Author: Neale Donald Walsch

  • You can create a personal hell

    (Last of a 5-part series)

    Someone (I forgot who it was, doggone it) mentioned on my Facebook page a few weeks ago that the notion of “hell” is mentioned 88 times in the bible: 64 times as the Hebrew word Sheol in the old testament, 11 times as Hades in the new testament, once as Tartarus, 12 times as Gehenna.

    As we have been discussing here in the past several entries, Conversations with God tells us flatly that “hell” does not exist. There is simply no such place.

    In the book HOME WITH GOD in a Life That Never Ends, I asked God what, if we believe that God will judge us and might condemn us to everlasting damnation, happens to us after we die. God replied…

    Exactly what you expect. As soon as you move through stage one of death and realize that you are no longer living with a body, you will move into stage two and will experience yourself being judged, just exactly as you imagined that you would be, and the judgment will turn out just exactly as you imagined that it would.

    If you died thinking that you deserve heaven, you will immediately experience that, and if you think that you deserve hell, you will immediately experience that.

    Heaven will be exactly as you imagined it would be, as will hell. If you have no idea about the specifics of either, you will make them up right on the spot, Then, these places will be created for you that way, instantly.

    You may remain in these experiences as long as you wish.

    “Well, then, I can find myself in hell!” I said, and God replied:

    Let us be clear. Hell does not exist. There simply is no such place. Therefore, there is no such place for you to go.

    Now…can you create a personal “hell” for yourself if you choose to, or if you believe this is what you “deserve”? Yes. So you can send your self to “hell,” and that “hell” will turn out to be exactly as you imagine or feel a need for it to be—but you will not stay there for one moment longer than you choose to.

    “Who would choose to stay there at all?”, I wondered. Said God:

    You’d be surprised. A lot of people live within a belief system that says they are sinners and must be punished for their “offenses,” and so they will actually stay in their illusion of “hell”, thinking that this is what they deserve, that this is what they “have coming” to them, that this is what they have to do.

    It will not matter, however, because they will not suffer at all. They will simply observe themselves from a detached distance and see what is going on—something like watching an instructional video.

    “But if there is no suffering, what is going on?”, I wanted to know.

    Suffering, but there will be none, God said.

    I’m sorry?

    What is going on is that they will appear to be suffering, but the part of them that is watching this will feel nothing. Not even sadness. They will simply be observing.

    To use an analogy, it would be a bit like watching your child “play act” some little scene in your kitchen. The child appears to be “suffering,” holding her hand to her head or clutching her stomach, hoping that Mommy will let her stay home from school. Mommy understands perfectly that nothing is really happening. There is no suffering going on.

    This is not an exact analogy, but it is close enough to get across the feeling.

    So these observers would be watching themselves in this self-created “hell,” but they would know that it is not real. And when they have learned what they feel they need to learn (that is, reminded themselves of what they had forgotten), they will “release” themselves and go on to the third stage of death.

    That third stage, God explained, is the complete merging with the Divine. And that is, ultimately, all that happens after what we call “death.” We ultimately merge with Divinity Itself, then to reemerge as an Individuation of the Divine, allowing ourselves to reenter the Realm of the Physical to afford ourselves yet another in an endless string of opportunities to express and experience Who We Really Are.

    This is my understanding of what is true about “hell,” from my reading of the Conversations with God material. I hope it has served you for us to join in this exploration together.

    (Neale Donald Walsch is the author of the Conversations with God series of books. His newest writing, The Only Thing That Matters, releases this week from Hay House. In it he describes how we can all experience our Divinity.)

  • IF YOU ARE PREGNANT FROM RAPE,
    IS IT WHAT GOD INTENDED?

    Running for the United States Senate in the state of Indiana, Republican candidate Richard Mourdock declared at a public debate with his opponent Tuesday night that God intends pregnancies that result from rape to occur.

    For this reason, Mr. Mourdock said, he opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest, the cable news network CNN has reported.

    Mr. Mourdock joins Republican Congressman Todd Akin, who is seeking to advance to the U.S. Senate seat from Missouri, and Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, running for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives in Illinois, in placing before the American public yet another statement regarding pregnancies and abortion that appear to be significantly in disharmony with the views held by the majority of American women.

    Taken together, those statements are these…

    From Mr. Akin: In cases of “legitimate rape,” a woman’s body automatically biologically rejects insemination and therefore, pregnancy rarely occurs in such cases.

    From Mr. Mourdock:  “I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.” Mr. Mourdock said he would not oppose abortion if a mother’s life was in danger.

    From Mr. Walsh: Abortion as a life-saving procedures are not needed because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother. After a firestorm of objections for the next 24 hours, Mr. Walsh the next day amended his statement, acknowledging that there might be “very rare circumstances” where life-saving abortions might be required.

    All three candidates have had the stout support of the so-called tea party in the U.S., which has been seeking to move the Republican Party further to the right in setting the political agenda for America.

    And so, for the third time in three months and the second time in two weeks, the American people, and women in particular, have had their most basic and sacred spiritual beliefs placed on the line as they go into voting booths or mark their advance ballots in U.S. election just ahead.

    It has been said that politics are—or certainly should be—the civic-action outcome and the on-the-ground product of a person’s most sacred and important beliefs. If this is true, the American election could turn on the question of what God wants. Mr. Mourdock has made it clear in written statements to reporters following his debate on Tuesday that he was not in any way suggesting that God wants women to be raped. Yet if such a heinous thing should occur, he said, and it resulted in the woman becoming pregnant, that pregnancy would have to be considered what God intended.

    “Life is a gift from God,” Mr. Mourdock said, “and I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something God intended to happen.”

    The New Spirituality agrees with Mr. Mourdock. And it goes further. Everything that occurs in Life is intended by God, it declares. There is nothing that happens in the Universe that is somehow outside of God’s ability to control. A person could not so much as lift a little finger if God did not want it to happen. So if something has happened, it could not have happened against God’s Will. Such a thing would be impossible.

    If this is not true, then we really are “children of a lesser God.” We are moving through a life that is placing circumstances and situations before us at the whim and whimsy of “fate.” The whole experience is just a roll of the dice. Yet Conversations with God says that just the opposite is true. Not a sparrow falls without God’s knowledge, and not a thing occurs against God’s Will.

    Why, then—to stick with the present case—would it be God’s Will for a pregnancy to occur as a result of a rape? And, extending the logic of the New Spirituality, how could the rape itself occur if it were against God’s Will?

    The true test of any spiritual belief must be in how questions such as these are approached and answered. And people of courage are invited by Life to speak their answers into Life, bringing their most sacred beliefs into the arena of their experience.

