Where Did You Hear About Us?

I ordered a product from the Neale Donald Walsch site the other day and the confirmation email had some sort of survey or something in it. One of the questions was "Where did you hear of us?"

I don't actually recall where I first heard of Walsch's Conversations with God (CwG) books, but I do know why I chose to read the first installment back in 2006. I was planning to write some sort of something - a book, treatise, paragraph, short story, weblog or something - called Conversations with Mushrooms. Having heard of his book it was easy enough to paraphrase his title, but the thought occured me it might be nice if I actually read one of the books before doing so. It just seemed a good idea, the thing to do. I have since read most all of his works, and am still working on CwM...

Conversations with Mushrooms was inspired by "spiritual / religious" as well as "atheistic / scientific" people that claim to have gained deep understanding of life's principles based on experiences with hallucinogens of various nature. I use the term Mushrooms to refer broadly to the larger idea of naturally occuring hallucinogenic drug experience, which would include marijuana.

Stoners are fine as far as people go, but I for one have little faith that what I now call Medijuanatation is going to change the world in a useful way. It rarely changes the channel in a useful way... Yet we have a huge crop of self-important profound societal couch-potatoes that actually argue that the deepest insights come after lots of bong hits, chocolate chip cookies and soda...

I'll talk more about them later, and those wonderfully wacky scientific folks that are certain God, Allah and Santa are "imaginary friends", yet swear the universe "speaks to them" profoundly in special quiet moments of insight - like when their brain is awash in flashing, swirling, colorful visions of things that are not there... Yes they hear a voice, and it is no imaginary friend. The "Voice of Mushroom" can be trusted, and is accessible to us all... Uhhhh, right. (makes little circles with index finger pointing at right side of head, while making the "Twilight Zone" noise...) :^)

There's the spiritualists as well - the ones I actually believe do get quiet in their head and reach deep states with the assistance of their substances. I am certain Native Americans for example were not simple stoners. They benefited from induced hallucinations.

Modern Americans however do not seem to benefit. The ones I refer to are the ones that emerge to continue believing that the answer to the world's woes is found in someone else's actions. It's either something like "Jesus save me", or something like "If other people would only change..."

That, my friends, is more like a "wading pool" insight - not terribly deep.

So anyway, I went to the library, borrowed CwG Book 1, and got caught up in a wonderful series of books that have served me well. Highly recommended. Hallucinations not required.

Dance In The Moment,

Greg Allen
http://www.graspingatlaws.net/
http://www.songsharing.org/