The EDGE | Feature Article Moments of Grace The EDGE Interview with Neale Donald Walsch by Carrie McDowell and Eric Plantenberg “God did not pick me. God picks everyone. God is speaking to all of us, all the time. The question is not, to whom does God talk? The question is, who listens?" -- Neale Donald Walsch Neale listened. And the result: A New York Times bestseller. A dialogue with God that has been translated 27 languages. World speaking tours and hundreds of book signings. Most importantly, millions of people worldwide who are waking up and remembering their own divine connection. A renowned speaker and author of the ground-breaking trilogy Conversations with God, Neale Donald Walsch captivates audiences all over the world with a beautiful and universal message of love. Neale will be speaking in Madison, Wisc., from 7 to 10 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25 at the Masonic Center. In his new book, Moments of Grace, true stories of synchronicity, faith and healing, are woven together with Neale's comments to illuminate how Conversations with God can truly be activated in our lives. Neale spoke with us from his home in Ashland, Ore. On the first page of Moments of Grace --which by the way is an extraordinary book... Neale Donald Walsch: Thank you for saying that. Because I keep getting the question, "Why you?" I said finally to my staff, "You know, I need to take some of those letters I've gotten from people and put them into this book because people are still thinking that somehow it's about me or that I was singled out or chosen." You really need to understand that every one of us is having these moments of grace in which we are touched by the experience of having a conversation or some interaction with God. So I'm very excited about the Moments of Grace book. People who have read it are apparently excited as well, because they're starting to give it away to friends as happened with Conversations with God. On the first page, you talked about how, in Conversations with God, if we learned anything it's that God talks to all of us all of the time. A lot of people really don't get that. You follow it up by saying we can only hear God when we're open to listening. If someone asked you, how do you become more open to listening, what advice would you give them? Walsch: Well, first you have to be willing to admit to the possibility that there's something to listen to. Otherwise, it's like having the radio in your car but refusing to turn it on because you don't think there's anything there. So the first step is to be willing to acknowledge that there may be a signal out there. That's not a small first step, because whole piles of people think this is rubbish and I'm making this all up and it doesn't exist and yadda yadda yadda. Once we say, "Yeah, okay, I get it, there's a God, and there's a signal out there, and God's signal goes everywhere," then the second step is to allow ourselves to move into a place of worthiness. That also is not a small step. It's a huge step for people, because even if they could admit to the possibility that a thing called God exists -- or especially if they admit that "Yeah, God does exist" -- then they almost automatically go to the thought: "He would never talk directly to me. I mean he talks to the Pope and to Mother Teresa maybe, and I guess Gandhi may have been inspired once in a while, but not me. Not Harvey Wallbanger from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania." So we automatically deselect ourselves from the group of people who are worthy enough to receive direct communications from God. We do it for a whole pile of reasons: for the same reasons we deselect ourselves from everything else in life -- being worthy of being loved, being worthy of being successful, being worthy of having in life what we would love to have in life. For all those reasons, we just reject. That's a huge second step to say: A) God exists. B) I'm worthy to be receiving these communications directly -- not generically like I go to church where God talks to all of us through the prayers or whatever, but just specifically me. But if we're willing to go to step A and step B, and if we have raised our willingness bar high enough to get past those two, then we move to step 3. Step 3 is to sensitize our awareness to everything that's happening around us, to all of life, and be aware that God speaks to us in a thousand different languages -- truly as the Native Americans would say, as whispers on the wind. And I mean that quite literally. Walk down a dusty road and just listen to the Earth and listen to the wind and listen to the water rushing through a stream. Native Americans understood this perfectly. They would go off on a vision quest and just sit there and do nothing but listen to the planet and come back with incredible clarity. Look all around us at everything that is happening: the deer that crosses our headlights, the billboard around the next corner, the lyrics to the next song you hear on the radio, the chance utterance of a friend you just happened to meet on the street, or, in fact, the whispered words that you hear inside of your mind standing in the shower. Begin to sensitize yourself to the gazillion and one ways in which the universe communicates to life about life and in which God talks to us. Once you're aware that every incoming message is a potential message from the universe, a potential conversation with God, you begin to listen to life more carefully -- not just to each other, but to all of life. We begin to listen to everything that's occurring and we begin to listen to that aspect of life that we call ourselves. We begin at last to listen to ourselves: to our own body, to what our body is telling us about ourselves. We listen to our own intuition and our own heart. Lastly, we listen to our mind. We really do that at the end, after listening to everything else, because to be able to hear all of the rest of the conversations with God, we've got to be out of our mind. As we lead with our heart, in politics, in religion, in economics, in business and in relationships, we begin to live life in a whole new way, for we've listened to ourselves and we've given ourselves permission to say what's really so -- and we follow that advice, and life becomes an entirely different experience. So, how does the message from the Conversations with God books fit or complement traditional faiths, such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and the Eastern religions? Walsch: I think it says exactly what those religions say, but I think it says it far more clearly, far more definitively and far more categorically. It eliminates any negative aspect of one's failure to do do what is commanded. What it says simply that religion does not say is you can have a friendship with God -- or not, as you wish -- and if you don't you won't go to hell and you won't burn in fires of damnation. None of that is going to happen. It's not necessary any more for us to feel we have to come to God -- or else. And by taking the "or else" out of it, it shifted the entire experience of deity. When you consider all of the "With God" books as a body of work -- the Conversation with God trilogy, Friendship with God and Communion with God -- they issue to the world a challenge to adopt a new theology: that ours is not a better way; ours is merely another way. That's the second way in which the "With God" cosmology diverges from the traditional theologies of the world's religions. Most of the world's religions insist that their way is the best way, and in fact, in some cases the only way, to return to God. Some suggest that if one doesn't take that particular way, one is doomed to everlasting damnation or something equally as horrible. What the With God cosmology did was take that aspect of explicitivity out of it, saying to the world that there is no true religion, just as there are no chosen people. In fact, there is no one path back home. All it really takes to return to God is a sincere and authentic desire to do so. And in that instant, one is returned, because -- in truth -- one never left. With the expression of that authentic desire, one's perception is opened and one is then able to experience that God never went anywhere and that we've always had that connection. That makes a lot of sense. What do people do with their existing faith after they see beyond the negativity in it and really get to the core of the message of Conversations with God? Walsch: Well, nothing. Live it. I mean, there are millions of people who have read the CWG books and find great truth there and wonderful wisdom who have continued to practice their theology, their religion of choice. Indeed, many priests and rabbis and members of the clergy have written to me telling me how much they have enjoyed my books and how much this reading helped to re-contextualize their experience of their own faith, but certainly it did not drive them from it. I think they just simply re-contextualize their own religious experience, taking the best of what they found there and simply releasing gently without recrimination or making wrong any aspect of their own personal theology that simply doesn't feel real in their minds. People have done that anyway, long before my books. It didn't take Conversation with God books to cause people to live their religion, each in their own unique way. Catholics were using prophylactics long ago, all the while the church was teaching that was a no no. I do think Conversation with God gave people a larger space of permission to do so. And I think the people who have read Conversations with God have given themselves permission at the next highest level to live their own theology in a way that is unique to their deepest understandings and to their individual experience. For tickets to see Neale Donald Walsch in Madison, call 1 (888) 695-2565 or visit www.ticketworks.com. For more information on Neale Donald Walsch visit his website. Copyright © 2001 Carrie McDowell and Eric Plantenberg SEPT 2001