Conversations

with God
Spiritual Mentoring Program
_________
Month #1 : Mastering Change
Topic #7: Use Your Head!

This lesson written by Neale Donald Walsch
based on the information found in
When Everything Changes, Change Everything


Discussion

When I was a child my father said to me over and over again whenever I
encountered a circumstance that seemed problematical: Use your head!
If I heard that once, I heard that a thousand times. What he was saying was,
Youre not thinking. Just think.
That was good advice, and he taught me with that injunction to r ely on
myself to find the answers. One thing Dad never did was give us the answers. He
wouldnt do it. Not if he k new that wed b een given the answers once already. If it
was a new problem, a new set of circumstances, fair enough. Hed tell us what he
knew about that. B ut if it was something he k new wed already discussed, hed
refuse to supply us with solutions. Use your head, hed saybecause he k new
that the solutions were in there.

Thats What Evolution is For
As we travel around the Circle of Evolution we encounter the same old
ground, the same old conditions, the same old circumstances over and over again
(not only in this ife, but in lifetime after lifetime). Indeed, thats what Evolution is
for. And as we encounter these identical or nearly identical problems, God k nows
that we already have all the answers within us. All we have to do i s use our head.
Yet When Everything Changes, Change Everything invites us to use it i n a new
way: in conjunction with our Soul. That is b ecause the Mechanics of the Mind are
not effective enough to be used on their own. Indeed, they were not designed to
be used on their own. They were designed to be used in collaboration with the
System of the Soul.
This is something that most people do not k now.

The Mind and the Soul were designed to be used
together; not as singular tools, but as collaborative
equipment.

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If you use the Mind alone in attempting to solve a particular problem, you
will go b ack to the Data of the Mind that you collected the last time you
encountered this (or a similar) problem, and you will attempt to address it in the
same way.
Ironically, you will do this even though the last time you addressed it in this
way you were unsuccessful in solving it. That wont matter to you. Youll keep
doing the same thing over and over again, a f ly against the window pane
They say that the definition of i nsanity is doing the same thing over and over
again, expecting to get different results. At present, this is a description of the
human race.
The way out of this trap i s threefold:
First, to notice that you are in the trap. That is, to begin to see the self-
destructive patterns in your life, and admit they are there.
Second, to ask yourself, Is it possible that there i s something I do not
understand about all this, the understanding of which would change everything?
and, in search of an answer to that question, to leave the place where the data
that produces your understanding is limited (that is, get out of your Mind), and
go to the place where the data about life stands outside the limitation of physical
experience or memory.
Third, to act on the Data of the Soul.

There Are No New Conditions or Situations, BUT
Look, there are no new conditions or situations in life. Once you pass the age
of six or eight, there simply arent any. That i s why the Catholic Church teaches
that when a child r eaches the age of seven, he or she has reached the Age of
Reason. The Church means that b y this time the child will have encountered
every life situation, in one form or another, at least once, and from that point on
should be able to use its head in figuring out solutions. I n that sense, the child is
said to have lost i ts innocence, and should know better.
I am not sure I agree with the Churchs assessment i n this regard, b ut I do
understand the theory. And I agree that after a few years i n physicality, it i s
virtually i mpossible to encounter any new circumstances or situations i n life. We
can create new experiences, but we will not encounter new situations.
We create new experiences b y covering Old Ground in a new way. Let me
repeat that one, because you may have missed it.

We create new experiences b y covering old ground
in a new way.

Once youve been around for a while, youve already encountered everything
youre going to encounter. Youve encountered f ear. Youve encountered
betrayal. Youve encountered sadness. Youve encountered loneliness and anger
and disappointment and frustration and, really, all the negative emotions youre
ever going to encounter. (All the positive ones, too.) And most of you will have
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encountered all that b efore you were three. (So maybe the Catholic Church i s
right after all, b ecause by the time you are seven, you will have more than
doubled your d ata about these things.)
So the q uestion in life becomes not when you will change the circumstances
and situations in your life, but when you will change your reaction and r esponse
to the same old circumstances and situations that keep on repeating themselves.
Whoa.that i s an i mportant statement!

The q uestion in life is not when you will change its
circumstances and conditions, but when you will
change your reaction to them.

Your answer to this question will set the tone for the rest of your life.
Yet you cannotor let me just say that you will find it very, very difficult
tochange your reaction and response to the negative circumstances and
conditions of your life if you continue trying to do so using your Mind as your
only tool.
You must use the Soul as well.

