An Interview with International Best Selling Author of
Conversations with God
Neale Donald Walsh
Renee: You have a very inspiring story Neale – a story of your world falling apart in the 1990s – a fire, a marriage break up, a car crash, a broken neck, ending up homeless, having to find food from a dumpster… to receiving your first million dollar publishing deal for your first Conversations with God book in 1995. That is quite a transformation! What role, if any, do you feel luck played in this, or was it destiny, or an act of will self created?
Neale: That’s a very good question. I don’t think it was an act of destiny that I would receive a book contract, in the amount that you mentioned. I think it was an act of destiny that the material came to me, that the messages came to me, and I think it was an act of destiny that I was able to hear those messages clearly and that I took them down in writing, and submitted them to a publisher. I think that was all, in a sense, an act of destiny. I don’t think it was luck, in the classic sense of the word luck. I think it was luck in the sense of, when things are…how do I put this…when things are supposed to happen, they happen the way they’re supposed to happen. They take place the way they’re supposed to take place. But I don’t think that it was just simply sheer luck, I think God had a hand in all of this. (laughs)
Renee: Now Neale some may find it difficult to swallow that you’ve had conversations with God… thinking “sure you can talk to God” but, God doesn’t answer back. Or does he?
Neale: Well, that’s another good question. And the answer is yes, she does. It’s important for us to understand this, I think that we were always meant to hear and have a two way conversation with God. Not simply one way and I’m not the first person to have suggested and announced that such a two way conversation has taken place. There are people throughout the ages that have made the exact same statement. Usually it takes a few years for people to accept that such a thing might have happened. Sooner or later I think that people can understand that where does inspiration come from? Where does creativity come from? Where do poets draw their ideas from, and musicians and composers and artists of every kind? Not just authors of books so… you know what’s interesting is that I don’t have a need for anyone to believe I had a conversation with God. I’m not running around the world trying to convince people that this happened. I have no need for anyone to believe that. I simply suggest, read the material, if you’re curious enough to do so, and make your own decision whether the material, whether the messages have brought any benefit to you. And if you feel benefit from reading the material wonderful and if you don’t, throw it away, get rid of it as fast as you can.
Renee: I love how you say that God didn’t stop talking 2000 years ago.
Neale: Yes, a lot of people want to imagine that God has had a case of celestial laryngitis and that he simply stopped talking 2000 years ago. That’s not really true and it’s not really like that. God is talking to all of us all the time. The point made in the book is exactly that. On page 5 of 3000 pages of dialogue, the statement is made by God, “I am talking with everyone all the time. The question is not to whom am I talking, the question is who’s listening?”
Renee: Yes, and as you say, we might not interpret and understand through our creativity and our inspirations that it is actually God speaking to us.
Neale: I think that is exactly the way we receive messages from the Divine. Messages come in a wide variety of ways – the lyrics of the next song you hear on the radio, the chance utterance of a friend down the street, and in a thousand other ways as well. But it’s pretty clear that God is talking to us all the time. There is no doubt about that, no question about that.
Renee: I like how earlier when I questioned you about God and referred to God as ‘he’, you answered with ‘she’. The God that you converse with in these books, how would you describe this God?
Neale: Well, I think there is nothing of which God is not. God is neither man or woman, nor is it any particular form or shape, nor a singularity. I think that, in my experience, God is everything, that is there is nothing that is not God. So when you ask me how would you describe God, I would simply say look around you. Look at the universe, look at the cosmos, look at every single human being that you may encounter in your daily life. That which I understand God to be permeates everything and is part of everything. And so my answer to your question would be in my understanding there is nothing that is not God.
Renee: Another one of your words of wisdom is that “The Universe is conspiring in our favour always”. Now that can be a hard pill to swallow. For example, personally, my 14 year old son died 18 months ago and I could easily question this statement, as could many, many countless others suffering in countless ways . So even when seemingly ‘bad’ things happen to us, it’s in our favour?
Neale: In the sense that we are here for a particular purpose. That every human being is here, with the singular intention, to express and experience their true identity and their divine nature at the highest level through which the circumstances will invite and allow. In that sense everything, even the terrible, terrible experiences of life leads to our evolution. That is everything is part of the package that produces the evolution that we are now experiencing. So my understanding and my experience has been that all things lead to the next expression of divinity that emerges from us, in us, through us and as us. And that expression is a response to all the events of life. The same thing could be said by the way, for the man that many people have understood died on the cross in Calvary. That is the person known as Jesus. How was that possible if he really was the son of God, or for that matter, simply just one of the holiest men anyone has ever known. How could such a thing happen to him? Or is it possible that it did not happen to him but that it actually happened through him? That is at his behest at some level. Now that is difficult for us to embrace, I agree with you, I agree with your statement. It’s very difficult for us to embrace and yet spiritual masters throughout the ages, not just Jesus but many spiritual teachers; the Buddha, Lao Tzu, your contemporary spiritual masters; Paramhansa yogananda two years ago, the Dalai Lama even to this day. All great spiritual masters tell us the same thing – God and we, are one. We are here to express, or invited at least, to express divinity and nothing that occurs in our life is misplaced, in the sense that, each is a stepping stone into the next expression of who we really are, including the terrible tragedy that occurs in the lives of so many of us.
