We Are All One and Yet Different
God: “There are no cans or can nots here. There are no shoulds or shouldn’ts. You may do as you wish. Every decision is a statement of Who You Are.”
Neale Donald Walsch: “Well, “who I am” is a person who does not want a mosquito bite!”
God: “Fine. Then do what it takes to experience yourself as that. It is simple, you see?”
Neale Donald Walsch: “But if I am one with everything, am I not killing a part of myself when I swat the mosquito?”
God: “Nothing dies, but only changes form. Yet let us use your definitions for the moment, for the purposes of this discussion. Yes, by your definition, you are killing a part of yourself when you swat the mosquito. You are doing the same thing when you cut down a tree. Or pick a flower. Or slaughter a cow and eat it.”
Neale Donald Walsch: “Then I can’t touch anything! I have to leave everything exactly the way it is! If termites are destroying my house, I have to just move out and give them the house, because, after all, I don’t want to murder them. How far do you take this?
God: “That is a good question. How far do you take this? Does the fact that you don’t kill people mean that you don’t kill termites? Conversely, does the fact that you kill termites mean that it is okay to kill people?
Neale Donald Walsch: “No, of course not.”
God: “Well, then, there you have it. You have answered your own question.”
God: “I have said you are all One, but I have not said you are all the same. Is your hair the same as your heart?”
Neale Donald Walsch: “I beg your pardon?”
Because you cut your hair off, does that mean you will cut your heart out?
Neale Donald Walsch: I see what You’re saying.
God: “Do you? Do you, really? Because many human beings act as if they don’t. They treat everyone and everything as if it were the same. They treat human life as if it were worth nothing more than the life of a mosquito. A termite. If they see that it is okay to cut their hair off, they cut their heart out. They bite their nose to spite their face.”
Neale Donald Walsch: “Not many people act like that.”
God: “I tell you this: every one of you has acted like that, in one way or another. Every one of you has acted indiscriminately, treating one thing as if it were the same as another—even treating one person as if he or she were another.
You walk down the street and see a white person and think that she is the same as you imagine all white people to be. You walk down the street and see a black person and think he is the same as you imagine all black people to be. In this you make two mistakes.
You have stereotyped Whites and Blacks, Jews and Gentiles, men and women, Russians and Americans, Serbs and Albanians, bosses and workers, even blondes and brunettes . . . and you will not stop stereotyping, because to stop stereotyping means that you will have to stop justifying your treatment of each other.”
- Friendship with God