    Mr. Mourdock did just that at the debate with his opponent on Tuesday, acknowledging with regard to the abortion question, and his position on it: “I struggled with it myself for a long time.” Members of the New Spirituality community may have opinions that differ from those of Mr. Mourdock on why it would not be against God’s Will for a pregnancy to occur as a result of a rape, and what “should” or “must” be done afterward, but they would be admiring of Mr. Mourdock for his bravery in so publicly announcing his beliefs.

    Indeed, a major tenet of the New Spirituality is that “ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way” to understand Life and its events. Where the New Spirituality would differ from Mr. Mourdock would be in his belief that if a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape or incest, it is God’s Will that she have the child. The New Spirituality would say that it is God’s Will that she have a choice as to whether to have the child, not that she be without choice—and that the very opportunity to make this choice in an integral part of the larger purpose for the experience itself. Indeed, it is the reason for every situation, circumstance, or event in Life, which continually creates a contextual field within which humans have the opportunity to decide Who They Are, and Who They Now Choose To Be, CWG says.

    Life is not a series of random events, occurring without rhyme or reason, Conversations with God shares, but rather, an intricately designed and deliberately set into motion sequence of occurrences collaboratively and spontaneously created by all the Souls in existence for the purpose of giving that Collection of Souls a direct experience of Itself, both as a collection and as individuals within the collection. In other words, Life exists as a means by which that which we call God may know Itself experientially, through the expression in physicality of Its individual parts, within a realm of relativity.

    The New Spirituality says that we are here on Earth to do more than just live and die and make the best of the experience. We are also here to do more than simply find a way to “get back to heaven”—or, at least, avoid going to hell. Those are simplistic views of the reason and purpose for human existence.

    We are here, Conversations with God says, to advance a larger agenda. We are here to move forward an eternal evolutionary process in which our Soul is involved. It is a process through which each individual Soul experiences its True Identity fully, and by which Life Itself expands its expression to reflect the wonder of its ultimate and true nature.

    And just exactly what is the “True Identity” of the soul? CWG indicates that the soul is the individuated aspect of Divinity Itself, and that its purpose through physical life is to express and to experience Divinity at the next highest level, in a constantly escalating spiral.

    We don’t “have to” do it. Nothing is required of us in this or any other lifetime. Not the bringing to term of a pregnancy resulting from rape, nor any other thing in particular. We have an endless number of lifetimes, and nothing is specifically demanded, commanded, or required of us in any given passage through physical life. Our incarnations never end, with the soul moving from one physical expression to another on an eternal journey—and it is the eternality of Life Itself which makes it not necessary for a particular lifetime to produce a particular outcome.

    To allow your Mind to get a handle on this, imagine that after 40 years of going to a job every day, you have finally retired, are in wonderful health, have ample financial resources, and can now look forward to years of doing whatever you please. Would you feel required to play golf next Thursday, as opposed to Thursday a week later? Other than for the sheer joy of it, would there be any other reason to do a particular thing on a particular day in a particular way?

    The beauty of retirement, of course, is freedom—the joy and the freedom to do what you want, when you want, in the way that you want. You are said to have “earned it.”

    This is also the beauty of Life Itself. And this freedom, too, you have “earned.” By the very act of coming into physicality (not an insignificant decision) and living day-to-day in the Realm of Relativity (no small task), you have earned the freedom to do what you want, when you want, in the way that you want. Freedom is God’s prerogative—and you are nothing less than Divine.

    The Old Spirituality, of course, espouses a different view. First, it says (in most cases) that we do not have infinite lifetimes, but rather, only this one. Second, it says that while we have Free Will, we really do not, but are required or commanded to do certain things and not to do other things, and that violation of that command will “earn” us something alright—it will earn us eternal torment and unending suffering in the fires of hell. Finally, it says that God has told us exactly what our requirements are, and all we have to do is pick and listen to the Right Religion to know exactly what God wants and demands from us. If we pick the wrong religion—yes, even if we believe in God and try to serve God, but believe in God in the wrong way—we are likewise going straight to hell immediately after death.

    The New Spirituality tells us that Life on Earth is part and parcel of the ‘heaven’ you have been told about. The whole expression—the experience between physical lifetimes and the experience of each lifetime—is what “paradise” is all about. “Heaven” for the soul is the ability to know and to express Divinity in you, through you, as you…in the way and at the time that you wish.

    In truth, Divinity is expressed through you no matter what you do. It is impossible for you not to express Divinity, since Divinity is Who You Are. It is simply a matter of how you want to define Divinity in This Moment, Now.

    Put another way, God is what you say God is, by how you are being in any given situation or circumstance. As Conversations with God says, “Every act is an act of self-definition.” And Life Itself, throughout the multiple universes, is God in the act of defining Itself as it wishes to know Itself through the here-and-now expression of Itself.

    The greatest gift we have been given by God—or, to state it more accurately, that we have given ourselves—is Free Will. We can express our Selves in any way that we desire. The question is not, “How can the way human beings are be an expression of Divinity?” The question is, “Why would human beings choose for Divinity to be expressed in this way?” And, more transformatively, “What could cause us to define Who We Are, and Divinity Itself, in another way? A higher way? A grander way?”

    If we are in the act of defining God, would we want to do it any differently tomorrow than we have done today? That is the question. Our answer will determine the future of humanity, and so is, in both human terms and Divine terms, The Only Thing That Matters.

    UPDATE: October 25 — Reporter Wayne Drash writes in a copyrighted story on CNN’s website today that Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-selling book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, said Mourdock’s remarks were off-base. Mr. Drash quotes Rabbi Kushner as saying that people “should have compassion for the person whose life is messed up by this and not make her an instrument for our idiosyncratic, theological commitment.

    “If you believe she has no right to terminate that pregnancy, you’re free to believe that,” Kushner is quoted. “But for you to write your preferences into law and compel another person to mess her life up because of what you believe, I think you’re going too far.”

    Mr. Drash ends his quotes from Mr. Kushner with this observation from the rabbi: “I continue to be bemused by the ultraconservative lawmakers who say they want smaller government and less government intrusion into people’s lives, except when it comes to who you can marry and how many children you should have.”

    In the same CNN story, Mr. Drash reported on a Protestant chaplain who said that he has consoled about 50 pregnant rape victims through the years — typically girls raped by their fathers — while working with the Phoenix Police Department. This leaves open the question: Would Mr. Mourdock say that victims of rape impregnated by their own fathers or brothers or grandfathers be told in no uncertain terms to have the baby, because it is God’s intention?

