What Would Happen If

What Would Happen If...

It's always interesting to me to imagine what would happen if we, as a human race, actually decided to apply the wisdom and the insights of our sacred writings and spiritual teachings to real life.

Take the wisdom and the insights in Conversations with God, for instance.

Millions of people in the United States and, through its 24 foreign-language editions, around the world have read this extraordinary material. Hundreds of letters each week confirm that the overwhelming majority of those readers love the books and the insights in them. But would they love them if they had to apply them?

Let's take a look at what we see "on the ground."

If we applied the wisdom of CWG in the area of health, we would stop smoking, eating red meat, and drinking alcohol today.

Simple observation reveals that the vast majority of Americans are nowhere near ready to do that. Not only are they unwilling to give up their physical pleasures -- no matter how damaging to their bodies those "pleasures" may be -- they will jump all over anyone who even suggests that they might benefit from doing so.

Of the letters I have received containing negative reaction to the CWG dialogues, an astonishing number raised objection to the book's comment that taking alcohol is not a good idea. People had more trouble with that than any other single commentary in the books.

And now the late Dr. Benjamin Spock is being ruthlessly criticized for the advice he inserted into the latest edition of his world-famous book, "Baby and Child Care," just before he died. The new version has just been released, and the deceased pediatrician is being blasted for making a simple recommendation: stick to a vegetarian diet, with no dairy products, after the age of 2.

Pretty good advice, no? From a pretty impeachable source, yes? Still, people are upset. They're saying the good doctor didn't know what he was talking about. Here's a man whose books have sold more copies during their 52 years on the shelves than any other book except the Bible, but suddenly he's lost his marbles. Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, specialist in child behavior at Boston City Hospital, calls the dietary recommendations "absolutely insane."

Okay, let's forget about health. Let's look at economics.

Conversations with God has a lot to say about the way we do business in our world, and the manner in which we distribute our collectively-produced wealth -- and the second-most negative reaction to the books has fallen into this area. Men actually get up and walk out of my lecture audiences when I repeat the suggestion from the dialogue that all companies from now on print two numbers on their price tags: the price of a product or service, and the company's cost.

Similarly negative responses have been received to the CWG suggestion that corporations publish and distribute to their employees each month the to-the- penny salaries of all employees. You would think God had suggested that everyone go home and strangle the cat.

The CWG observation that an evolved society would place a cap on the amount of money any person could make annually, voluntarily contributing the rest to the common good, is positively an anathema, Even though the text makes it clear that the amount would be ridiculously high -- say, $25 million a year -- the reaction in this country is a resounding no.

Apparently, we want to be able to make obscene amounts of money, with no limits, voluntary or not, even if it means that half the world has to starve in order to support us in doing it.

Okay, forget about health and economics. Let's look at personal relationships.

CWG suggests a rather startling concept in the conduct of our relationships: plain truth. The dialogue suggests that if we seek the ultimate in our relationships we will hereafter adopt a behavior of Total Visibility in our interactions with each other. We will tell the truth about everything. We will live with complete transparency.

You would not believe the discussions and the objections I have gotten at my 5-day retreats on that one.

The rationales we have come up with to justify what I have come to call our Code of Secrets are breathtaking in their distortions. We have, through the years, constructed a group ethic which now seems to say that in most social circumstances it is more acceptable to lie than to tell the truth. Indeed, the person who actually says what is "so" is now the person who is judged, chastised, and avoided. It used to be the other way around.

We want to hide our feelings, not reveal them. We want to shield our Selves, not show them. We want -- and now, because of the way our society has constructed things, we need -- to lie rather than tell the truth.

Nowhere is this more evident than in our sexual mores. In no other area of life do I more consistently observe that human beings say one thing and do another. We have somehow allowed ourselves to be so ashamed of what we want to do that we have found no way to do it other than to lie about it.

This brings us to what could be the subject of an entire column.

The Monica Matter.

Yes, yes, I know, it's all very boring -- but I'm exploring it in another context here.

The problem with lying as a social device (which, of course, is exactly what it has become) is that we only allow ourselves to do it. We still make it "wrong" for others. This can sometimes prove inconvenient, especially when we are caught in the awkwardness of our contradictions.

If the President of the United States did have a sexual dalliance, did anyone really expect him to admit it? Would we have, under similar circumstances?

The problem in our society today is not that there is too much lying, but that we have made it far too difficult not to lie. Our hypocrisy has created that.

CWG's take on this? Says the dialogue, "There's no such thing as Right and Wrong."

There's another one that clears the auditorium.

People have a hard time letting go of their judgments. The irony of this is that it is our very sense of self-righteousness which stops that which is inherently good from bubbling to the surface in our encounters with each other. We're so afraid of being made "wrong" about so many of our behaviors that we couldn't do them "right" if we wanted to.

If we adopted a credo of Total Visibility, acting with utter transparency, we'd be crucified in this society. We live in a culture that demands the truth -- while it encourages lies.

Okay, forget about personal relationships. Let's look at politics.

Or religion.

Or education.

Or.....or....

Wherever we look on the landscape of human affairs we see that it is easier to hold spiritual values -- and certainly easier to talk about them -- than to apply them. In the case of Bill Clinton, I hope we can all remember that.

-Neale