Excerpt from "The Mother of Invention; The Legacy of Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Future of YOU"

The following excerpt is taken from the book The Mother of Invention; The Legacy of Barbara Marx Hubbard and the Future of YOU, by Neale Donald Walsch. It is published by Hay House (January 15, 2011) and available at all bookstores or online at: www.hayhouse.com

Introduction

They say that “necessity is the mother of invention,” but they’re wrong. Barbara Marx Hubbard is.

And you are.

And we all are.

We are each inventing ourselves, and the life we are living, in every single moment of Now. And we are doing exactly the same for all of humanity. For as we invent ourselves individually, we do so collectively.

The act of “inventing” goes on continually. Put another way, we are new in every moment. We are not the same as we were before, not even for a nanosecond, nor is our species as a whole. The question is not whether we are changing, but how; not whether humanity is in the act of “becoming,” but what?

In creating humanity’s answer to these questions, your life does make a difference—and the difference it makes can be huge, if you’ll let it be.

All of this may be a little bit difficult to believe, or at least to embrace as your Functioning Reality, but that’s why this book is so perfect for you right now. It appears to be a biography, but you’re soon going to find out that it is not only about someone else’s life, it is about your own; that it is not only a wonderful story in which to lose oneself, but a wonderful way in which to find oneself.

The Mother of Invention is a book in which you are invited to participate, because the end of this story depends, in part, on you. That’s why I chose to write it.

Please allow me a brief word of introduction. I am the author of 27 books on contemporary spirituality, among them the 9-book Conversations with God series. I believe deeply that life is creational—that is, what we are collectively experiencing is a product of what we are collectively creating. And I wanted to place before you a story that throws open the door of possibility to all of us, answering at last the question: “What can I do?” and ending at last the frustrated lament: “I’m only one person.”

I wrote this book because I want you to know that ordinary, average people such as you and me can have an impact on our entire planet—and that, should we all choose to move in some of the same directions together, we can really have an impact.

This book opens that possibility for all of us, through the real-life example of a housewife and mother of five who chose to create a better world—and who is choosing to do so right now, up to this very minute.

The point of this book: If this person can do it, we all can!

Many people have heard of Barbara Marx Hubbard—and many people have not. I like the fact that she is not a household name, immediately recognizable the world over. That makes her more like us, and a wonderful model. A template. An outpicturing of what we all are—and what we are all potentialed to be.

“Potentialed” is a new word. I just made it up. I like it. It says exactly what I want it to say. I think that we all are . . . no, I know that we all are . . . imbued with the potential to be more than we’ve so far allowed ourselves to be. Further, I think that we all know it. And I think that we are all endowed with an impulse to move toward our highest expression of that More that we know we are.

I’m convinced that all we need is courage, and all we need to gather the courage is a model, a template, a contemporary example, a here-and-now sample of how life could be lived in a new way. In short, someone to inspire us.

That’s where Barbara comes in. Eighty years of age at this writing, she feels that she and we are just beginning, that humanity is going to break through, not break down, and that we are ready to set aside our old patterns and old beliefs and old ways of being as we invent a New Human.

Barbara sees this as part of the natural evolutionary process of all sentient beings. And she believes that there is a natural Place in Time when conditions are perfect for all such beings to launch a new way of living. It is the fulcrum. It is the apogee. It is what Malcolm Gladwell calls the Tipping Point.

For humanity, that time may very well be . . . December 22, 2012.

Barbara and some of her friends are now calling this “Day One.” They are inviting us to join in envisioning, planning, and creating a huge, global multimedia Satellite and Internet Experience during the days leading up to the 22nd, telling the story of our species’ emergence as a new kind of human, and of the beginning of the next cycle of evolution.

Amidst all the anxious wondering, worried predictions, and negative speculation of many around the globe who see 2012 as an Ending, you and I are being urged by all the forces and energies of the Universe to see it as a Beginning—as Barbara sees it. Indeed, Barbara calls it “a birthing.”

How has she come to this point of view? Is it realistic? Could it be true?

The answer is that the life of Barbara Marx Hubbard includes a series of spiritual encounters. Yet this is not unusual, and does not make Barbara different from most of us. I believe that each of us experience, during our time on this earth, what are called Divine Interventions. I define these as moments when our mind, heart, and soul are opened simultaneously. In such moments we receive at all levels—mental, emotional, and spiritual—enormous truths about life.

My observation is that most human beings (myself included) at first ignore these moments, not recognizing them for what they are. Then, when and if they do understand what is happening, they often don’t know what to do about them, how to react to them, how to use them to their own benefit (to say nothing of using them for the benefit of humankind).

This is not our fault. We simply have not had spiritual training. Our cultures have trained us in how to use our bodies, and they have trained us in how to use our minds, but they have done very little to train us in how to interact with our souls. Indeed, and amazingly, many elements within our society don’t even acknowledge the existence of the soul.

This is an indication of just how young our species is. Speaking metaphorically, Barbara Marx Hubbard says that we are still in the gestation period in our development and are only now about to be birthed into the cosmic community of universal beings.

How does she know this? What makes her think this is true?

It is because of those spiritual encounters in Barbara’s life—three of them, to be exact. In her case, she paid attention.

As we mature, we, too, will pay attention. We will not only be able to acknowledge the existence of the part of our being from which such wisdom flows—what we might call our Higher Self—but we will also be able to communicate with it, receive guidance from it, and relate to it in a way that changes our lives forever.

Do we—you and I—really have a role to play in the process of that spiritual maturation? For ourselves and for our planet? And will we truly be able to co-create a new world, and a new way of living in our world, following the “end of history” in 2012? Or is this all just glib talk and wishful thinking?

Well, those are the questions to be addressed here. The answers that were given to Barbara may be the answers that can be given to you. Not all such spiritual answers come in visions or dreams or meditations. Some spiritual encounters come to us in very ordinary ways—like reading books.

So dive right in. Enjoy. Read about yourself at the same time you’re reading about a perfectly normal and yet wholly remarkable woman. Rediscover yourself here.

Nay . . . reinvent yourself.

And all of us.