Neale Donald Walsch On The Essential Path

Our guest this week is Neale Donald Walsch, is a writer, actor, speaker, globally recognized as the author of the life-changing “Conversations with God” book series. Neale 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 searching for spiritual meaning before experiencing his now famous conversation with God.

Transcript

Welcome to the Inspired Evolution and guys it is such a humble treat to be here today.

We have with us,

Neil Donald Walsh.

Neil,

How are you?

I'm wonderful,

Thank you for asking.

I hope you are too.

I'm doing amazing.

A blessing to have you here today.

For those tuning into Neil for the first time,

Bear with me just a second.

He's a man that needs very little introduction.

As his conversation is probably the largest one we can have,

Right?

It's a conversation with God.

He's a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways.

Neil's felt the majority of his life thriving professionally yet searching for spiritual meaning for experiencing his now famous Conversations with God.

Conversations with God is a series of books that have emerged from those encounters that he translated into 37 languages.

It's touched millions and it's inspiring important changes in everyday people's lives everywhere,

All around the world.

He's written 29 books on spirituality and more importantly,

In my humble opinion,

It's practical application in everyday living.

Conversations with God has redefined God for us.

It's shifted spiritual paradigms around the world.

In order to deal with the enormous response to his writings,

Neil has also helped develop these outreach projects such as the Conversations with God Foundation.

All of this is dedicated to help move the world from violence to peace,

From confusion to clarity,

From anger to love.

His work has taken him around the globe where he's experienced a collective hunger among people to find a new way to live,

Right?

At last in peace and in harmony.

He sought to bring people a new understanding of life and God which would allow them to experience just that.

The Essential Path is a book that he's recently written that I'm in love with.

It brings us a roadmap to at last live in peace and harmony.

But it begins with the daring decision to be who you truly are.

So thank you so much for being here and taking the time and energy to be here with us today Neil.

Well,

You're very welcome.

It's generous of you to ask me and I'm delighted to be able to join you and all of my readers and friends in your wonderful country.

So I wanted to start and let's hit the ground running.

What is the biggest problem that we face today,

Neil,

In your opinion?

Yes,

It's a fascinating question and my observation is that the biggest problem in the world today is that most people don't know what the biggest problem in the world today is.

That is,

We see the outcome,

We see what I would call the fallout from the biggest problem,

But we don't know what's causing the fallout.

We don't know why that outcome is occurring.

It's kind of like getting in your car,

You know,

And you turn it on,

You turn the key and the car won't start.

You can see that the car won't start,

That's the fallout,

But you don't know why.

And if you don't know how cars run,

If you open the hood and you have very little knowledge as a mechanic would of how a car operates,

Then you're really dead in the water.

There's nothing you can do.

So you know that the car won't start,

But you don't know why.

That's what's going on here.

We know that our civilization won't start moving in a direction that we would like it to move in,

But we don't know why.

We can't get under the hood,

We don't understand what the largest problem in the world today is.

So that's the biggest problem in the world today as I see it is that we don't know what the biggest problem in the world today is.

Now let me talk about the outcome.

We can see the fallout all over the place.

I could put that in one word.

I don't even need to make a speech about it.

In a single word I can describe the fallout.

The word is alienation.

Everywhere we look,

More now than ever before in my lifetime.

And I'm an older gentleman.

I'm not 17 anymore,

Or 27,

Or 37,

Or 47,

Or 57,

Or 67.

I'm almost 77 years old.

And never in my 77 years have I seen the world experiencing alienation at the level that I'm observing today.

People are just needing somehow or another to make each other wrong,

To demonize each other,

To alienate themselves from each other in political parties,

In social movements,

For a nation alienated from nation,

Races alienated from races,

Members of certain religious groups alienated from members of other religious groups.

They're just somehow or another wanting or needing to make each other desperately wrong for being different from or other than us.