  • REGARDING ABORTION: What is the spiritual value we are invited to honor?

    There has been quite a remarkable discussion taking place both on the personal Facebook page of Neale Donald Walsch, and in the Comments postings beneath the current Headline Story here on this newspaper page. The discussion now moves to this Question of the Week space.

    The Question This Week: What are the spiritual ramifications of the abortion issue…and can humanity agree on a resolution of this major social issue that so divides America, and much of the world?

    We begin the discussion with a re-posting of the exchange between Ronald Moore and Neale Donald Walsch found in the string under the headline story. We invite Mr. Walsch’s Facebook audience to join in this discussion…

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      Comment by Ronald Moore on October 22, 2012 at 1:35 am

    1. We are truly far from the ideal world of CWG right now and we have a long journey yet till we are there. We are free to make or own decisions with the knowledge that those have consequences. This subject would not be so difficult if it was anything but babies. Aren’t we supposed to be more compassionate towards the most defenseless of us all? It becomes more murkier when you see that the vast majority of these procedures have absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the pregnant woman. There is no easy answer, I certainly as a man don’t have the answer. What might help us is that we just be honest about this and stop all the lies. The truth will set us free and yes sometimes the truth hurts.

      POSTING FROM NEALE DONALD WALSCH IN RESPONSE…

      1. Comment by Neale Donald Walsch on October 22, 2012 at 8:03 am Edit

        Dear Ronald Moore…Now we are getting somewhere. You have said, “It becomes murkier when you see that the vast majority of these procedures have absolutely nothing to do with the safety of the pregnant woman.”

        I agree. I think we can all agree, on both sides of this question, that the statistics clearly show this.

        Ronald, you have also said: “There is no easy answer, I certainly as a man don’t have the answer. What might help us is that we just be honest about this and stop all the lies. The truth will set us free and yes sometimes the truth hurts.”

        I agree again. There IS no “easy answer.” But we might start with a “truth that hurts.” If we come from a new and larger understanding of Life, and what is really “so” about Life, we might find many of our internal conflicts disappearing.

        CWG has been contending for nearly two decades now that the problem facing humanity is a spiritual problem. There is something that we don’t understand about God and about Life, the understanding of which would change everything. Let’s start there…

        One thing we don’t understand about Life is that it is eternal. Your Soul always was, is now, and always will be. It has been, and will be, forever, and even forever more. It has lived many so-called “lives,” or physical incarnations. This is true of the Souls of all living beings.

        The key spiritual question here then becomes: Is this true also of the Soul of a fetus? If it is, then the question of “murder” is off the table in the abortion issue. And, for that matter, in all human affairs. The question in all human affairs becomes: What is the purpose of the Tri-Part Being that we call humans (Body/Mind/Spirit) coming into physical form in any particular lifetime? Does the Soul get only one lifetime to complete its purpose? Does it get any finite number of lifetimes? Or does it get an endless number of lifetimes, an infinite number, using All of Eternity to experience what it was designed by God to experience?

        And what, pray tell, is that?

        These are the difficult questions that true spiritual investigation must explore. And these questions confound the Mind, because the Mind is working with extraordinarily limited data—and inaccurate limited data at that: The inaccurate data given to us by human religions. Well intentioned religions, let us make it clear, but religions whose understanding is just as limited as that of human individuals. The problem: we are dealing here with incomplete data.

        Human religions would have us believe, for instance, that the Soul lives One Lifetime, and that is that. This places the question of abortion—and all human interaction, for that matter—within an extraordinarily limited context. Is it okay to end the Singular Life of A Soul using the death penalty, but not okay to do so using abortion? And what, exactly, makes one action perfectly okay, while another is not?

        Ah!, we say…because we have found the criminal “guilty,” while the fetus is “innocent.” So WE get to “play God” and decide (and we’d better be Right in every case about this) who is “guilty” and who is not. But in terms of a fetus we know for certain that it is innocent, and should therefore be granted physical life under every circumstance, without question.

        Yet when we discuss things at this level, we are not talking about the level of Soul. We are talking about the level of physical being. The Soul of the criminal may or may not be “guilty.” We say that is up to God to decide. It is not ours to judge. God will make that judgment. Some people have killed others with what they felt was “good reason”. So we let God be the judge. We only kill those who WE think we have “good reason” to kill. If THEY thought THAT had “good reason” to kill, and if we don’t agree, we kill them for that. But we can only deal with the physical, and we have to let God deal with the spiritual. We’ll deal with the bodily issues and let God deal with the Soul-level issues.

        Yet if that gives us the “right” to terminate the life of a cellular physical mass that call call a fully grown adult — through the death penalty, for instance (to speak nothing of what we call our “justified” wars) — why would it not give a woman the “right” to terminate the life of a cellular physical mass the size of a small coin, that we call a fetus?

        In both cases, are not the spiritual matters the purview of God? Yes, but we have that question of Guilt and Innocence once again. But have we not said here that many innocent people have been killed in wars that some humans felt were nevertheless justified? And have not innocent people been killed using the death penalty that some people felt was nevertheless justified? Could not both have been “mistakes”?

        You see, the whole of human affairs becomes very complicated when we consider its complexities within the context of what we imagine ourselves to know about Life Itself. Yet what if there was something we do not KNOW about God and about Life, the knowing of which would change everything? What is life was eternal, and you could not “terminate” the “life” of any Soul, no matter how hard you tried? And what if there was no such place as “hell,” and that even Hitler went to heaven — as Conversations with God says? What if there is more to this whole process of Life on Earth than meets the eye? What if we are trying to put a puzzle together with half the pieces missing?

        NOW we are talking. Care to have THAT discussion?

        If so, use the Comment Section beneath this post.

  • Don’t replace one set of beliefs with another

    Remember, with this, as with all communications from God, take what you read as valuable, but not as Infallible. Know that you are your own highest authority. Whether you read the Talmud or the Bible, the Bhagavad-gita or the Quran, the Pali Canon or the Book of Mormon, or any holy text, do not place your source of authority outside of you, but, rather, go within to see if the truth you find there is in harmony with the truth you find in your heart. If it is, do not say to others, “This book is true.” Say, “This book is true for me.”

    And if others ask you about the way you are living because of the truth you have found within you, be sure to say that yours is not a better way, yours is merely another way.

    That is what this present communication is. This communication is just another way of looking at things. If it makes the world more clear for you, fine. If it puts you more closely in touch with your own innermost truth, good. But be careful not to turn this into your new “holy scripture,” for then you will have simply replaced one set of beliefs with another.

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    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the bottom of the ancillary copy below.