LESSON #7:
THE MIND IS NOT THE
CHIEF TOOL OF EVOLUTION

Your Mind is a tool of evolution f or sure, but i t is not the chief tool. I t is not
the only tool. And i t is not the best tool. The best tool is a combination tool, a
blending of the Mind and the Soul. Well cover how to accomplish that b lending
in the days and weeks ahead as we move through this Spiritual Mentoring
Program. But for now I want you to simply grapple with this notion: You cannot
trust your M ind.
Your Mind, alone, does not hold sufficient data to allow you to do anything
but survive. And i t cannot even guarantee you that! What i t certainly cannot
guarantee you i s that you will expand, grow, on this cycle of your evolution.
So the work at present, your work for now, i s to give up any notion you may
have of your Mind being the b est friend you ever had. Actually, i n some ways it
may be the worst.


__________________________________________________________________________________
TODAYS ASSIGNMENT:
1. Please r e-read Chapters 6-7-8 of When E verything Changes, Change
Everything. This is not as much reading as i t sounds. Those three chapters cover
just 13 pages of text, and can be read in about as many minutes. So take a quarter

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of an hour now, please, and find your copy of WECCE and review those chapters,
line by line.
2. Please take the QUIK QUIZ below, answering the f ollowing questions i n
your Notebook. By requiring yourself to answer these questions (even if you have
to look in the book to get the answers) you will solidify this teaching in your
Mind, making it more r eadily available to you when you need it. (You may wish
to print out this page and tape it or paste it into your Notebook.)

A. WECCE says that a person can change their reality
by changing three aspects of the events that have taken place
in our lives. Please name those three things you can change.
B. If it is not an event that produces Fear in our lives,
then what is it?
C. Let us say that you are experiencing an Emotion that
you do not wish to experience with regard to an event that has
taken place in your life. In your understanding, what is
sponsoring that Emotion?
D. Please complete the f ollowing sentence: Your
thought is something you are ________________________.
E. There are three versions of r eality existing at one
time. What are these three versions called?
F. Which one of the three versions of r eality that you
experience in any given moment depends upon what your
Mind entertains when?
G. There are seven stops along the Line of Causality.
Please draw the line here, listing those seven steps f rom Event
to Reality.
H. According to When Everything Changes, Change
Everything there are three kinds of truth. These are:
I. WECCE says that on every road and highway there
should be a huge billboard carrying one of lifes most
important messages, which i s: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS

The answers to all of these questions are fairly easy to find with even a
cursory reading of Chapters 6-7-8 of the WECCE text. The object of this exercise
is to i ngrain those r esponses in your memory, so that they will b ecome second
nature to you, r endering the wisdom of CwG readily available to you during
moments of your life when you are meeting challenges.

Please Note
It is importantit is very importantto d o these assignments,
and to do them in a timely fashion. Each one is built upon
the other, and they are made to follow sequentially.
Failure to d o this homework will reduce
significantly the benefit you receive from this program.

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 Conversations with God
Spiritual Mentoring Program
_________

Month #1: Mastering Change

Topic #8: The Power of Afterthought

This lesson written by Neale Donald Walsch
based on the information found in
When Everything Changes, Change Everything


Discussion

As we move forward with this Spiritual Mentoring I want to keep i mpressing
upon you the power of your thoughts. It i s your Emotion r egarding any Event in
your life that creates your Experience OF that Eventand thus, your r eality with
regard to it. And it i s your Thought about that event that creates your Emotion.
So Thought is very powerful. It was Descartes who famously said, I think,
therefore I am. As it turns out, what your reality i s, i s controlled b y, created b y,
what you think. B ut here i s something that they do not tell you in many
philosophy classesand that we are definitely not told i n any grade schools or
high schools: You can change what you think, and therefore change your reality,
about anything at any time.
That i s i mportant enough to repeat.

You can change what you think, and therefore
change your reality, about anything at any time.

This makes Thought even more i mportant and even more powerful than
most people i magine.
Looking at the Line of Causality as shown to us in When Everything Changes,
Change Everything, we see that Reality comes in three forms: Distorted Reality,
Observed Reality, and Ultimate Reality. Which reality we are living i n with regard
to any particular event depends on our experience of that event, which i s created
by our emotion around that event, which i s created by our thought with regard
to that event.
But here is something that nobody ever told me until I was more than four
decades into my life (and boy, could I have used this earlier): We can change
our thought about an event at any timeeven years or decades later, even after
holding onto a previous thought about that event through most of our life.

