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Guy Spiro: Neale we last spoke several years ago when the first Conversations With God had just been published. You’ve sold a few books since then.

Neale Donald Walsch: That was ten years ago in May. This is the tenth anniversary year of the release of Conversation with God, book one. The publisher is releasing the first three books, the original trilogy, as a one book volume in a special commemorative tenth anniversary edition. It’s called The Complete Conversations with God, An Uncommon Dialogue.

GS: How many books have been sold in the past ten years?

NDW: In the entire Conversations with God cosmology, probably in excess of ten million.

GS: What would you say to somebody who believes that you’ve actually had conversations with God?

NDW: They’re right.

GS: Please elaborate.

NDW: I would say if someone believed that, then they’re right. Did I hear your question accurately? I did have conversations with God. We’re all having conversations with God all the time and we’re calling them something else.

GS: As simply as you can then, how would you define God?

NDW: The question isn’t what is God, or how do you define God. The question is, how do you define what is not God? The answer to that comes up zero. There is no way to define what is not God because there is nothing that is not God.

GS: Exactly. I picked up your book, What God Wants, and as I often do, I opened it up randomly to the section where you ask, “What does God want?” and the answer was, “Absolutely nothing.” My reaction was, “Thank you, Neale.” How can God want anything when God is everything?

NDW: Yes, although it is a revolutionary spiritual concept that would set the world on its ear if the world actually embraced it functionally. Right now, we can’t even ask the world to embrace it functionally. It’s all we can do to ask the world to embrace it as a point of discussion. Even to discuss that possibility, much less to implement it, is in many places considered inappropriate, out of bounds, blasphemy, apostasy, heresy, and that’s very sad. It’s sad when you get to the point where not only can you not implement but you can’t even explore or discuss alternative ideas about God, deity, about life and how it works. We are caught in a jail of our own creation, a prison of our own devise, a prison of our thoughts around this issue. If we allowed ourselves to be restrained in such a way around all the other areas of human endeavor such as technology, science, medical science, politics, social science, we would have made no progress whatsoever on this planet. We have moved forward with breathtaking advances in precisely those areas where we have had the courage to question the prior assumption.

GS: It’s not too long ago that we would have been invited out to the woodpile for a burning for even talking along these lines.

NDW: That was the point I just made.

GS: It goes back to my original question. When people who still have the vision of God as the old guy with the white beard looking down in judgment see a title like Conversations with God, they’re thinking that you’re saying that is who you’re talking to.

NDW: I’m talking to God in whatever image we want to create or hold, and if that’s the image that is most comfortable for some people, then that is the God I’m talking to. So they would not be inaccurate. I am speaking to God in all of God’s multiplicity of forms, including that one. So they would not, in fact, be inaccurate in assuming that is what I mean. I’m talking to God in the many ways in which God shows up in the lives of people, including, for some of those people, as the man in the long white beard and a long white robe, sitting on a throne some place.

GS: When you say that, I’m reminded of the Hindu view. Some people wring their hands over them being polytheists, but Hindus know that they are only talking about different aspects, or different ways of viewing God.

NDW: I agree.

GS: I think that the idea that God has a gender and opinions and plays favorites has caused humanity untold misery. I personally can’t believe that God cares who wins the Superbowl, no matter how many wide receivers cross themselves after scoring touchdowns. This is the mentality that ultimately leads to burning witches and flying airplanes into buildings. You know, “my God can beat up your God.”

NDW: Yes. That is a dangerous attitude and point of view. It’s okay if the wide receiver crosses himself after scoring a touchdown if he is saying a prayer of thanks. It’s very okay for us to use whichever ritual or demonstration feels appropriate and natural to us to say a word of gratefulness to a gifting universe, and to say that I appreciate that and to thank God. Gratitude, whether we’re thanking God for a touchdown, or thanking God for saving the life of our child in a near miss accident, is just as valid in either case. I really appreciate when I see athletes crossing themselves. Or the guy who steps into the batter’s box and we see him crossing himself as if he was asking God to help him do well. Even that is okay. I mean, if we can’t ask God to help us do well at work or help us do well in something, then what’s the point of having a relationship with God? But I think if people infer from that action that God has a preference with regard to the outcome, that would be the mistake and the error.