    If Conversations with God has touched your life in a positive way, you are one of millions of people around the world who have had such an experience. All of the readers of CWG have yearned to find a way to keep its healing messages alive in their life. One of the best ways to do that is to read and re-read the material over and over again — and we have made it convenient and easy for you to do so. Come here often and enjoy selected excerpts from the Conversations with God cosmology, changed on a regular basis, so you can “dip in” to the 3,000 pages of material quickly and easily. We hope you have enjoyed the excerpt above, from the book: Communion with God.

    =====================

    About Book-On-A-Bench…

    If you believe that the messages in Conversations with God could inspire humanity to change its basic beliefs about God, about Life, and about Human Beings and their relationship to each other, leave those messages lying around.

    Simply “forget” or “misplace” a copy of Conversations with God on a bench somewhere. At a bus stop, or a train station, or an airport—or actually on the bus, train, or plane. At a hairstyling salon, a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a park bench, or even just a bench on the street. Just leave a book lying around.

    If everybody did this, the message of Conversations with God could “go viral” in a matter of weeks. So I invite you to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

    ABOUT NEALE

    Neale Donald Walsch is a modern-day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways.  With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before beginning his now-famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching the lives of millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day living.

    Neale was born in Milwaukee to a Roman Catholic family that encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. Serving as his first spiritual mentor, Neale’s mother taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the divine — and she taught Neale to do the same.

    A nontraditional believer, Neale’s mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale: “I don’t have to go to church — God comes to me. He’s with me and around me wherever I am.” This notion of God at an early age would later move Neale to transcend traditional views of organized religion.

    Neale grew into an insatiably curious child whose comments about life seemed to possess a wisdom beyond his years, and often caused relatives and family friends to ask, “Where does he come up with this stuff?” While attending a Catholic grade school, Neale would often pose questions in catechism class that would extend past the traditional grade school curriculum.

    Finally, the parish priest invited Neale to his rectory to answer the difficult questions that he didn’t wish to address in front of the rest of the class. This meeting turned into a once-a-week visit that blossomed into an open forum in which Neale learned not to be afraid to ask questions about religion and spirituality—and also learned that his asking these types of questions did not mean that he would offend God.

     

    Joyless spirituality is observed.
    Is rigidity and anger sometimes produced by religion?

    By the age of 15, Neale’s involvement with spiritually based teachings led him to observe that when people got involved in religion they too often seemed less joyful and more rigid, exhibiting behaviors of prejudice, separateness, and even anger. Neale concluded that for many people the collective experience of theology was not positive.

    After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold him and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.

    Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director; a newspaper reporter and, ultimately, managing editor; public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems; and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

     

    A life-changing accident.
    A desperate questioning that touches the world.

    He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scenery strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of location. It produced a change in his entire life. One day a car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path. Neale emerged from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.

    More than a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him the better part of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found, at first, modest part-time jobs, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time employment and an eventual spot as a syndicated radio talk show host.

    He had seen the bottom of life living outside, gathering beer and soft drink cans in a park to collect the return deposit, but now his life seemed to be on the mend. Yet, once more, Neale felt an emptiness inside. In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take,” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, “to make life work?”

     

    The books that began a spiritual revolution.
    The words that opened doors again.

    Now well chronicled and widely talked about, it was this questioning letter that received a divine answer. Neale tells us that he heard a “voiceless” voice, soft and kind, warm and loving, that gave him an answer to this and other questions. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled these responses onto the tablet.

    More questions came, and, as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed placed inside his head, but also seemed clearly beyond his normal thinking. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way, on-paper dialogue. He continued this first “conversation” for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad.

    Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says that the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue created in this way was published without significant alteration or editing. He also says that God is talking to all of us, all the time, and that he has come to understand that this experience is not unusual, nor does it make him in any way a special person or a unique messenger.

    In addition to producing the renowned With God series, Neale has published 18 other works, as well as many video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, seven of the Conversations with God books made the New York Times bestseller list, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying a place on that list for more than two-and-half years. Walsch’s books have sold more than seven million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages.

    The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms across the planet. In order to deal with the enormous global response to his writings, Neale formed the Conversations with God Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love.

     

    The work expands.
    A movement begins.

    Neale founded the School of the New Spirituality and its CWG for Parents program to bring parents the tools to share new spirituality principles of a loving, non-condemning God with their children. He also founded Humanity’s Team, with branches in over 30 countries, now promoting the concept of the Oneness of all people and of all of life.

    What Neale calls his “final creation” is The Global Conversation, an Internet Newspaper dedicated to exploring day-to-day events on our planet within the context of The New Spirituality, and offering people across the globe the opportunity to not only witness the playing out of humanity’s Cultural Story in the news, but participate in re-writing that Story, through their contributions and posted comments on the newspaper’s site.

    Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Machu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

    Everywhere he has gone—from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul—Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live; a way to co-exist, at last, in peace and harmony, with a reverence for Life Itself in all its forms, and for each other. And he has sought to help them develop a new, expanded understanding of God, of life, and of themselves that allows them to create and experience this.

    (Neale Donald Walsch lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife, the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).)

  • CONGRESSMAN SAID THERE’S NEVER
    MEDICAL REASON FOR ABORTION

    The GOP is in trouble again. Republican Congressmen Joe Walsh, representing Illinois’ 8th District, declared last Thursday night that there is never a single instance when there is a medical necessity to use abortion to save a woman’s life.

    The congressman’s remark came in a televised debate against his Democrat opponent, Tammy Duckworth, and was reported by writers Bob Secter and Deborah L. Shelton in a copyrighted stored in the Chicago Tribune.

    The Tribune article was picked up and widely distributed by the Washington Bureau of McClatchy News Service and can be found here.

    Asked about the statement after the debate, Mr. Walsh stood by his assertion in his response to reporters. “With modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which an abortion would be needed to save the life of a mother, the Republican said.

    The Tribune story said that “medical experts sought to refute Walsh’s initial claim,” the newspaper reporting that “The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said 600 women die annually in the U.S. from pregnancy and child-birth related causes.”

    By the day after the debate, Mr. Walsh was retreating from his first remarks made both during the debate and afterward, the Tribune story said. “Those comments had created a firestorm,” the Tribune article said, and the paper reported that Mr. Walsh, who the newspaper described as “a tea party icon,” was “in damage control mode.”

    “At a hastily-called news conference, the rookie congressman backed off that sweeping assertion, slightly, acknowledging ‘very rare circumstances’ where life-saving abortions might be required,” the Tribune story said.

