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That’s not what your soul wants

August 6, 2026

“But it still seems misleading since it suggests that you can win the lottery by wishing for it.”

Not by wishing for it—that’s not what Walsch wrote down.

“He says ‘wanting it badly enough.’”

But don’t you see? That’s not what your soul wants. If it did, per impossibile, it would win it. But it doesn’t, because your soul has no true desire for such things.

“But, Lord, don’t You see how misleading the statement is? It certainly will be read as wish-fulfillment.”

Then it’s a mistake. That is not what I meant. People want God’s will to conform to theirs. Others try to conform their will to God’s. But, at root, the two are the same. The goal is to get to the point that you surface your true will, which will coincide with God’s. Remember that I want what is good for you. I do not have some arbitrary plan and then demand obedience to it. I want nothing other than your fulfillment. That is what you want too.

Two Fortune Cookies, One Shared Future – Jerry L. Martin’s Daybook

July 30, 2026

When I was courting Abigail long distance, I would meet her train at Union Station and we would eat there. After a few visits, we ventured into nearby Chinatown, as it was called. After a dinner filled with the intensity of new-found lovers getting to know each other, we opened our fortune cookies.

It was the only time in my life that I have seen the following: the two fortunes were identical! Word for word. Well, that cookie was right on the money.

Recently, brrrr, I got a different result, once again for the only time in my life. My cookie was empty — I had no future at all. Well, it was good knowing you.

“You Must Have Faith.”

July 23, 2026

“Is it okay to ask You for specific guidance?”

Of course. You should feel free to ask Me for assistance of any kind. However, you must have faith. I cannot (will not) help you if you do not have faith.

As time went on, I found I was praying but not really listening. I was avoiding something.

Abraham Lincoln, Divine Will, and the Civil War’s Moral Purpose | Jerry L. Martin’s Daybook

July 22, 2026

It seems that events of the Civil War transformed Lincoln’s religious side, which had previously been sufficiently skeptical that, as a candidate, he had to defend himself against the charge of being a “scoffer.”

Lincoln seemed, according to historian Shelby Foote, “not to be a praying man and he had never joined a church.” The change seemed to have been wrought by the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln had set out, not to abolish slavery, though he despised the institution, but to save the Union, with or without slavery, as he often explained. But the Proclamation had redefined the war, so that, “now, in this second autumn of the war, a change began to show.” On his desk, his secretary, John Hay, found the following statement, written for Lincoln’s own purposes, a “Meditation on Divine Will.” It expresses the puzzlement that, evidently, “God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.” He explained more fully to a Quaker lady who visited to praise him for the Proclamation. “If I had had my way, this war would never have been commenced.

If I had been allowed my way, this war would have been ended before this. But we find it still continues, and we must believe that he permits for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us …” In fact, if Lincoln had gotten his wish and war had been averted or ended quickly, the slaves would not have been emancipated, the South would not have surrendered unconditionally, and there would have been no 13^th amendment, abolishing slavery.

“There is an Inaccessible aspect of me”

July 2, 2026

I was guided to look into the ancient Mystery Religions, of which the Eleusinian and Orphic are the most famous. The Mysteries were cults whose rites were open only to initiates. Participants were sworn never to disclose what took place and, remarkably, none ever did. What little we know is thanks to historians’ detective work. The rites were apparently connected with nature and the seasons, and especially the harvest. After a lengthy training, the ultimate secret was revealed to the successful initiate: a single grain of corn in a stone bowl. Not much. But if God was in that drop of water I had encountered, He could well be seen in that grain of corn, that source of life. I was told that the Mystery Religions connected the polytheistic reverence of natural phenomena to Nature as an encompassing whole.

The Mystery Religions are a bridge from one to the other and also, and precisely because of or through, the inner dimension. The self is unitary, and when the self relates fully to nature, nature is its unitary opposite.

“So Mystery Religions are important?”

(Yes), because one way I manifest Myself is esoterically, and this heightens My own sense of specialness. I am not only the same as human beings but also different. There is an inaccessible aspect of Me that the mysteries apprehend and try to get at.

“And this does something for You?”

Yes, it lets Me get at that aspect of Myself.

I found this hard to understand. It seems that there is an aspect of God that, while not totally inaccessible, is manifested only esoterically, in some secret or private way. And this inner dimension heightens His sense of specialness.

I wondered whether this might be true of all of us.

“Lord, is there a less accessible aspect of each of us that heightens our specialness?”

Yes.