Renee: So what would you say is God’s plan for humanity?
Neale: God doesn’t have a plan for humanity in the sense that we understand the word plan…like we’re going to win the world series or cure cancer or this is going to happen or that is going to happen. God doesn’t have a plan in that sense. God has a desire, in my understanding. God’s desire is that each human being on the planet, and for that matter all sentient beings in the universe, in the entire cosmos, have the opportunity to announce and declare, to express and come to experience who they really are. And then life is designed to be a co-creative process in which all people engage collaboratively to producing the outcomes and events that allow us to step into the perfect circumstance ….. which we can do exactly that.
Renee: Now, through the journey of your life, have you come to a place where you no longer struggle, where you don’t have down days or wobble from your path?
Neale: No. No I would be telling you a fib if not an outright lie if I answered yes to that question. No, no I have struggles, and conflicts and difficulties and challenges every day of my life. I’m not walking on water nor am I at a place where I have reached perfection in my expression of divinity. But if you ask me am I doing better now than I was 20 years ago my answer would be profoundly yes. Have I found a greater level of peace, a greater level of joy, a greater level of harmony, a deeper level of understanding, a higher place of compassion and forgiveness for myself and others? The answer is yes.
Renee: So with all the attention and fame coming your way from these books, did you struggle with what we call the ‘ego’?
Neale: All the time. Every time I get up in front of an audience. Every time I write another book and have it published. Every time I appear on national television programs. Every time I do a radio interview like this one right here. Of course I deal with ego all the time, I can’t not. I walk down the street and somebody stops me and asks for my autograph, my ego kicks in right away. “Wow, look at this am I not special?” The question is not whether our ego kicks in, the question is what do we do in response to that? How do we deal with that? Because our ego, by the way, is not a bad thing, the ego is that element of us, that part of us that allows us to know that we are individualised. The ego is that part of us that allows us to know and experience our individuality. As long as it doesn’t cause us to experience superiority. So when my ego comes up for me, what I have to do is simply to recognise again, and call forth my deeper understanding, that I am individualised, but I’m not superior, I’m not better than, I’m simply different from others on the planet. And it’s okay to announce my difference, as long as I don’t imagine that my difference makes me better.
Renee: Now Neale what role does kindness play in our lives? Our magazine theme this edition is kindness so I wanted to ask you about kindness.
Neale: (laughs) I think that kindness is the element, or the essence or the characteristic if you please, of life, a word, a label that we give to a certain kind of behaviour, that allows us to demonstrate the grandest thought we have about ourselves and about others. So then kindness becomes the key, the key that opens the door, that unlocks the vault, behind which is the secret of who we really are, and who everyone else is. Kindness is the key that opens that door and then we see ahhh, when I am kind…and by the way not only kind to others but when I am kind to myself, while I am exhibiting kindness with myself and with others, it is in those moments that I begin to demonstrate and put into actuality, an expression of my true identity. So I think kindness becomes critical. It is the key that opens the door to everything.
Renee: Now we always end our program with a gratitude segment and one of the quotes I’ve read from you is “The struggle ends when gratitude begins”. Neale what advice can you give us when we are finding it difficult to feel the gratitude?
Neale: “Thank you God for allowing me to understand but it is difficult to experience gratitude because I do not hold it as my true reality in this moment. I don’t feel grateful right now, but thank you God for giving me the opportunity to notice that, and to step into gratitude anyway. To judge not be appearances but to hold as my highest truth that perfection is playing out in my life right here right now. And thank you God as well for allowing me to understand that this problem has already been solved for me. And that what is going on for me in my life right now is but a stepping stone, allowing me to advance even further, in the evolution of my soul and my advancement of my journey here on the Earth.”
Renee: One last question, another quote from you Neale is…. “That if you want to create abundance for yourself, then create it for someone else.” How does that work?
Neale: Well, whatever it is that you want to experience in your own life be the source of that same thing in the life of another. Whether it’s abundance, or patience, or compassion or understanding, or partnership or love, or whatever you wish to experience more of in your life, cause another to experience more of it in their life. That is, be the source of that which you wish to receive. Move from the playing board of life, if I can use that analogy, move from the place of being the seeker, to being the source. When we are in the place of seeker, I seek more love, I seek more abundance, I seek more patience, compassion and understanding. When we occupy the place called seeker, we are dependent of some other source, God perhaps, or some other person perhaps, your boss, your wife, your husband, lover, whoever it may be, we are looking outside of ourselves to receive that which we imagine to have insufficient supply of. On the other hand, if we consider ourselves to be the source of it, we discover that what flows through us, sticks to us. That what we give to another becomes part of who we really are. It automatically expands the experience of ourselves because we suddenly realise I already have that! Therefore, whatever it is that you wish to experience in your life, be the source of it in the life of another. It’s magic! You become not only the source, but the sorcerer.
Renee: Oh I love that! Thank you so very much for your time Neale and enjoy your visit to Australia.
Neale: Thank you also and good bye for now.
Renee Cashman – McAlpine
Editor of Connect Magazine North Queensland and so much more …