    The Chicago newspaper continued its report by quoting Dr. Erika Levi, an obstetrician-gynecologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Tribune story said that, according to Dr. Levi, life-threatening medical conditions that can lead to terminating a pregnancy include infections of the uterus or the amniotic sac surrounding the fetus, some heart conditions, and pre-eclampsia, a rapid rise in blood pressure that occurs during pregnancy and in the period right afterward.

    “All of these conditions can occur throughout the pregnancy,” the Tribune quoted Dr. Levi as continuing. “If these conditions occur prior to viability (of the fetus) then, at that point, abortion can become the only option to save the life of the mother.”

    The Tribune story also quoted Dr. David Grimes, a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, who, the paper said, “added others to the list, including complications of diabetes, pulmonary hypertension, and cancer, which he said sometimes can require termination of the pregnancy before treatment can proceed. Cases severe enough to require abortions are rare, Grimes said, adding that he nonetheless sees several a year.”

    The paper said that “Grimes took issue with anti-abortion politicians, Walsh included, who view ‘women as some kind of Tupperware container that holds the fetus for nine months’.”

    “I am flabbergasted that he is that out of touch with science,” the Tribune quoted Walsh’s opponent, Ms. Duckworth, as saying. The Democrat supports abortion rights, the paper said.

    Rep. Walsh’s comments drew rapid comparison with the now widely repeated statements by Republican Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri, who is in a race against Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill for a seat in the United States Senate. Mr. Akin, like Mr. Walsh a staunch opponent of abortion, proclaimed that a woman’s body would automatically stop her from becoming pregnant in a case of “legitimate rape.” The statement outraged both men and women inside and outside the political arena, and caused Akin to immediately lose funding and support.

    The ongoing statements from both Republicans, and other members of the GOP across the nation, on the abortion issue have led to stern words of protest from women across America, and have caused considerable trouble with the female voting block for GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Mr. Romney has sought to distance himself from extremists within his party by announcing repeatedly that his own opposition to abortion includes exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

    GOP Congressman Walsh’s first statement that modern medical science has completely eliminated the last-case scenario, and his follow-up retreat that such a circumstance was, in fact, possible, but would be “very rare,” could be bringing a bit of election angst to Romney campaign headquarters, and to that of other Republican candidates for lower public office throughout the nation.

    The issue has become a political hot potato in the 2012 campaign season, as both citizens and their political leaders struggle to find a place for government, if any, in the highly personal circumstance of a woman facing the question of whether to have an abortion. There are those who argue that the decision is a matter of women’s rights, while others declare that abortion is akin to murder and should be made illegal in all cases by the government.

    Mr. Romney has flatly declared that if elected he will push to eliminate all funding for Planned Parenthood, and has indicated as well that he would appoint pro-life justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Such a move, observers say, would no doubt tip the delicate judicial balance that has kept intake the Roe v Wade decision, which is the landmark Supreme Court case which struck down many state laws restricting abortion.

    Women, and those men who support women’s right to an abortion and their right to make that decision without government interference, fear that should Mr. Romney be elected president, Roe v Wade will be overturned with his appointees in place.

    Looking at how the New Spirituality might be overlaid on this issue, it is noted that Conversations with God says that freedom is a perfect description of the nature of Divinity. In a perfect society of highly evolved beings, CWG says, there would be no laws of any kind, and all behavior would be regulated individually by each member of such a society, automatically and without requirement bringing them into harmony with, and awareness of, the highest good of all concerned.

    The question for our Earthly society in the 21st Century becomes: To what degree is humanity ready and able to live with such freedom? Business owners, for instance, want freedom from government regulation, while at the same time many of them want government to regulate what a woman may legally decide about her own body. Human society is still trying to work out the contradictions.

    And your thoughts?

  • MANY VOTERS KNOW LITTLE ABOUT
    THEIR COUNTRY OR CANDIDATES

    The saddest aspect of the democratic process in America is that so many people don’t know—and don’t seem to care—about facts. It is not Truth that matters, it is ideology. And when Truth flies in the face of what a person believes, many people insist that the Truth is a lie, thus making it possible for them to stick with their beliefs no matter what.

    For instance, U.S. President Barack Obama recently said: “After a decade of decline, this country has created over half a million new manufacturing jobs.” The Truth: Since he took office, the country has lost about a million such jobs, and has regained more than half of them during the economic comeback. When a football team loses 15 yards of first down, then regains 8 yards on  second down, that is not exactly called progress.

    For instance, Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney said in the second debate: “We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office.” The Truth: the economy was losing 800,000 jobs a month when Mr. Obama took office as a result of 8 years of President Bush’s administration—so holding Mr. Obama to a net job creation standard means he would have to have made up for massive losses that were out of his control entirely. AND….he has done it. The Bureau of Labor statistics show that across the four years of the Obama Administration there has been created a net positive 125,000 jobs.

    Item 1 above was taken from a fascinating article in Time magazine’s Oct 15 issue, titled Blue Truth/Red Truth. The second item came from a story by reporter George Nornick published Oct 17 by The Nation headlined Romney’s Seven Biggest Debate Lies. Here’s another…

    Mr. Romney said in the second debate: “I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care or not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.” But back in March, when Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri introduced a bill that would allow employers to deny contraceptive coverage to employees based on the employer’s religious beliefs, Mr. Romney said: “Of course I support the Blunt amendment.”

    Mr. Romney also said in that second debate: “As a matter of fact, oil production is down 14 percent this year on federal land.” And, reporter Nornick points out, it is true that drilling on public lands dropped 14 percent in 2011. But it went up 15 percent the year before. So overall, oil production on federal lands is up under Mr. Obama. Says The Nation article: “Romney is being extremely dishonest in singling out the one year that it dropped.”

    Meanwhile, the Time magazine article pointed out that Mr. Obama has asked on the campaign trail, “What rights would Romney deny (for gay couples)?” Then he has answered his own question: “Adopting children together.” The magazine points out that this is simply false. The article in Time corrects the record, pointing to the fact that Mr. Romney “supports adoption rights for same-sex couples.”

    But the problem is about more than what the candidates say. It’s about what the American public actually knows. In the Oct 17 issue of USA TODAY writer Katrina Trinko, a member of the paper’s Board of Contributors, reports that “only 34% of Americans can name even one Supreme Court justice,” citing an August survey by FindLaw.com. She also reports that in 2011 Newsweek magazine asked 1,000 Americans to take a citizenship test—and 38% failed.

    And a 2006 study by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum “discovered that only 28% could identify even two of the First Amendments five freedoms,” Trinko continued.

