My dear, dear companions on this journey…
The time has come for me to make a closing statement about Conversations with God — this wonderful experience that has touched my life and, amazingly, the lives of millions of others around the world.
By “closing statement” I do not necessarily mean “final” statement. I may very well have more things to say about CWG before I die (and after I die, for that matter, as I am sure there will be writings released after my departure). So by “closing statement” I mean to say that the words here are intended to bring a close to any speculation about how I feel about, how I personally hold, the Conversations with God experience — and how I wish and hope that anyone who is, or becomes, aware of it will feel also.
I want to put to rest any thought, idea, notion, or claim that may lead to a misunderstanding that any person or group may have about me, and about the body of work that has filled over 30 books and consumed the last 25 years of my life.
I am aware, of course, that some people and groups have called me a blasphemer, a heretic, an apostate, and, in the extreme, an instrument of the devil. I understand how they could have come to that, for many of the ideas I have placed into the world directly confront and specifically contradict their most sacred beliefs.
Because of this, I am very okay with them calling me these names. I am okay with it because I admire and encourage the active and energetic defense of one’s own most sacred beliefs, so long as that defense does not involve or include the inflicting of emotional or physical violence. (No, not even to protect — much less, to extend) — those beliefs.) For in my heart’s deepest experience and my mind’s highest understanding, sacred beliefs lose the quality which rendered them “sacred” if they are demonstrated in a way that deeply or irrevocably damages another.
But so long as we create and maintain the space within which you can share and practice your beliefs and I can share and practice mine…and we can do so while loving each other purely, and admiring each other genuinely, for having the courage and the gumption and the willingness to do so without rage-filled hostility, without brutality, and surely without bloodshed…then we will have both venerated our beliefs and honored each other. And what better way can there be to reveal why our beliefs feel so valid to us?
It is true that in my writing and in my speaking I have offered critical commentary on certain beliefs held by and espoused by particular religions, but I placed each of those statements into the arena of ideas in the spirit of simple and honest disagreement — and I hope that I have always welcomed the spirited disagreement of others with a willingness for open engagement in ongoing and vibrant dialogue.
That said, I hope you will hear me when I offer, with as much clarity as I can muster, this “closing statement” on the messages of CWG: I could be wrong about all of this.
Don’t imagine for a second that I don’t think about that. I think about it all the time. Matt Lauer once asked me in an interview on The Today Show on NBC: “Neale, do you ever doubt that the experience you’ve had is what you say it is? Do you ever doubt the accuracy of the information you feel you’ve been given?”
My response was immediate, simple, and straightforward.
“Matt, the day I stop doubting is the day I become dangerous, and I have no intention of becoming dangerous.”
So I want to tell you to doubt as well. (I’m sure I don’t have to encourage this.) I want you to be clear that one of the most important messages of the Conversations with God dialogues is not to believe them.
Indeed, in the very first book of the nine texts we hear this in the voice of God:
“Believe nothing I say. Simply live it. Experience it. Then live whatever other paradigm you want to construct. Afterward, look to your experience to find your truth.”
We do well to remain our own authority in all matters regarding the Self and the Soul. No one can tell us what is True for us, and no one should try.
I will always be happy to tell you what is true for me. I became very clear about my truth when I read the recommendations and the suggestions on how I might live my own life found in the CWG dialogue. I couldn’t help but think: “I wish someone had told me these things fifty years ago. I can’t imagine a better way to live.”
I hope that if and after you read and absorb the CWG material, you agree with me. I hold this hope because I truly believe its messages can profoundly change your individual life, and the world entire, for the better. But whatever your personal response to the 3,000+ pages of this dialogue, I think we can concur that this is a powerful subject we are talking about here, and it is good to proceed with care.
All of it is wrapped up in our relationship with The Divine—indeed, in the question of whether there even is a “God.” And that is not a small matter.
Our understanding of all of this is significant because most human beings need and seek and sooner or later deeply yearn to find some kind of meaning in life. Without that meaning, without some purpose for it all, many of us soon find ourselves simply trudging along with heaviness of heart, trying to make the best of something we haven’t even begun to understand, pushing through our days and nights engaged in what appear to be increasingly aimless, valueless, senseless activities that clarify nothing, produce little, and generate not much more than “things to do” while on our way to where, we don’t know, but an eventual end that we call death — the anticipation of which offers naught but a heightened sense of what feels like the almost bitterly laughable fruitlessness of it all.
And so we yearn, and we search. And giving it deeper thought as I write this, I arrive at a place of knowing that if we hold the notion that there is some sort of Higher Power in existence, our reaching clarity may very well be guaranteed.
Seek and ye shall find, God has said to all of us. Knock and it shall be opened unto you. We may very well be caused to remember that there is something greater going on here. Information may come our way that will make the “larger-ness” of all that is and all that occurs suddenly apparent.
But what is the larger reason for it? What is the greater purpose? What is the grander point? These are the questions we all ultimately ask about life. And this is what I believe only your own ongoing conversation with God can tell you. The ideas and the pronouncements of others can perhaps lead you closer to it, but only your own inner communion with The Divine can open your heart and mind to your deepest truth.
I hope, then, that you will allow yourself to experience such a communion, to have such a conversation, and to know . . . whatever your most sacred belief, whatever your religion, whatever your faith tradition, or if you have none at all . . . that you can experience your own first-person, one-on-one exchange with God.
For some it may come in the form of words. For others, as feelings, or a simple sense of “knowing.” For still others, pictures and thought forms and signs and signals may present themselves as life itself is being lived.
God’s “conversation” has no limits, no boundaries, no specifications in terms of “how” it may proceed and how its messages may be sent or received. But I do not believe that your interaction with The Divine was ever intended to be a one-way encounter. I believe it was intended to provide you with comfort, to produce for you wisdom and clarity and strength, and a goal worthy of your dedication, of your commitment, of your time and your effort.
And so, I encourage you to engage in your own conversation with God every day, in whatever way feels natural and good to you, based on your tradition or your innermost feeling. Call it prayer, call it meditation, call it inspiration, call it whatever you wish. And if my exchanges with God have lead you to your own, my publishing the CWG books will have succeeded in its goal—which was not to open you to my truth, but to put you directly in touch with your own.
God has blessed you, and me, and all the world. And if we simply extend God’s blessings to everyone whose life we touch, through all the days of our lives, in each of the encounters that fill our hours upon the Earth, we will have unlocked the Secret of the Ages held within the folds of the most sacred doctrines of all of humanity’s spiritual belief systems: Love is the answer. Love is all there is. Love is who you are. And the experiencing and expressing of love is why you are here.
There you have it. The mysteries of life have been solved.
I could, of course, be wrong about all of this.
(But I don’t think so.)
;o)
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