And that is causing not just in the country where I live,

In the United States,

But all over the world really,

This incredible split in our community.

And interestingly enough,

Fascinatingly enough,

At exactly the wrong time,

Because now with this totally unexpected experience of the worldwide coronavirus outbreak,

This pandemic that is gripping the entire planet,

The last thing we need is to be alienated from each other.

It's exactly the opposite of what the moment calls for.

But I don't think that's a coincidence.

I mean,

I think at some higher level,

That these two forces,

The forces of alienation and the forces calling us together,

Are meeting face to face at precisely the same time,

For a reason that has to do with the evolution of our species.

Yeah,

I think that's fascinating.

And so that was going to be a question that I asked you,

Which is,

You know,

Somehow we're also like,

Reading conversations with God,

And this is different to the text that is the essential path,

But they both do fit very nicely together.

There is this conversation that perhaps,

You know,

I wanted to ask if whether the greater levels of alienation actually serve greater levels of connection.

And I'm enthused by this conversation because connection,

I widely advertise,

Is my highest value as a human being.

I live to connect.

But yeah,

Does that,

Like,

Does the greater level of alienation in some way serve us coming into greater levels of connection?

And does that mean that alienation must always be present for connection to be present?

How does,

How do we navigate something like that?

Interesting questions.

I think the answer to your first question is,

At some level,

Of course,

It serves us because in the absence of what we are not,

What we are,

Cannot be experienced.

To put it in simple terms,

In the absence of big,

Small cannot be experienced.

In the absence of fast,

There's no such thing as slow.

So we live in a contextual field that requires the other than,

If I could use that phrase,

That requires that which we are not to,

At some level,

Emerge in order for us to create an experience that which we are and to know it in relative terms.

The question becomes,

How large must the other than experience be?

And for how long?

Is it sufficient for it to simply emerge and to reveal itself in the short term,

In a relatively small way,

Or must it in fact overtake the entire planet before we wake up?

And that,

Of course,

Is the key question facing humanity right now.

How much of what we don't want to be has to reveal itself before we shake our collective heads,

Before we tisk,

Tisk ourselves?

I don't believe it.

Before we decide,

All right,

Enough is enough,

And choose to move in a different direction.

That is,

In fact,

The question facing humanity at this very moment.

You've asked the key question facing everyone on the globe,

And all people who have an opportunity to play a role in the changing of our collective direction.

And so we're discussing evolution,

Which obviously is a very dear topic to me,

Inspired evolution is the name of the show.

But it seems like you're alluding to the fact that we have a decision in our evolution.

Oh,

My goodness,

Of course we do.

Evolution is not a process that happens to us.

It's a process that happens through us,

Especially sentient beings.

We might not say that perhaps about a plant,

You know,

Or maybe even a fish.

But certainly when we talk about sentient beings,

That is beings who have the experience of sentience,

And sentience is defined as self-consciousness,

Self-awareness.

You know,

It's true that if you put a dog in front of a mirror,

It'll bark,

Because it thinks it's seeing another dog.

And I tried that once with my puppy,

And I didn't want to be cruel,

But I just wanted to try it as an experiment just for a moment or two.

So I put him in front of a mirror that I had placed at floor level,

And of course he immediately began barking,

Who's that other animal,

And what is he doing in my house?

But because most animals do not have an experience of self-awareness.

But if we define sentience as self-awareness,

And I do,

Then we notice that beings that are self-aware have a role to play,

In fact a key role to play,

In the process by which they evolve,

Because they are aware of what is going on with them,

In them,

As them,

And through them,

In every moment of their life.

And they can make decisions that affect that experience.

And so what decisions are,

Like,

A decision implies a choice,

What are some of the choices that we have?

Like,

You know,

What is it,

Fundamentally,

That's the decision we have to choose between,

That's consistently creating where we are?

Like I know alienation is.

.

.

That's a huge question,

There's a million and one answers to that question.