    But it’s not only constitutional provisions or civic questions that too many voters know little about, it’s “what’s so” in American life itself. For instance, Trinko reports, “a 2011 CNN survey found that the median estimate for the percentage of the budget that was foreign aid was 10%. In reality, it was then under 1% of the total federal budget.”

    The writer says that “it’s the same story with public broadcasting,” touted by Mr. Romney in a debate as a place where he would cut expenditures, saying he “loves Big Bird,” but the cost of PBS had to go. The public’s median estimate of the PBS portion of the federal budget was 5%, “while actually it was 1/100th of 1%,” Ms. Trinko’s article said.

    It’s becoming sadly clear that many people don’t like it when “fact checkers” take the sting out of their candidate’s charge, or the lift out of their candidate’s claim.

    They like it when Mr. Romney says he wants to “keep our Pell Grant program growing,” allowing young people who might not otherwise be able to afford it to go to college, and they hate it when fact checkers like Mr. Nornick point out that the budget of Mr. Romney’s own running mate, Vice-Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, would cut Pell Grants for up to one million students.

    They like it when Mr. Romney responds to a debate question about where he stands on equal pay for women by saying that he actively sought to bring more women into his cabinet when he took office as governor of Massachusetts, and they hate it when fact checkers point out that he actively and vocally opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.

    (And they totally despise it when Mr. Nornick reports on a Boston Globe story revealing that there were no female partners at Bain Capital during the 1980s and 1990sand that even today only four of forty-nine of the firm’s managing directors are women.)

    People like it when Mr. Obama’s campaign charges that the way Bain Capital reorganized “cost the government and the American taxpayers $10 million,” and they hate it when fact checkers at Time magazine point out that “Bain wrote off $10 million in debt to a failed bank at the expense of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (the FDIC)—which is funded by banks. Taxpayers paid nothing.”

    In just a few days now the people of American will decide: What part should Truth and Facts play in their decision regarding who shall be the next President of the United States? But the real question is, are there enough people with enough intelligence to even care?

    A few days ago, when Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers showed that the unemployment rate in America is now lower than it was when Mr. Obama took office, right wing Republicans ran around claiming on all the talk shows that the latest statistics where artificially skewed in a vast internal conspiracy within the Obama Administration. These are the same statistics that those same Republicans considered extremely reliable when for the 43 previous months they showed a high unemployment rate.

    The conclusion of the Far Right: When the numbers support us, embarrassing the President for 43 straight months, the Administration could do nothing to hide them or skew them, and so those numbers are reliable and you can stake your life on them. When the numbers oppose us, showing the President has made some gains on the problem, the Administration must have at last found a way to secretly pressure or force the Bureau of labor Statistics to report false numbers, and so the new stats are the result of a conspiracy.

    People believe what they want to believe. The New Spirituality calls for complete transparency in all matters, public and private. Will we ever see that in our political campaigns? Not in 2012, apparently. And worse yet, not enough people seem to care.

  • Free Will eliminates the possibility of ‘hell’

    (Part 4 of a 5-part series)

    There is a very good reason why you cannot go to hell no matter what you do during your life here on earth. There is no such place.

    We are invited by the Conversations with God writings to explore the possibility that God’s Kingdom is divided into three parts—what we might call the Realm of the Spiritual, the Realm of the Physical, and the Realm of Pure Being. Nowhere is there mentioned a place of eternal torment and damnation.

    Of course, other spiritual writings do mention such a place, as we all know. So the question becomes: Which of Earth’s spiritual writings is accurate and true?

    The difficulty with approaching such a question is that some religions claim that the question itself is a blasphemy. In some religious communities one can be sentenced to death for posing such an inquiry.

    Some religions seek to make it very clear that the writings that support their spiritual understanding were “inspired by God,” and are therefore beyond question. They are to be taken as the Literal Word of God. No questions asked, no doubts permitted.

    Yet if even one of the writers of the world’s many sacred scriptures got even one of the major principles upon which an entire religion is based wrong, or misinterpreted anything at all, the world could have been inadvertently misled for hundreds or thousands of years.

    On the question of “hell” and “damnation,” Conversations with God tell us this is exactly what has occurred. God is the creator, the source, and the essence of Pure, Unconditional Love, and would never judge and then punish God’s own creations simply because—to use one striking example from ancient and contemporary religious doctrine—different people have come to God by different paths.

    Does it really seem that a loving, caring, compassionate and all-wise God would say to a devote and loving, patient and kind, compassionate and generous, caring and forgiving person that because he or she did not belong to a particular religion that he or she was going straight to hell?

    Please.

    There is no such place as hell. It simply does not exist. There is, however, an “afterlife.” And in that Afterlife every sentient being will experience what is true: that every sentient being has been given Free Will.

    It is how we have used that Free Will that has produced the Hell on Earth that so many human beings have experienced—and are continuing to experience on this very day. Yet in the moment that we leave this physical body and return to the Realm of the Spiritual, we will use that Free Will (which will still be ours, by the way) to express and experience our True Nature (which is Divinity) fully. Unless we don’t. If we want or feel the need to experience some sort of “hell”…if we feel we deserve it and ought to go there…we will. (Thus, the testimony of some people who have clinically died, come back to life, and sworn that there was a “hell” on “the other side.”)

    Yet in the one-millionth of a nanosecond that we experienced what we, in our imagination, have thought “hell” to be, we would surely say, “I want out of here!”—and with that very thought we would free our Selves, as an experience and expression of Who We Really Are…and that will be “heaven.”

    (A remarkable and detailed description of this entire process will be found in the book Home with God.)

    Even more amazing, we have the opportunity to express and experience that True Identity right here on Earth. We don’t have to wait for the Afterlife. We can experience our Divinity right here, Right Now. Indeed, all of physical life was created as an opportunity for us to do so. It is what we decide and what we do, both individually and collectively, that determines whether we experience our Divinity.

    (Neale Donald Walsch is the author of the Conversations with God series of books. His newest writing, The Only Thing That Matters, releases this week from Hay House. In it he describes how we can all experience our Divinity.)

  • THE NEW POLITICS: YOUR VOTE
    MAY BE TIED TO YOUR PAY CHECK

    A Chicago-based magazine has just released the recording of a telephone conference call last June in which Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, speaking to a group of small business owners organized by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, urges employers to “make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise, and therefore their job and their future, in the upcoming elections.”

    The practice is perfectly legal, and employers should utilize it to influence the vote of their workers, Mr. Romney said. The GOP candidate presumably does not feel that this is another case of the intimidation of hourly-wage or salaried employees by their bosses.

