Neale Donald Walsch Conversations with Humanity

NDW: Actually, no. Because while spending time with family and giving oneself more of life’s treats can be very important, it is not what we have done and are doing with our time that is significant, it is the reason that we are doing whatever we are doing.

OMTimes: What is the importance of understanding the reason we do something, as long as we do it or did it, doe it really matter?

NDW: It is not the activity of our lives that makes them matter, it is the purpose for which we undertake the activity—it is a person’s innermost motivation—that causes what one is doing in life, and one’s life itself, to matter. Let me use a simple example from everyday life to illustrate the point.

You can be doing the dishes because they are piled high in the sink and there’s no more space, or perhaps you’re expecting guests and you’re embarrassed at how your kitchen looks…or you can do the dishes because having a clean and tidy personal space speaks richly to you of who are at your core…or because you want to save your partner—who you know has had a long day—from having to do them.

In each of the instances above the activity is the same: you are cleaning up the dishes. Yet in each of those instances the motivation is decidedly different.

In some moments in life the motivation to do what one is doing emerges from the Soul serving what I call the Divine Purpose. The book makes the point that when it does this, it matters. When it does not do this, it does not matter, in the sense that it has little or nothing to do with our reason for being here.