     I know some athletes who are very prayerful, and I know some Christian athletes who would make the sign of the cross or who pray to God before stepping into the batter’s box or going out on the playing field, or throwing the ball into the hoop. They will tell you that their thought is not that God has a preference in the outcome, that God’s on their side and not on the other side, that He’s for the Celtics and not for the other team, but in fact, that they are just praying for the assistance of universal blessing on what they are about to do. This is what they do; their work, their contribution to the culture of life. They’re just asking that God help them do it well. It’s entirely appropriate and we ought, in fact, to be doing more of that. So, I’m very praiseful of people who do that and I have nothing to say about the tight end or anyone who crosses himself in the end zone. God bless them.

GS: Yes, but to think that God has picked the winner in an event ...

NDW: Of course we understand that not only does God have no preference in who wins the Superbowl, He has no preference in any matter whatsoever.

GS: Exactly.

NDW: The idea, however, is that we each use whatever way seems appropriate to us to connect with the divine, with the energy which we call God, to bring that energy into play in the expression and the experience of our everyday lives—whether we’re football players or plumbers, housewives or priests.

     It doesn’t matter. Whatever device that we use to connect ourselves with all that is, with the expression of life, is itself appropriate, and a foundation, in a wonderful sense, of a larger reality. That’s simply saying that I acknowledge a larger reality and I call upon the energies that create that larger reality, through the tradition that is most natural to me, to bring me the blessings that it has to bestow right here, right now. It sounds fine to me. We really need more of that, not less.

GS: How do you answer those who look at the tsunami and say that it was God’s will that all those people died?

NDW: I don’t know anyone who says that. Maybe you’ve met people or have heard people who say that, and if they do, it’s both profoundly sad and deeply mistaken because God would never desire that kind of tragedy or suffering to befall any human being. So it would be inaccurate, dramatically inaccurate to assert such a truth.

GS: As I look through What God Wants, I get the strong impression that you don’t see God as standing outside of creation.

NDW: No. I certainly don’t. God is both the creator and the created, and the two are one. Interestingly, most of the world’s traditional religions teach that. Then they teach the opposite. So, to some degree at least, they contradict themselves within the folds of their own doctrines. But most of the world’s major religions teach of a God that says, “I am that I am. I am the alpha and the omega. I am the beginning and the end.” Most of the world’s religions teach that God is the all in all, the unmoved mover, that which is. These words are commonly found in the vocabularies and the articulations of the great faith traditions of our planet.

     I don’t know how else to interpret those words. I didn’t make those words up. “I am the all in all, I am the alpha and the omega. Even before you have asked, I have answered,”—all of those kinds of statements that we have heard through our lifetimes from the world’s great religions. These are not made up assertions, suddenly come to light in the new age. We’ve heard this kind of verbiage from traditional religions for millennia. So the question is whether religions are now prepared to stand alongside of their own statements and declare them invalid, or whether they meant what they said when they said that God is the alpha and the omega. That doesn’t leave anything else.

GS: How do you see that shaking out? Either the religions will own up to the inner truth or ...

NDW: I think that people will, and religions, as happens with all institutions that are created by human beings, will follow. I think that in the next thirty years, as I flatly predict in my book Tomorrow’s God, there will be created on this planet a new theology and a new spirituality and a new God, tomorrow’s God.

     I believe that tomorrow’s God will probably be experienced and, in fact, created by humanity in the next twenty-five to thirty years. It will not be a rejection of the present organized religions, it will be a refurbishing, if I can use the word, of our religions which are presently in place. It will be a refreshing of them, an enlargement of them.