    Mr. Romney’s remarks came at the end of a conference call in which he assailed President Obama’s policies as being not good for business, and Mr. Obama himself as being anti-business. “And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope—I hope you pass those along to your employees,” he told the business owners. Mr. Romney said he believes that what employers tell their employees “will figure into their election decision, their voting decision…”

    The recording of the conference call was reportedly published June 17 by In These Times, the Chicago magazine, and re-printed by online outlets, including The Huffington Post and ThinkProgress, according to a report on June 18 by The Slatest, a widely-read online news source. That story may be accessed here.

    Readers of The Global Conversion will recall that we pointed here to a widely circulated story a few days ago about the owner of a Florida time-share company who apparently took Romney’s advice, telling his estimated  7,000 employees in a memo from the front office to them all that if Mr. Obama was re-elected and then raised taxes on the super-rich as he had promised, he did not see how he could keep his business operating at its present level and that he would probably have to lay off some employees.

    The man, who a few years ago listed his net worth at over a billion dollars, was featured on a recent television program as now attempting to build the Biggest House in America, a 90,000-square-foot mansion depicted here.

    What all of this raises in terms of The New Spirituality is the perennial question: What, if anything, can Those Who Have More reasonably be asked to share with Those Who Have Less? Mr. Romney has already announced the income tax rate he pays is a fraction over 14%—which is much less than the rate that most Americans of 1/100th of his income pay. Warren Buffet, the multi-billionaire, likewise announced a few months ago that he pays a tax rate that is less than his secretary’s. Mr. Buffet said that this is patently unfair. Mr. Romney has indicted that there is nothing wrong with this.

    And you say…?

  • OUR OLDER PEOPLE: DO WE
    OWE THEM ANYTHING?

    The number of older Americans, defined as those over 65, is expected to increase from 43 million to 75 million in the next two decades. That is short—but not by much—of a doubling of that critical count. And why is it critical? Because it raises a critical question: Who shall take care of them?

    The question, of course, is not limited to the United States. As the standard of living increases everywhere, as advances in medical science and technology continue, with one disease after another being defeated, life has been made better for people everywhere. And not only better…but longer.

    And whether “longer” will continue to equate with “better” remains one of humanity’s biggest question marks. Were we better off, as a species, when we died younger? We have told ourselves, “No.” We have told ourselves that the longer we live (barring catastrophic and painful illness), the better. Yet if this is true, we face as a species that critical question: Who shall care for all the longer-living humans?

    Do all of us, as members of this species, love those who gave us life—and, by their labors, opened us to its bounty—enough to grant them the fruits of those labors until they die? Even if it takes them a long time to die?

    In essence, the question breaks down to this: To what—if anything—are older humans entitled?

    That word—ENTITLEMENT—is playing a big role today in American politics. And on Oct. 16—the day of the second Presidential Debate—a story ran on the American television network CNN announcing that the rise in Social Security benefits in the United States will rise by only 1.7% in 2013, which, the news report said, “won’t be quite enough to cover the increase in prices over the last year.”

    Still, the CNN report went on, “it’s better than the previous two years, when benefits did not rise at all.”

    The cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security is based on the Consumer Price Index, the government’s key inflation reading, the CNN report explained.  The September reading came out Tuesday and it showed overall prices up 2% compared to a year earlier, greatly due to higher prices for food, gasoline and medical care. The so-called core-CPI, which is closely watched by economists and investors because it strips out volatile food and energy prices, also rose 2% over the last 12 months.

    Yet even that index provides a wildly inaccurate picture of what senior citizens are really facing, its critics assert, because it does not truly account for the real increase of costs for older people. For instance, older people use much more medical care than most younger human beings—and the cost of medical care has increased by 4.4% in the latest CPI rating, according to the CNN report.

    Most seniors no longer pay income taxes in the U.S., and fall in what  Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney described in his now famous “47% speech” at a Republican fundraiser in the U.S. on May 17. Here is what Mr. Romney said:

    “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That’s an entitlement. The government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…

    “These are people who pay no income tax…My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5-10% in the center that are independants, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

    Mr. Romney, asked about his remarks immediately after a video of them became public, defended his observation vigorously, although he allowed as to how he stated them inelegantly. Two weeks later, he had changed his mind, saying that he was “completely wrong” in his comments. American voters were left to decide if this was simply an effort to regain votes he may have lost as a result of his earlier remarks and his defense of them.

    The larger question that Mr. Romney’s 47% Speech raises is this: Just what “entitlement” does humanity’s older population have a “right” to claim? Most cannot continue working, and thus producing their own income. Nor should they have to. Fifty-five years or more of “contributing to society” should be sufficient to earn them some time of rest toward the end of their lives if they desire it, no? And who says that a person who is retired is somehow a “non-contributing” member of our society? Must we work—even if we are healthy enough to do so—until we are 80 in order to be considered to be “contributing” to the whole?

    One point of view about older people is that their own family members should take care of them, not a government which taxes the income of all of its younger, wage-earning people in order to do so. Another point of view is that the entirety of young humans should take care of the entirety of older humans, as two groups whose lives are intrinsically intertwined.

    Within the understandings and the messages of The New Spirituality there is no question on this issue. The primary message of Conversations with God is stated in four words: We Are All One. Clearly, were humanity to adopt and embrace the concepts of CWG and The New Spirituality, there would be no discussion of how humanity as a whole would take care of those members within its species who could no longer take sole care of themselves.

    Younger people would do so, and would do so gladly, considering it an honor—even if they had to sacrifice in order to do so. Indeed, especially if they had to sacrifice would they consider it a way of honoring Those Who Have Gone Before.

  • We are nearing the 2nd stage
    of Earth’s transformation

    GOD: You are nearing the second stage of the process of transforming life on your planet, and it can be complete in a very short period of time—a few decades to one or two generations—if you choose.

    The first stage of this transformation has taken much longer—indeed, several thousand years. Even this, in cosmic terms, is a very short time. It is during this period of The Awakening of Humanity that individuals whom you have called teacher, master, or avatar self-identified, and then undertook the task of reminding others of Who They Really Are.

    As the number of people who are touched by this early group and their teaching increases to critical mass, you will experience a “quickening of the spirit,” or what you might call a breakthrough, in which second-stage transformation begins.

    Now the adults begin teaching their young—and from that point on, the movement is very quick.

    Your race is at this breakthrough point now. Many humans felt a shift when you moved into what you called your new millennium.  This was a key point in the onset of a global shift of consciousness, in which you are now playing your role.

    The key to continuing this momentum lies with your young. If the education of your offspring now includes certain life principles, your species can make the quantum leap forward in its evolution of which it is capable.

