From Thomas H. Greco, Jr. Report of September 24, 2007

As always, my vacation is a working vacation and my journey is a journey of
self-discovery and self-creation. I go as the spirit moves me when and where
it feels right to go, not so much seeking, but taking things as I find them
and trying to understand my reactions to them, my likes and dislikes, the
pleasures and discomforts, the delights and annoyances.

I find myself to be more outgoing and gregarious when I travel, impelled by my desire to
connect, to be less separate, to be more the participant than the observer.
What is life, after all, than a mosaic of experiences that we create for
ourselves in order to discover who we are and who we wish to become.

This is a primary lesson of my literary companion on this particular
sojourn, Book 2 of Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations With God. It has
provided additional insights, and confirmation of many things I have known
at some level to be true. The idea of a conversation with God will seem
blasphemous to many who have been reared in religious traditions that place
God above and beyond humans, but there is plenty of confirmation, for
instance in the Bible, and probably in Islam, as well other religious
writings that makes it plain that God is with us, that God is love, that God
does not judge or condemn us, that we are in fact God. Did not Jesus say,
The Father and I are one? Does the Bible not say that Jesus was the
first-born of many brethren? This “birth” is a shift in consciousness, for
as Walsch puts it, You must stop seeing God as separate from you, and you as
separate from each other. Is this not what it means to love the Lord thy
God, and thy neighbor as thyself.

When I finished Book I of Conversations With God a couple months ago I found
little to disagree with, but there were two points I cannot accept. First,
Walsh’s (God’s) view of reincarnation seems to be one that sees the
personality (the individual consciousness) as surviving and reincarnating
through many lifetimes. I have seen no evidence for that. Obviously, life
keeps manifesting in new bodies, but it seems to me that each is a unique
manifestation, like each snowflake is a unique manifestation of the
phenomenon we call snow. Yes, there is something that we all share,
something which is the essence of life, the source of all, what we may call
God. And when we identify with that, there is no need to hold onto the idea
of a separate self that comes back into a new body. This, after all, seems
to be the sum of what Walsch (God) is saying.

The second point of disagreement is about the use of alcohol. Walsch seems
to take the position that total abstinence is an ideal to be sought after.
Granted that alcohol is much abused in our world, but so are so many other
things, and such an extreme position is at variance with everything else in
his book and ignores the fact of the many beneficial effects of moderate
consumption of alcoholic beverages. They are, first of all, anti-septic, so
a bit of wine or beer or tequila with a meal may help to ward off the ill
effects of contaminated food, which is quite common in most countries.
Medical research has shown that a bit of wine has a positive effect upon
cardio-vascular health, and then there is its capacity to “make men merry”
and promote conviviality.

Book II has some interesting things to say about human sexuality and
geo-politics, but I’ll leave comment on that for another time.

Regarding my usual work in the realm of “transformation restructuring” I’ve
continued while “on the road” to maintain my fairly regular email
correspondence. Malaysia has an abundance of internet cafes, and many hotels
and guesthouses provide internet access, some free of charge. Much as I
wanted to travel light, I could not bear to leave my laptop behind. It is,
after all, my primary work tool, memory bank, and main link to the world. So
instead of being burdened with only a small backpack, I must carry a
computer briefcase as well (I left the rest of my stuff in Auroville).
Fortunately, it’s still a manageable burden to carry between stopping places
if I don’t try to walk too far.

The monetary education project has made some good progress. Just prior to my
departure from Auroville, Manuel and I did some significant work editing the
audio records of some of my recent presentations and adding the edited files
as sound tracks to the respective power point slide shows. One of these,
Money, Power, Democracy and War, has been added to the slide shows at our
main website, MONEY

Another, The End of Money and the
Liberation of Exchange, which was presented at the International Conference
on the Gold Dinar Economy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (July 24, 2007), will
soon be added. I’ve also added some new posts and pages to my blogs. See
especially BEYOND MONEY

Going Places Doing Things

Since emplaning at Chennai on June 14, I’ve spent time in Kuala Lumpur,
Penang, and now Langkawi. I’ll leave aside the more personal details for
eventual face-to-face conversations and make this more of a
tips-for-travelers report and description of where I’ve been. If you want to
read that part you can find the report posted in its entirety at Tom’s News
and Views: GRECO

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