(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 and express our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.”)

HIGHLIGHTS OF TODAY’S BLOG…
* Continuing the discussion about The Group of 1000
* A tri-level global undertaking
* Solving the world’s problem at the level of belief
* A radical new approach to ending our global nightmare

(This is the eleventh in a series of blogs on the seemingly unending conflict in our world. The series makes the point that there is a way to avoid the constant conflict and killing upon the earth, and that way is for the earth’s people to adopt a New Spirituality — a new “story” about God, about Life, and about Each Other.)
Thank you for sticking with me so far through this 11-part series of blogs. I know that after yesterday’s entry here it took an enormous amount of goodwill, willingness and determination on your part to hang in there with me and at least hear me out on the ideas, plans, goals, and objectives of this organization I have created called The Group of 1000.
I can’t say that I didn’t plan it that way, because I did. Yesterday’s blog was a qualifier. I knew that after hearing what I had to say there, many people might say, “This guy is arrogant as hell. I’m outta here.” I notice that you are still here, and I appreciate you very much.
Okay, so here is the idea that I promised yesterday I would explain to you in detail today…

The Action Plan to Change Our World is a tri-level global undertaking to shift the collective consciousness within ten to fifteen years. We seek to produce not a short-term “band aid” effect, but long term medicine to cure the ills of human society. Our three-pronged approach centers around three specific kinds of activities in the world:
1. Creating Understanding
2. Creating Community
3. Creating Ourselves Anew
In order to produce these outcomes The Group of 1000 will operate at the highest level of commitment and service providing physical energy, spiritual sustenance and financial support to three non-profit organizations, all of which are focusing from different directions on the same goal. These organizations are:
1. The School of the New Spirituality
2. Humanity’s Team
3. ReCreation Foundation
Please allow me to explain.
Since I was given the startling and very direct information contained in The New Revelations (the first ten chapters of which came through in six days following the 9/11 tragedy in 2001), I have been clear that the world is moving toward a moment of enormous and spectacular possibility for all humankind — OR, toward the brink of its own self-destruction. We get to choose, and that choice is being laid before us by the tide of events even as you read these words.
In The New Revelations it is explained that for centuries and millennia human beings have been trying to solve their problems at every level except the level at which those problems exist. That is true today, even though we now consider humanity to be an advanced culture and a highly evolved species.
The problem in our world today is, of course, that we have still not found a way to live together in peace and harmony. It is not as if we have not been trying. Yet we have been trying in the same way for all this time, refusing to consider that perhaps our methodology might need to be altered.
We have been trying to solve the problem as if it were a political problem, by using political means. Endlessly we have debated, endlessly we have passed resolutions and voted on solutions and approved legislation…but none of it has done any good. We are today facing the same problem we faced thousands of years ago: we just can’t get along.
So we have then tried to solve the problem as if it were an economic problem, by using economic means. Endlessly we have thrown money at it, or withheld money from it (as in the form of sanctions), imagining that by manipulating cold, hard cash we can change the on-the-ground conditions that create disharmony…but none of this has done any good. We are today facing the same problem we faced thousands of years ago: we just can’t get along.
So we have said, “Ah! If it is not a political problem and if it is not an economic problem, it must be a military problem.” And we have tried to solve the problem using military means. Endlessly we have thrown stones at it and flung spears at it and shot arrows at it and fired bullets at it and dropped bombs on it…but none of this has done any good. We are today facing the same problem we faced thousands of years ago: we just can’t get along.
Do you know the definition of insanity? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.
All of these insights were contained in The New Revelations, and repeated in Tomorrow’s God and in What God Wants. That trilogy of CwG books is essential reading for anyone thinking of joining The Group of 1000, because all of the texts make it clear that the problem facing humanity today is not a political problem, it is not an economic problem, and it is certainly not a military problem.

THE PROBLEM FACING THE WORLD TODAY IS A SPIRITUAL PROBLEM.
AND IT CAN ONLY BE SOLVED BY SPIRITUAL MEANS.

The problem has to do with what we believe. It has to do with our most sacred beliefs about God, about Life, and about Each Other. These beliefs drive the engine of our experience.
Passed on from generation to generation through a system of education that includes madrassas, yeshivas, parochial and private schools of every kind, these understandings of the world and How It Is are placed into the minds of human beings when they are 8 and 10 and 12 and 14 years old. And so, when they are 18, 20, 22, and 24, many of them are ready to fly airplanes into buildings or over cities dropping bombs, and they do so with impugnity, firm in their belief that what they are doing is “right.”
By the time these humans reach 40, 50 and 60 years of age they are at the head of movements and governments and corporate empires that encourage, direct, support and sustain such actions.
And so, the madness goes on. Even as this is being read by you, more 8 and 10 and 12 and 14-year-olds are being taught the same values, given the same understandings, presented with the same histories and scenarios, and offered the same worldview — so that while we are all biting our fingers about today, the Long Range Thinkers are already impacting tomorrow.
Conversations with God says we can change all that. Just as its message has changed you, so, too, can it change other people around the world. Already these books have been translated in 37 languages and published in over 60 countries. Yet getting the books out there is not enough. Now it is time for us to become Long Range Thinkers.
It is time for us to put together an Action Plan to Change Our World and to create, not wait for, the change we wish to see in the world.
We can turn the tide of events on our earth, but CwG has made it clear that the only way this can be done is through education, creating community about a new set of beliefs, and recreating ourselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever we held about Who We Are.