    Build your schools around concepts, not academic subjects; core concepts such as Awareness, Honesty, Responsibility. Sub-topics such as Transparency, Sharing, Freedom, Full Self-Expression, Joyous Sexual Celebration, Human Bonding, and Diversity in Oneness.

    Teach your children these things, and you will have taught them grandly. Above all, teach them of The Illusion, and how—and why—to live with it, and not within it.

    ========================================

    Editor’s Note: If you would like to COMMENT on the above excerpt, please scroll down to the bottom of the ancillary copy below.

    If Conversations with God has touched your life in a positive way, you are one of millions of people around the world who have had such an experience. All of the readers of CWG have yearned to find a way to keep its healing messages alive in their life. One of the best ways to do that is to read and re-read the material over and over again — and we have made it convenient and easy for you to do so. Come here often and enjoy selected excerpts from the Conversations with God cosmology, changed on a regular basis, so you can “dip in” to the 3,000 pages of material quickly and easily. We hope you have enjoyed the excerpt above, from the book: Communion with God.

    =====================

    About Book-On-A-Bench…

    If you believe that the messages in Conversations with God could inspire humanity to change its basic beliefs about God, about Life, and about Human Beings and their relationship to each other, leave those messages lying around.

    Simply “forget” or “misplace” a copy of Conversations with God on a bench somewhere. At a bus stop, or a train station, or an airport—or actually on the bus, train, or plane. At a hairstyling salon, a doctor’s office, a chiropractor’s office, a park bench, or even just a bench on the street. Just leave a book lying around.

    If everybody did this, the message of Conversations with God could “go viral” in a matter of weeks. So I invite you to participate in the Book-On-A-Bench program and spread ideas that could create a new cultural story far and wide.

    = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =


    ABOUT NEALE

    Neale Donald Walsch is a modern-day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways.  With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before beginning his now-famous conversation with God. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching the lives of millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day living.

    Neale was born in Milwaukee to a Roman Catholic family that encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. Serving as his first spiritual mentor, Neale’s mother taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the divine — and she taught Neale to do the same.

    A nontraditional believer, Neale’s mother hardly ever went to church, and when he asked her why, she told Neale: “I don’t have to go to church — God comes to me. He’s with me and around me wherever I am.” This notion of God at an early age would later move Neale to transcend traditional views of organized religion.

    Neale grew into an insatiably curious child whose comments about life seemed to possess a wisdom beyond his years, and often caused relatives and family friends to ask, “Where does he come up with this stuff?” While attending a Catholic grade school, Neale would often pose questions in catechism class that would extend past the traditional grade school curriculum.

    Finally, the parish priest invited Neale to his rectory to answer the difficult questions that he didn’t wish to address in front of the rest of the class. This meeting turned into a once-a-week visit that blossomed into an open forum in which Neale learned not to be afraid to ask questions about religion and spirituality—and also learned that his asking these types of questions did not mean that he would offend God.

     

    Joyless spirituality is observed.
    Is rigidity and anger sometimes produced by religion?

    By the age of 15, Neale’s involvement with spiritually based teachings led him to observe that when people got involved in religion they too often seemed less joyful and more rigid, exhibiting behaviors of prejudice, separateness, and even anger. Neale concluded that for many people the collective experience of theology was not positive.

    After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, but academic life could not hold him and he dropped out of college after two years to follow an interest in broadcasting that eventually led to a full-time position at the age of 19 at a small radio station far from his Milwaukee home, in Annapolis, Maryland.

    Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale in the years that followed became a radio station program director; a newspaper reporter and, ultimately, managing editor; public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems; and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

     

    A life-changing accident.
    A desperate questioning that touches the world.

    He had relocated in Oregon as part of a change-of-scenery strategy to find his way, but Fate was to provide more than a change of location. It produced a change in his entire life. One day a car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his path. Neale emerged from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.

    More than a year of rehab threw him out of work. A failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself on the street, homeless. It took him the better part of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found, at first, modest part-time jobs, once again in broadcasting, then worked his way into full time employment and an eventual spot as a syndicated radio talk show host.

    He had seen the bottom of life living outside, gathering beer and soft drink cans in a park to collect the return deposit, but now his life seemed to be on the mend. Yet, once more, Neale felt an emptiness inside. In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take,” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, “to make life work?”

     

    The books that began a spiritual revolution.
    The words that opened doors again.

    Now well chronicled and widely talked about, it was this questioning letter that received a divine answer. Neale tells us that he heard a “voiceless” voice, soft and kind, warm and loving, that gave him an answer to this and other questions. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled these responses onto the tablet.

    More questions came, and, as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now seemed placed inside his head, but also seemed clearly beyond his normal thinking. Before he knew it, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way, on-paper dialogue. He continued this first “conversation” for hours, and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad.

    Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He says that the process was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the dialogue created in this way was published without significant alteration or editing. He also says that God is talking to all of us, all the time, and that he has come to understand that this experience is not unusual, nor does it make him in any way a special person or a unique messenger.

    In addition to producing the renowned With God series, Neale has published 18 other works, as well as many video and audio programs. Available throughout the world, seven of the Conversations with God books made the New York Times bestseller list, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying a place on that list for more than two-and-half years. Walsch’s books have sold more than seven million copies worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages.

    The With God series has redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms across the planet. In order to deal with the enormous global response to his writings, Neale formed the Conversations with God Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to inspiring the world to help itself move from violence to peace, from confusion to clarity, and from anger to love.

     

    The work expands.
    A movement begins.

    Neale founded the School of the New Spirituality and its CWG for Parents program to bring parents the tools to share new spirituality principles of a loving, non-condemning God with their children. He also founded Humanity’s Team, with branches in over 30 countries, now promoting the concept of the Oneness of all people and of all of life.

    What Neale calls his “final creation” is The Global Conversation, an Internet Newspaper dedicated to exploring day-to-day events on our planet within the context of The New Spirituality, and offering people across the globe the opportunity to not only witness the playing out of humanity’s Cultural Story in the news, but participate in re-writing that Story, through their contributions and posted comments on the newspaper’s site.

    Neale’s work has taken him from the steps of Machu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

    Everywhere he has gone—from South Africa to Norway, Croatia to The Netherlands, the streets of Zurich to the streets of Seoul—Neale has found a hunger among the people to find a new way to live; a way to co-exist, at last, in peace and harmony, with a reverence for Life Itself in all its forms, and for each other. And he has sought to help them develop a new, expanded understanding of God, of life, and of themselves that allows them to create and experience this.

    (Neale Donald Walsch lives in Ashland, Oregon with his wife, the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).)