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 Thoughts can be changed on a moments notice, and when thoughts are
changed, emotions are changed. Most people think i t is the other way around,
that emotions precede thoughts, and dictate them. Y et WECCE offers a
revolutionary (in the field of psychiatry and psychology) new idea about this.
WECCE says that thought precedes emotion, not the other way around.
In simple terms, how you feel about an event i n your life does not determine
what you think about that event. Rather, what you think about an event
determines how you feel about it. ANDyou can determine what you think about
an event at any time. You can decide what you think before it happens, you can
decide what you think when it happens, or you can decide what you think after it
happens.

Upsetting the A pple Cart
This idea upsets most peoples apple cart for sure. Most people feel that
their emotions cannot b e changed without violating their authentic reaction to
something. And if you tell them that they can change the thought that has
produced a particular emotion, they may feel that you are asking them to
sublimate something, or to ignore the fact that a particular event has occurred.
Let me make it clear that I am speaking of nothing of the sort. N o one i s
suggesting for even a moment that we should sublimate our feelings, and we are
absolutely positively not suggesting that anyone ignore anything.
In fact, we are suggesting exactly the opposite. Far from ignoring the event,
we are inviting you to pay even more attention to it, examine it more closely than
perhaps you may have ever done before, explore it i n every detail. Look at it,
really look at it, from every angleincluding from the perspective of the Soul.
Changing ones Mind about an event in their life is not about ignoring that
event, i t is about seeing it in a new way. It is about moving to a different truth
about it.
How can you move to a different truth about something?, you might ask.
The truth is the truth, i s it not? Well, yes and no. Truth is not necessarily a Pure
Product. That is, there i s not simply THE Truth. There are three kinds of Truth
that our Mind looks at with regard to everything. There is the imagined truth,
there is the apparent truth, and there is the actual truth.
This is explained i n great detail in When Everything Changes, Change
Everything, and I very much hope that you have carefully r ead and deeply
absorbed that material. I t can b e life-changing.

Changing ones mind about an event is not about
ignoring that event, it is about seeing it in a new
way.


Pick a Truth That Serves You
Yet what could cause you to see it i n a new way? Ah, that is the next best
question.
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 When something bad happens in life many people will say, Dont give i t a
second thought. I often tell people exactly the opposite. Think again, I say. And
this time, look to see where your thoughts are coming from.
Are they coming from your I magined Truth? Are they coming from the
Apparent Truth? Or are they coming from the Actual Truth about the event that
has occurred?
If they are coming from your I magined Truth, you will no doubt have a lot of
things in there that have nothing to do with the Observed Reality. Your I magined
Truth oftenno, not oftenalwaysincludes a lot of old emotional content
that you re-cycle i nto your present thought, thus making that emotion brand
new.
Remember, your latest emotion comes from your latest thoughtbut if your
latest thought is contaminated with previously held emotion, you will r ecreate
that emotion in the current moment and make it your present e motion as well.
A person close to you might ask, Are you still hanging onto all of that?, and
you could hear yourself replying, I cant help it. I still feel that way.
Yet here i s something I want you to know: You can have a new truth about
an old event.
That may b e one of the most i mportant things anyone has ever said to you.


You can have a N ew Truth about an Old Event.


This New Truth will become apparent to you when you examine the Event
using not just the Data of the Mind and the analytical process of the Mind, but
also the System of the Soul. You will then elevate from the I magined Truth to the
Apparent Truthand this can be sufficient to change how you t hink about a past
Event, which will alter your Emotion surrounding that Event, which will produce
a new Experience of the Event, which will r esult in your standing i n a new Reality
with regard to it. You can raise yourself from the Distorted Reality to the
Observed Realityand that is a very healthy and r eleasing, freedom-giving place
to be!
How i s all this possible? Simple. I t is when you adopt the Perspective of the
Soul (which i s what using the System of the Soul is all about) that you bring into
the Mind new data, data that has not b een heretofore considered, about the
Event in q uestion. As you analyze this new data you begin to explore what really
went on there during that past Event. This can cause you to change your Mind
about the entire episode. You literally move to a new thought about it. (Thats
why the work that I do in the world is said to be part of the New Thought
Movement!)

