When Everything Changes, Change Everything - Neale Donald Walsch

PLEASE SIT DOWN.
No, really.
Please. Sit down.
There’s a better than even chance you’re reading these first few words standing up (in a bookstore someplace, or maybe in someone’s home), scanning these lines to see if you want to read any further. If you are, please sit down. You’re not going to want to read the first few paragraphs and then just walk away. You’re going to want more time with what’s written here. So “steal” as many moments as you can with this book before deciding whether to buy it—because I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into. This book is not just a book. It is meant to be a conversation during which we will conduct an extraordinary investigation into how life works at the mental and spiritual level, out of which will emerge a surprising revelation about ways in which we can change our experience of change itself—which means, of course, our experience of life. The conversation we are about to have will thus offer you a pathway to get help and to find peace if you are struggling right now with changes in your life. Why I wanted you to sit down is that I wanted you to be in a better position to hear all of this, to really take it in. What I’m going to share with you here is not something that you can just pick up “on the run,” as it were, in little snippets and snatches and bits of reading grabbed here and there. This is a book you’re going to want to sit down with. I also wanted you to be seated when you hear the news. So here it is. Sitting or standing, ready or not, here it is: The changes in your life are not going to stop. If you’re thinking about riding things out for a while, waiting for things to settle down a bit, you may be in for a surprise. There’s going to be no “settling down.” Things are going to be in a constant state of upheaval on this planet and in your own life for a good while now. Actually . . . yes, well, I might as well tell you. . . . actually, forever. Change is what is—and there is no way to change that. . . .
What can be changed is the way you deal with change, and the way you’re changed by change.
That’s what this book is about. We are going to be talking here about how to deal with major change, not just minor change. I mean change that emerges from collapse, calamity, and catastrophe—or at least what we label as these. So if your life is collapsing right now, if you’re in the midst of a calamity, if a catastrophe has occurred, what you’re going to find here could save your life.
I mean, emotionally.
But heck, you know what? Maybe even physically.
Here you will be given Nine Changes That Can Change Everything. This little list will alter all that appears in your reality. Unless it does not. The choice will be yours. But it is a list that you may at least want to read. You may at least want to find out what it’s all about. I hope that you will make these Nine Changes as quickly as possible. Not just because the changes in life that you are experiencing (that we all are experiencing) are not going to stop, but also because the pace of change is only going to increase. Someone noted a few years ago that it was possible for my great-grandfather to live an entire lifetime without having anything come along that seriously challenged his worldview, because very little happened that he heard about that altered his understanding of how things were. My grandfather had a different experience. He was able to live thirty or forty years, but not much longer, before some new piece of information was unveiled that seriously confronted his notion of the world. Perhaps half a dozen times during his life such a major event or development occurred that he heard about. In my father’s day that window of change dropped to only fifteen or twenty years. That’s about as long as my dad could hold on to his ideas about life and how it works and what is true about everything. Sooner or later something would happen to disrupt his whole mental construction and require him to alter his thoughts and concepts. In my own life span that time has been reduced to just five to eight years. In the lifetime of my children it will be reduced to something like two years—and possibly less. And in the lifetime of their children it could be reduced to thirty or forty weeks. This is no exaggeration. You can see the trend. Social scientists say that the rate of change is increasing exponentially. In the time of my great-grandchildren the period of time between changes will be reduced to days. And then, perhaps even hours. In truth, we are already there—and have always been there. For in actuality, nothing has ever remained the same for even a moment. Everything is in motion, and if we define change as the altering of configurations, we see that change is the natural order of things. So we’ve been living in a constant swirl of change from the beginning. What is different now is the amount of time that it takes for us to notice the changes that are always occurring. Our ability to communicate globally about everything within seconds is what has changed the way we experience change. The speed of our communications is catching up with the speed of our alterations. This condition in itself sponsors an increase in the rate of change. Today our languages and expressions change overnight, our customs and styles change by the season, our beliefs and understandings and even some of our most deeply held convictions change not with, but within, each generation. Because change is happening all around us and within us so rapidly, what is needed now is a guidebook, an “operator’s manual” for human beings facing dramatically shifting life realities. This book is, therefore, more than a collection of anecdotes or “real life stories” about people who have gone through changes in their life, or a once-over-lightly treatment of something that deserves deeper exploration. The text that follows offers some peeks at the experience of others (including my own), because there can be value in that, but it also provides a much-needed explanation of the mental and spiritual basis of change—and specific instructions on how to use mental and spiritual tools to change the way change changes you. What the Nine Changes empower us to do is not stop change (I hope I’ve already made the point that this is impossible) or even slow the rate of change, but rather, make a quantum leap in our approach to change, in our ways of dealing with it—and in our ways of creating it. One final word. The ideas here are based in ancient wisdom, modern science, everyday psychology, practical metaphysics, and contemporary spirituality. The invitation here presumes that Divinity exists, that life has a purpose, that human beings have a soul, that our body is something we have and not something we are, and that the mind is under our control at all times. A rejection of any one of these notions removes the underpinning from much of what is shared here. On the other hand, if these concepts feel valid to you, you could be holding in your hand the most useful, the most helpful, the most powerful book you have read in a very long time.