OUR CHALLENGE IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD’S MIND ABOUT GOD.

Why? What’s the point? Can it do any good?
YES! It is the most important thing we could possible do right now. You see, its humanity’s ideas about God and about What God Wants, and about Life and How Life Is, that are driving the engine of humanity’s experience. Change those ideas and you change the world.
Yet how can we do that? Write more books? Deliver more lectures? Produce radio and television programs? Well, those all help, but what we really need is to create a system of schools just like the madrassas and the yeshivas and the parochial and private schools that cover the landscape.
We need to create classrooms in cities, towns, and villages around the globe in which is taught the New Spirituality.
Just what is the “New Spirituality”? As it says above, it is a way of expressing our natural impulse toward the Divine without making others wrong for the way in which they are doing it.
It is a way of looking at the world, a way of understanding God and Life and Each Other, that brings each of us a new perspective of our relationship with all of that.
That new perspective would allow us to see ourselves as One, at last.
Can such a radical notion be taught? YES. The answer is yes. But we must be willing to undertake the venture, we must be willing to embrace the mission. Together, we can meet this challenge. Yet let’s not kid ourselves about it. It will take huge energy, huge resources, and huge numbers of people. And that is why the serious commitment laid out in yesterday’s blog is being asked of each member of The Group of 1000.
There are those who have ideas about how our world should be who are willing to offer others (including women and children!) a chance to strap a bomb to their body and blow themselves up in a subway station somewhere. And, startlingly, those who are being offered this chance are jumping at it. How is this possible? It is possible because they have been given a point of view about the world since they were 8 and 10 years old.
We are not talking here about that level of commitment. We are not asking that you give your life, we are asking that you USE your life — about 1% of it — to change our world.
Here is, specifically, what we seek to do:
1. The Group of 1000 will act as the prime source of spiritual, physical and financial support for the School of the New Spirituality, now in the formative stages of becoming a separate non-profit organization, that will do two things: (A) Create a School of Theology offering a degree-based program, including graduate degrees, for persons yearning to teach the New Spirituality; (B) Bring classrooms and Home Schooling Kits to locations around the world in which those newly trained teachers will teach children and adults.
2. The Group of 1000 will act as the prime source of spiritual, physical and financial support for Humanity’s Team, a separate non-profit organization whose mission is to create community through a worldwide Civil Rights Movement for the Soul, freeing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a righteous, jealous, angry, demanding, exclusive, vindictive, vengeful, and violent God, and offering people everywhere the freedom to follow their natural impulse to seek and experience the Divine without fear of being socially ostracized, legally punished, or militarily attacked for the way in which they are doing it.
3. The Group of 1000 will act as the prime source of spiritual, physical and financial support for the ReCreation Foundation, a separate non-profit organization presenting spiritual renewal retreats around the world assisting people in recreating themselves anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever they held about Who They Are, and whose Life Education Program offers people training in the skills and understandings required to hold study groups, facilitate workshops and retreats, and present informal talks and public lectures on the New Spirituality, thereby multiplying the number of messengers of the New Spirituality in the world.
By under girding and supporting all three of these extraordinary spiritual initiatives, The Group of 1000 will empower a magnificent and multifold agenda, moving forward on three fronts at the same time in the global effort to create, at last, peace on Earth and goodwill to humans everywhere.
This can be accomplished.
Just as people have been educated in beliefs systems that make violence and war possible, so, too, can they be educated in beliefs that make violence and war unthinkable.
The spiritual resources of The Group of 1000 will be used to support all of the efforts of the non-profit groups above. Regular prayer circles and coordinated worldwide meditations will be organized, focusing enormous spiritual energy in a particular way at a particular time. As we know now from books like Conversations with God and movies such as What the Bleep, this kind of intentioned directing of the Life Force, this highly conscious use of the Essence and the Energy of Life Itself, which some people call chi or ki, can and does have extraordinary impact on the world of physicality.
The physical resources of The Group of 1000 — that is, the time and talents and physical energy of its members — will be allocated to the non-profit organizations as each member of The Group of 1000 determines. All members will be asked to make a genuine commitment to being the change they wish to see by participating in the world-impacting activities of one or more of these non-profits, with a minimum of 1% of your hours dedicated each month to high-level involvement.
The financial resources of The Group of 1000 will be contributed in the following proportion:
A. 45% of contributed funds will flow to the School of the New Spirituality
B. 45% of contributed funds will flow to Humanity’s Team
C. 5% of contributed funds will flow to the ReCreation Foundation
D. 5% of contributed funds will flow toward Administrative Costs
In my next and final blog on this subject, I will outline in more detail exactly what Humanity’s Team is now doing, just what the ReCreation Foundation is now producing, and precisely where we are right now in our planning for the School of the New Spirituality, so that you can make an even better assessment of this whole Action Plan. I’ll also give you links allowing you to check much of this out on your own.
THEN…in that blog on Thursday…you will be given a sign-up link that will allow you to become a member of The Group of 1000 instantly. The truth is, you know right now whether you want to be a member.