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The Power to Change Your Life
You do hold i n your hands the power to change your life. It i s contained in
what I call The Power of Afterthought. I t can change your life b ecause it changes
the way you think of your life. And that changes your Emotion, which changes
your Experience, which changes your Reality.
So i magine Thought as a way of cutting through all the stuff youve been
carrying around about a past Event and then b uilding a new set of ideas about
that Event. Thoughts are like chain saws, hammers and screwdrivers. They are
tools with which to craft the Reality you choose.
One of the most personally creative things you can do is to say, On second
thought

LESSON #8:
THOUGHTS ARE YOUR POWER TOOLS
WITH WHICH YOU CAN BUILD
ANY REALITY YOU CHOOSE

Remember alwaysReality is not something that I SReality is something
that you create. I n every moment of your life you are creating your own reality.
This is a fundamental teaching of Conversations with God.
Most people think that what this means is that you are creating the Events of
your life. Yet that is not all this means. It also meansperhaps more importantly,
it meansthat you are creating your reaction to the Events of your life.
Here i s why this is important:
Your Outer Life (that is, every Event of your life) is created by you in
collaboration with many other people. It is a Co-Creation. Y our I nner Life, on the
other hand, is created by you and you alone. I t is an Individual Creation for which
only you are responsible, and over which you have Total Control.


__________________________________________________________________________________
TODAYS ASSIGNMENT:
1. Think about your Thoughts about a particular Event. Choose an Event
that has occurred in your life. For the purposes of this assignment, make it one
that was not particularly positive. Write a description of the Event in your
Notebook.
2. Now re-read what you have written and think about your Thoughts
regarding this Event.
3. Now look b eyond those Thoughts and allow yourself to analyze the
Truths that you hold about this Event that create those Thoughts. Make a list of
all the Truths you can identify regarding this thing that once happened. It could
be a fairly recent Event, or something that occurred a long time ago.
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 4. Now place each of those Truths into one of three categories. Ask yourself,
with regard to each Truth: Is this an Imagined Truth? Is this what i s obvious and
Apparent to everyone? Is this the Actual Truth?
5. Now, with regard to this particular Event, see if you can enlarge your
Databank to include information available only to your Soul. If you are able to do
this (in an upcoming lesson well show you how if you cant do i t already), look to
see what this new data, gathered from assuming the Perspective of the Soul, does
to your Truth. Does it change it i n any way?
6. Make an entry about all this in your Notebook.
7. Now, please r e-read Chapter 9 of When Everything Changes, Change
Everything.

Please Note
It is importantit is very importantto d o these assignments,
and to do them in a timely fashion. Each one is built upon
the other, and they are made to follow sequentially.
Failure to d o this homework will reduce
significantly the benefit you receive from this program.

























Month #1: Mastering Change
Topic #9: Your Databank
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This lesson written by Neale Donald Walsch
based on the information found in
When Everything Changes, Change Everything


Discussion

Before moving on to the Pathway to the Soul we have one more stop to
make. We should pay a visit to your Databank.
It is your personal Databank, from which your Mind withdraws its Truth
about every Event of your life. This Truth then becomes the basis of your
Thought about that Event. Your Thought then becomes the basis of your Emotion
surrounding that Event. Your Emotion then b ecomes the basis of your
Experience of that Event. And your Experience then becomes the basis of your
Reality with regard to that Event.
I know I have said all this now a number of times. I k eep r unning you
through the Line of Causality, becauseif you truly wish to change your lifeit
is vitally i mportant for you to understand how you got to where you are right
now.
What I k eep describing here over and over again are the Mechanics of the
Mind. This is, i n short, how your Mind works. And when you understand how
your Mind works, you can make it work for you.


When you understand how your Mind works,
you can make it work for y ou.


This is no small thing. This is about harnessing the greatest power ever
known, the greatest power you will ever have: the P ower of Thought, and the
Power of Afterthought.

Where the Mind Gets Its Truth
The Mind thinks it k nows what i s going on right now. It thinks i t knows what
has always gone on. Thats because it k eeps a record of everything that has ever
gone on. I t stores all incoming data from every single moment in its Databank.
Then, it categorizes that data. Then, when new data come in through the
data receptors of your Body (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, f eet, any other body
parts, nerves, etc.), your Mind r eviews all Past Data, brings forward anything that
is the same or nearly the same as the presently encountered data, analyzes the
Past Data against the Present Data, and forms what you call a Truth about the
Present Data.

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 It is from this Truth that you create a Reality about What I s Happening Right
Here Right Now, and make a decision as to how to r espond to it.
All of this would b e wonderful if your Minds data were flawless.
Regrettably, that is not the case.

