(This weblog creates, for us all, a chance to meet at the interaction of Life and the New Spirituality. It is written by the author of Conversations with God, the worldwide best-selling series of books. The “New Spirituality” is defined by the author as “a new way to experience our natural impulse toward the Divine, which does not make others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)
Wednesday is Question and Answer Day on the blog…a time for exploring many of the questions that people have recently asked about the nine Conversations with God books and the New Spirituality. Here’s this week’s entry…
Topic: Wanting and Choosing
Question asked by: Michiel
Question: It’s been more than two years since I have read the first CWG book and since then I’ve read them all and I keep on reading them over and over. I can’t get enough of these wonderful messages. The way I look at life has changed tremendously since then. And I can really say that the new spirituality feels like freedom. Actually, it is freedom.
Anyway, what I wanted to talk to you about is the topic of choosing and wanting. That is the part that always confused me in your books. God says that wanting is declaring that you do not have it and choosing is declaring that you have it. This is basically what the difference is, right?
So when you place the thing you desire into the future and declare you have it…

…(because the future and the present are happening now, and now is all there is) the experience must come to you. God also says that words are one level of creation, so when you say “I want…” the universe says “Yes” and gives you more of the experience of wanting, which you only can do when you have the experience of not having something.
And when you say: “I Choose…” then you will attract the experience you declare to choose, because you know it already exists. Still, the difference between wanting and choosing is not very clear to me always. Ask and It Is Given by Esther & Jerry Hicks says that the experience of not having things can be very helpful in creating, because of the contrast they provide, out of which a new desire is born or the already existing desire becomes more powerful. They are using the word ‘wanting’ often when they describe a process of creating.
And I also believe it’s true that out of not having someting a new desire comes. And that desires do not come if you feel you already have everything.
What I conclude of CWG is that desiring something is always declaring not having it (because, why would you desire something you already have?) and thus you will not experience it. So the only option is to remember you already have everything, because you are One with God. But if you achieve that state of being, you will not desire anything, right?
So then, you will not declare anything and the experience you thought having would be so great, would now seem just like every other experience…(well, every experience would then be exhilarating, but not one will be preferrable over the other) then what would be the point of still choosing this particular experience?
The answer is obvious: there would be no desire to specifically choose this experience, because you have achieved mastery and anything and everything is perfect the way it is.
Actually, this prospect does not seem so great to me. I know that this is the way God feels, as All That Is, but aren’t we here to experience parts of it and not the whole? Because we feel like that when we are in the Absolute Reality and now we are in the Relative Reality. So isn’t it the point of life to experience those parts and that it is only possible to do that when the opposite exists? Because otherwise, you can’t desire anything…and isn’t desire the way to choose the ‘parts of God’ you wish to experience? So isn’t desiring something that always must be answered by the universe anyway in order to be able to live your purpouse?
And then, because desire always comes from not having something, would then ‘wanting’ not be the same as ‘choosing’? What if we start believing that every desire we have (whether it’s wanting or choosing) is simply a desire that will always be answered? (as Ask and It is Given says) Will that not cause a fulfilling of all desires, if only we use the process of allowing well and we stay in vibrational match? If that is true and we do that, then it wouldn’t matter whether we say “I want…” or “I choose…”, or would it? What is your view on this?
Thanks in advance.
Love,
Michiel
Neale’s Response: Whew! When you ask a question you don’t kid around, do you…that’s a lallapalooza there, Michiel!
Okay, let’s start at the beginning. Everything has to do with consciousness and the Process of Creation. Everything depends on the level of consciousness at which one resides and from which one is coming when one engages the Process of Creation. Reading Conversations with God or Ask and It Is Given (or, for that matter, any other book) is like reading the Bible. It is very dangerous to take a selected paragraph or sentence and make a General Rule About Life out of it. I would caution against doing this.
This is, however, exactly what you have done with regard to the injunction against using the word “want” that is found in Conversations with God. In general, this rule makes sense, as it applies to the largest number of people who read it. Very few of these people reside at the level of consciousness demonstrated in your question. I certainly did not when this material was first given to me.
When I used the word “want,” I was very certain that I did not have what it was that I was “wanting.” Only much later, after being given much more of the Conversations with God material, did I come to deeply understand the Process of Creation. This is a process by which we “call forth” that which we desire. Only much later did I realize that what I wished to create could not be created, for the extraordinary reason that it already existed in the Field of Infinite Possibilities!
Now that I know this, I can use the word “want” whenever I choose because I know that the word “want” is interchangeable with the word “desire.” Now, “wanting” something means, in my mind, that I simply “desire” to experience a part of That Which Already Exists. Years ago I did not have this understanding, and so, when I said that I “wanted” something, what that meant in my mind was that I yearned for something that I did not have. For people operating at this level of consciousness it is very much preferable to use the phrase “I choose” or “I desire,” because for most people the words “I want” actually amount to a declaration. And what is declared is what occurs. This is how the Process of Creation works.
Now, after nine books and 3000 pages of conversations, I realize that I already have everything I could possibly wish to have. It is all at my fingertips. All I have to do is announce my desire for it, and it is made manifest in my reality.
This is the understanding that is described in the wonderful book by Esther and Jerry Hicks. My book, Conversations with God, was written for a person of extremely limited awareness — namely me. It is a Beginner’s Manual for Spiritual Seekers.
You are clearly not someone who falls into this category. I therefore give you permission to use the word “want” whenever you…well, actually, whenever you WANT!
Thanks for the question, Michiel. Great question!
Love, Neale.