Don’t blame yourself.

June 25, 2026

One week I testified before a U.S. Senate committee. It did not go well and, bowed as well as beaten, my ego limped out of the hearing room.

Get your ego out of it. Stand back and look (at it) at a distance.

“A ‘God’s-eye’ view?”

No, just objectively, as if it were someone else.

That helped. If it were someone else, I would know that, even on a good day, a Senate hearing is unpredictable. But there was still an ego wound.

“Lord, what can I do about that?”

Look, you are encased in a body and a personality, and it requires ego strength and self-respect. When I say, “Get the ego out,” I mean the second-order attachment to ego. The ego, like desires, is a fact, a necessary fact. Like the body, it gets bruised. You just nurture it and let it heal. Don’t deny it but don’t dwell on it either. Accept it and don’t attach it to blame. That your ego has been embarrassed is not the same as “doing something wrong.” Don’t blame yourself. That is an example of the wrong kind of attachment.

“Then I should just say, ‘I wish it had gone better,’ and leave it at that?”

Correct.

This is Where God’s Story Really Begins

June 18, 2026

All this was taking place on a flight to visit my Mom and Dad, who were in their eighties and living in California. Sitting beside me was a nine-year-old girl, traveling alone. She kept looking at me, wondering what I was up to. Ignoring her was unkind, so I stopped praying and chatted with her.

After that, I returned to my own meditations and received a stream of visual images, a vision: the sun cracking up, solar flares that zoomed out into the reaches of space. I then saw, through the mist, an ethereal caravan of camels and their riders, coming up a valley, their long line stretching behind, down a winding road into the distance. I followed the road back to the source. I came upon vast winds, like a monsoon, then a world exploding—and then the vision abruptly stopped. The caravan seemed to represent the long course of human history, traced backward, all the way to the beginning, and then nothing.

I had received hints about the moment of Creation. Then, one day, He told me more. This is where God’s story really begins.

The Grace of Remembering Others at Their Best- Jerry L. Martin’s Daybook

June 13, 2026

A friend’s recent experience reminded me of Steerforth in Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield.

He was a charming, good-looking, multi-talented senior boy when a desperate young David escaped his abusive stepfather and, with the aid of a spinster aunt, got into a good school. New boys are normally treated very badly but Steerforth, for whatever reason, cast the cloak of his own popularity over the boy, and they were friends from then on.

As time goes on, the reader sees glimpses of a questionable side to the boy’s hero, but David does not. Steerforth knows that his real character does not live up to his admirer’s image of him.

One day, he asks David, “Whatever you learn of me, please always remember me as I was in my best moments.”

Since we are all flawed, that is a request we might all sincerely make.

And I, for one, would say, with David, “Oh, of course, of course, I will always remember you at your best.”

“I am a Person, but I am also much more.”

June 5, 2026

“Lord, you have taken me through a story that is completely unorthodox and embarrassingly anthropomorphic. What am I to make of that?”

I am not interested in what you make of it (or) in conforming My account to your prior, fixed beliefs. Be more specific in your future questions.

I am using literal language because that is the only way to explain the experience of being God.

“But ‘experience’ is also anthropomorphic.”

Not really. I am a Person, but I am not only a Person. I am also much more. There is something you might call “what it is like” to be God. That is what “experience” refers to.

“But, Lord, You are admitting serious limitations as You scramble to create order out of chaos. This is not our idea of God.”

Limitations only from My perspective. Don’t be misled. By your standards I already had unimaginable power and knowledge.

“But You say you knew nothing.”

There is another side to the story. In one sense I knew nothing. But, in another sense, I was viewing everything from another level—as when your senses are confused but your mind is clear and is noting with precision and even analysis the nature and contours of the confusion. Think of waking from a dream while analyzing the fact that you just had a dream.

Or, I suppose, like a researcher taking an hallucinogenic and carefully noting its effects.

“That is self-indulgence.”

May 26, 2026

“Lord, are those moments of union with God the goal or are they just nice accompaniments?”

Neither. You shouldn’t strive for moments of union per se, for peak experiences. That is self-indulgence, and a mistake of some who seek mystical experience. It is like orgasms—you should not seek them for their own sake. That is an abuse, a kind of idolatry. They happen naturally as the outcome and expression of love. But the experience of union is not just the accidental accompaniment of loving God. It is the essential expression. As a philosopher, you should be able to understand the difference.

Yes, I could see that loving God, by His very nature, invites a degree of union, much as human love does.