There I sat, stewing in my own juice.
Finally, in the moonlight streaming through the window, I saw a yellow legal pad on the coffee
table in front of me. I picked it up, found a pen, flicked on a lamp, and began writing an angry
letter to God.
What does it take to make life WORK~’???? What have I done to deserve a life of such
continuing struggle? And what are the rules here? Somebody tell me the RULES! I’ll play, but
first somebody has to tell me the rules. And after you tell me, don’t change them!!!!
On and on like that I wrote, scribbling madly all over the pad—writing very large, as I do when
I am angry, pressing down so hard that a person could hold a sheet five pages lower up to
the light and see what I had written.
Finally, I’d emptied myself out. The anger, frustration, and near-hysteria had dissipated, and I
remember thinking, I’ve got to tell my friends about this. A yellow legal pad in the middle of
the night might be the best therapy, after all.
I held out my arm to put down the pen, but it wouldn’t leave my hand. That’s amazing, I
thought to myself. A few minutes of intensive writing and your hand cramps so badly, you
can’t even let go of the pen.
I waited for my muscles to relax but was struck instead with a feeling that there was
something more I needed to write. I watched as I brought pen back to paper, fascinating
myself even as I did it, because I knew of nothing more that I wanted to write. Yet here I was
acting as if there was more to be written.
No sooner had the pen reached the pad than my mind filled with a thought. The thought was
said to me, by a voice. It was the softest, kindest, most gentle voice I had ever heard. Except
that it wasn’t a voice. It was a... what I could only call a voiceless voice
or maybe, more like.., like a feeling that had words all over it.
The words that I “heard” in this way were:
Neale, do you really want answers to all of these questions, or are you just venting?
I remember thinking, I AM venting, but if you’ve got answers, I’d sure as hell like to know what
they are. To which I received the reply:
You ARE “sure as hell”—about a lot of things. But wouldn’t you rather be “sure as
heaven”?
And I found myself answering, What in the hell is that supposed to mean?
Thereafter came the most extraordinary thoughts, ideas, communications, call them what you
will, that I’ve ever experienced. The thoughts were so stunning that I found myself writing
them down—and responding to them. The ideas being given to me (through me?) were
answering my questions, but they were also bringing up other questions I’d never had before.
So here I was, having a pen-and-paper “dialogue.”
It went on for three hours, and then suddenly it was 7:30 in the morning and the house was
starting to come alive, so I put the pen and pad away. It was an interesting experience, but I
didn’t make much more of it—until the next night when I was awakened out of a sound sleep,