The Trouble with D ata
The problem with the Data of the Mind i s that it i s not reliable. I t is
contaminated. Data come i n two categories:
1. Factual Past Data
2. Judged P ast Data




Unfortunately, the second category is much larger than the first.
This is because your Mind is continually adding data it has collected
previously to data it is collecting now, r esulting in no data b eing freshly
encountered and stored, b ut all data b eing based to some degree upon previous
data.
And if that previous data is contaminated with emotional content (based on
data even more previous to that), this viral infection will skew the present data
as well as all future d ata that looks like it should fall into the same category.
Thus, you never see anything freshly, never encounter anything as i t really is
(the Actual Truth), and rarely even as it appears to b e (the Apparent Truth), but
almost always see things in the light of what you have seen beforeyour Truth
about which, in turn, was b ased on what you saw b efore thatwhich in turn was
based on what you saw b efore that which in turn was based on what you saw
before thatand so on and so forth, throughout all the days of your life.
Your Mind does hold some data that i s purely f actualbut very little. Your
Mind remembers that 2+2=4, and probably has very little judgment about that.
So this i s Factual Past Data, not Judged P ast Data. And there are obviously other
examples such as that which I would give you. But most of the data held in the
Mind has been judged in one way or another.
Its not all bad. Its not all negative. Some past data has been judged good
or joyful. But i t has b een judged nonetheless, meaning that there is very little
that you can encounter today in your life about which you have not already
formed a judgment. This is called pre-judging, or prejudice.
There i s only one way that I k now of to escape the prejudices of the Mind.

Getting Out While the Getting is Good
You must be out of your Mind.
Some people will actually say to you, when you truly escape the prejudices
of your Past Data: Whats the matter with you? Are you out of your mind???
And, in a way, you actually are. You have found a way to use your Mind to
get out of your Mind. I t is like how you can sometimes trick your computer.
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Ever done that? Of course you have. We all have. The computer doesnt want to
do what you want i t to do, for some reason, and so you do a work around i n
which you tell the computer that what is so i s not so, and what is not so is so. You
give it a command that lets you work right around the computers own
stubbornness.
Well, folksyou can do the same thing with your Mind.
And well talk about that in our upcoming lessons. B ut for now what I need
you to get is that your Truth about any Event is based on your Data about that
Eventand your data about that Event i s based on prior data about an identical
event, or a similar event, orif nothing like this has ever happened to me
beforeabout the next closest thing it can find that even vaguely resembles the
Event.

LESSON #9:
YOUR MINDS PAST DATA IS NOT RELIABLE
AS A BASIS FOR YOUR PRESENT TRUTH

If what you think is true about something i s based on what you thought was
true about that same thing, or a similar thing, once b efore (and it is), then you are
building a house of cards, and one day it may all come tumbling down.
Indeed, i t does. And at these times you may become very confused, and may
find yourself saying to your friends, Now I dont k now what to think
This is when people start going to counselors. Unfortunately, if they are
seeing psychiatrists or psychologists who are working i nside old models, they
may not find as much help there as they had hoped.

Understanding is the Key
What i s needed at moments such as this i s deep understanding of the
Mechanics of the Mind, and an awareness of how to use the Mind to get out of the
Mind. And were going there right now.
Well, almost right now. First, I need you to do this little exercise, to
cement i n what weve just learned.


__________________________________________________________________________________
TODAYS ASSIGNMENT:
1. Lets explore your Minds wealth of Past Data. In your CwG Spiritual
Mentoring Notebook go to an empty two-page spread and divide it into f our
horizontal sections, two sections on the left page and two on the right.
2. Now, pick four subjects. They can b e any subjects having to do with your
life. If it helps, select a topic from the list b elow, which CwG calls the Four
Cornerstones of the human experience:

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 a. Money
b. Love
c. Sex
d. God

3. Write the topics at the top of each of the four sections i n this two-page
spread i n your Notebook.
4. In the space beneath each topic, jot down whatever data your Mind has
stored with r egard to this subject. (Examples below)

MONEY
Money is the root of all evil; money doesnt grow on
trees; money is hard to come by; etc.
LOVE
Love is as love does; love asks nothing and gives
everything, etc.

You get the picture. Do this for all f our topics.

5. Looking at each entry, underline the entries that you would call Factual
Past Data and circle the entries that you would call Judged P ast Data.
6. Count the number of underlined entries and figure out what percentage
that number i s of the whole.
7. This is your Objectivity Score. It i s the percentage of the time that your
Thoughts (and the Emotions which they create) are based on a Truth that is
rooted in what i s factual rather than what is judgmental.
8. Write a short paragraph about what this tells you about your Reality,
your Experience i n life, and your Thinking.



Please Note
It is importantit is very importantto d o these assignments,
and to do them in a timely fashion. Each one is built upon
the other, and they are made to follow sequentially.
Failure to d o this homework will reduce
significantly the benefit you receive from this program.

2012M7