     What we are saying in the new spirituality movement is not that religion as it stands right now is wrong or inaccurate, but merely that it’s incomplete. That is, we are saying that there may be more to know on this subject of God and life and who we are in relationship to all of that than we currently know. There may be more yet to discover. There may be something that we do not understand, the understanding of which could change everything. And until we are willing to have the courage to question the prior assumption, we will not know what that is.

     That is the great sadness and the great tragedy of most of the world’s traditional organized religions: That unlike science and technology and medicine, unlike even politics (although it takes longer), theology, or religion, if you please, will not allow or tolerate any questioning of the prior assumptions. So, in allegorical terms, if we took the same attitudes in our medicine, in our research, we would be walking into a modern operating room preparing to do brain surgery with a very sharp stone.

GS: Along that line, isn’t it interesting to watch the conservatives within the Catholic church try to reconsolidate and hang on to power? It’s really the same thing that is going on with radical Islam.

NDW: It is quite predictable and very understandable, and I certainly can sympathize. I deeply understand what motivates such responses, but I think those responses are not beneficial to the spiritual evolution of humanity. At some point we’re going to have to ask if it’s okay now to question the prior assumption. Is it okay now to simply ask if there might be something we don’t know about this subject? The asking of that question does pose a threat to the current structure of religion, and if one is deeply invested in holding that structure in place, it would be understandable that the asking of those questions would be discouraged.

GS: I’m reminded of one of my favorite lines from Richard Bach: “The original sin is to limit the Is. Don’t.” God really is just the “Is.”

NDW: Yes, I agree. I don’t think I can say anything more profound than that.

GS: What is cutting edge for you now? What are you working on?

NDW: I’m writing a book about death and dying. It is the final book in the With God series of dialogue books. This conversation is taking place along the lines of what happens after we leave the body. It is, I think, if not the most controversial, surely the most meaningful of all of the books that I have watched come through me. And it is, I think, going to be a source of comfort and importance to people everywhere, most particularly, of course, to those who are terminally ill or have family members who are. But in the larger sense, it will be of importance to everybody because death is something that visits all of us, although most of us think it’s not going to until it does.

GS: “In the midst of life we are in death.”

NDW: That is the edge right now for me in the literary sense, in terms of the messages themselves that are coming through. I am exploring two other front edges of my own experiences. One is the Humanity’s Team movement that is gathering considerable steam now around the world. In villages across the globe, a civil rights movement is gathering for the freeing of humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry, vindictive, punishing, and angry God. The purpose of that movement is to create the space of possibility for a new spirituality to emerge upon the earth. There are ten thousand members of that movement now in ninety-six countries. There are country coordinators in forty-seven of those countries. The movement itself is now putting together a skeletal structure. I believe within the next two or three years, it’s now two years old, we’ll begin to produce some significant outcomes and purposeful results. The website is www.HumanitysTeam.com. People can learn more about it there.

     I’m also engaged into two other projects that are close to my heart. People run away on a personal level to place into the space of life their own energies in a healing way. I’ve created the Messenger Circle as a way for them to do that. I believe that all of us are messengers, not just me. I believe that all of us have wonderful messages to give and to bring to humanity. So the Messenger Circle is a place where people can put before the world, their message, understanding, willingness to help, and their contribution to global healing and to healing each of us individually. It is largely a website, internet experience that allows people all over the world to put before people all over the world those ideas and thoughts and those inspirations that ignite the heart of the members of the Messenger Circle. That Messenger Circle experience is available for people to participate in at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com. People will find a link to the Messenger Circle there.

     Finally, I’m involved in an outreach called Part of the Change. It is for those who choose to become spiritual activists in their communities on the ground, in the space of their life, not just on the internet or in the virtual community. They have made a commitment to become part of the change and we make available to them at no cost, a wonderful booklet called A Part of the Change: Your Role as a Spiritual Helper. It gives ten very practical steps and tools that they can implement and use to become part of the change that they wish to see in the world. They can also buy these wrist bands that are now so popular. We’ve created one for our movement and on the wrist band it says, I Am Part of the Change. People wear those now all over the world. I had one given to me in Scotland a couple of days ago from someone who didn’t know that I actually put them into the space. So this idea that we had has actually circled the globe and people are now wearing these bright orange colored bracelets all over the place. The purpose of wearing these bracelets, of course, is to identify themselves to each other that we might know who we are, here in the army of God, if you please, or on this team. We can create the space for all of these new possibilities to emerge, and people who want more information can get it by going to www.partofthechange.com. So those are the edgy things that are happening right now in my world—always busy, always looking for another way to place this extraordinary message into the world.

