness" is Who You Are, then love your work, because it is facilitating your creation of a living statement of Self. If "woman who works at job she hates in order to meet responsibilities as she sees them" is Who You Are, then love, love, love your job, for it totally supports your Self image, your Self concept.
Sex
. . . Sex is joy, and many of you have made sex everything else but. Sex is sacred, too -- yes. But joy and sacredness do mix (they are, in fact, the same thing), and many of you think they do not. Your attitudes about sex form a microcosm of your attitudes about life. Life should be a joy, a celebration, and it has become an experience of fear, anxiety, "not enough-ness," envy, rage, and tragedy. The same can be said about sex. You have repressed sex, even as you have repressed life . . . . You have shamed sex, even as you have shamed life, calling it evil and wicked, rather than the highest gift and the greatest pleasure.
Relationships
There is a way to be happy in relationships, and that is to use relationships for their intended purpose, not the purpose you have designed. . . . Most people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out of them, rather than what they can put into them. The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you'd like to see "show up," not what part of another you can capture and hold. . . . It is very romantic to say that now that your special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.
. . . you have no obligation. Neither in relationship, nor in all of life. . . . You have only opportunity. Opportunity, not obligation, is the cornerstone of religion, the basis of all spirituality. . . . Relationship -- your relationship to all things -- was created as your perfect tool in the work of the soul. That is why all human relationships are sacred ground. It is why every personal relationship is holy.
Copyright © 2002 by Neale Donald Walsch. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