GS: That’s all great work.

NDW: Thank you. It’s fun to do. It’s fun to think of new ways to light up the space and provide more avenues for people to travel if they seek to fully express where they really are in a way that contributes to a grander notion that we all have about that.

GS: Coming back to a more individual level, I’m reminded of one of my favorite lines out of A Course in Miracles: “The voice of God is as loud as our willingness to listen to it.”

NDW: That’s a wonderful line.

GS: How do you recommend that people who are open to hearing and accepting and following guidance proceed?

NDW: I’ve been asked this question many times and so I’ve been sort of forced by the question to look at the answer deeply through the years. I’ve noticed that there is a perhaps five step process by which we can get from where we are to where we want to be in terms of increasing our ability to both receive and react to those messages.

     First, we have to admit the possibility that it’s happening, that the guidance is being given. We have to be willing to acknowledge that such a possibility exists; that God is, in fact, talking to humanity on a daily basis, on a moment-to-moment basis, if you please, and that God has never stopped talking to us. That’s not a small thing. That acknowledgement actually is one that most of the world’s great religions are unwilling to make, ironically enough. Those religions insist in large part that, with rare exceptions, God stopped talking to humanity hundreds if not thousands of years ago, unless you are a saint or a sage or have been visited by God in a moment of extraordinary indulgence by the deity. The first step therefore, is acknowledging that there is no such thing as extraordinary indulgence, that God is speaking to all of us all the time.

     Step two is acknowledging our own worthiness to be a personal recipient of that communication. Ackniowledging not only that God is communicating with humanity all the time, but with us personally, and that we are worthy of receiving that communication, that there is no question of our worthiness in regard to that.

     The third step, then, is to listen for the communication and to open our eyes, open our ears, and notice that those communications come in many forms and in many ways, and are coming to us all the time. We are literally bombarded by the conversations with God that we are having. They come to us in the form of the words of the next song we hear on the radio, the next billboard we see as we turn the corner driving down the highway, the message on the next arm band or bracelet that we see someone wearing in a restaurant, as well as inspiring thoughts that arrive while we are in the shower or driving down the road or simply half-asleep in the morning. We’re all having these conversations all the time and we have to open our eyes and ears and listen for them. As someone once said many years ago, let those who have ears to hear listen.

     The fourth step is to not disavow the communications. That is, to not dismiss them or be tempted to call them something else like serendipity, inspiration of a different kind, women’s intuition, coincidence, or whatever we want to call them. They really are communications directly from deity.

     The fifth step is to not reject the communications, to walk in the steps that are being given us in those communications rather than acknowledging them without doing anything about it. So those are five steps that get us from where we are to where we want to be in connection with the larger question. How can the average person begin to have conversations with God? It’s a question I’ve answered many times.

GS: I think it’s important for people to know, too, that it’s not always step to the right, okay, and a piano falls out of the air. It’s not always big, momentous things. Messages can be quite mundane.

NDW: More often than not, they are.

GS: You’re doing seminars.

NDW: I’m doing seminars all over the world. We’ve just finished doing special one-, two-, and three-day retreats in England, Ireland, and Scotland. We do them in the United States on a regular basis as well. These are opportunities for people to deeply connect with the messages of Conversations with God and explore ways in which they can render those messages functional in their day to day lives. They’re very powerful, moving, and transformational for many people.

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Neale Donald Walsch presents the “Living Your Purpose” Retreat in the Chicago area August 4–9. For more information and to register to attend, see the advertisement in this issue and visit www.CwGRetreats.com or call 352-442-2244.

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