One answer is,

I'm sorry,

Even as there are a million and one moments in the lifetime,

Or a billion and one moments in the lifetime.

So the choices,

But the choices at the largest level are,

Do I wish to be who I really am?

Or do I wish to embrace the story that I have told myself and that my society and my species has told me about myself?

What do I do?

What do I choose to be true about me and about who I am and about how I express and experience myself in life?

That's the key question.

You know,

The key choice is,

Who am I?

You know,

There are really only four questions in life,

What I call four fundamental questions.

Number one,

Who am I?

Which is interesting,

You know,

Because my father would ask me that question throughout my childhood from the time I was 10 or 11 years old,

My father must have said to me three times a week,

Who the hell do you think you are anyway?

And I understood that he didn't know that that was a metaphysical question,

It was really a huge spiritual question.

But I've carried that question with me through all the years of my life.

And I realized that in every moment of my life,

I am now answering that question,

Who am I?

Well,

Watch this,

And then I decide who I am,

And then I demonstrate who I am by everything that I think,

Say and do.

So the first of the four fundamental questions of life is who am I?

The second question is,

Where am I?

I don't mean what room of the house am I in,

Or even what country am I living in,

Or even what planet am I in?

I mean,

In the largest sense,

In the cosmological sense,

Where am I?

What is this place that I find myself in?

And I have answered that question by defining the place I'm in as what I call the realm of the relative.

Or if you please the realm of the physical,

I am in the physical realm.

That's where I am.

Question number three,

Why?

Why am I where I am?

And that's a question that people,

Religions,

Philosophies have sought to answer for lo,

These many years.

Why am I where I am?

What am I doing here?

What's the purpose of life?

What's this all about?

What's it all about Alfie?

What am I doing here?

Which leads us to the fourth and final fundamental question of life.

Once we answer that question,

Question number four,

What do I intend to do about that?

What do I intend to do about my answer to question three,

Which is why am I here?

Now,

What I noticed,

My friend,

Is that most people have never answered or even asked themselves those four questions.

And so if you walk down the street with a clipboard and just take a survey of people say,

You know,

Why are you here?

What is the purpose of your life?

It's astonishing how many people will look at you and say,

Darn if I know,

You know,

I don't if I have the answer to that question,

I'd be a millionaire.

So people,

You know,

The largest number of human beings on the earth from my observation,

I'm willing to be wrong about this.

I would like to be wrong about it.

But from my observation,

The largest number of people on the earth do not know why they're here.

They do not know what they're doing,

What the intention of life is at the highest level.

They have bought into,

You know,

The cultural story.

You know,

I know what I'm supposed to be doing.

Neil,

I know what I'm supposed to be doing.

I've heard it since I was 12 years old.

Get the guy,

Get the girl,

Get the car,

Get the job,

Get the house,

Get the spouse,

Get the kids,

Get the grandkids,

Get the better job,

Get a better car,

Get the better house,

Get the better spouse,

Get the better spouse,

Get the better spouse,

Get the better spouse,

Get you know,

Get the cruise tickets,

Get the retirement watch,

Get the illness and then get the hell out.

And that's what they assume that life is.

And you know,

I try to put that in a semi humorous way.

But it would astonish you how many people on the earth live their life according to that formula.

Because they don't know what they're doing here.

I wrote a book once that starts off with the following sentence,

Chapter one,

Page one,

Sentence one.

98% of the world's people are spending 98% of their time on things that don't matter.

And it's understandable because they don't know what they're doing here.

They think it's about,

You know,

Get from birth to death,

The guy with the most toys at the end wins.

They have no idea what they're really trying to do,

What they're trying to accomplish,

If anything at all,

Nor do they have any idea even who they are,

What their true identity is.

They don't even know whether they're a physical being,

Simply a physical entity,

Like a bird or a fish or a dolphin or a whale,

You know,

A biological creature,

Perhaps more sophisticated than most,

Fair enough.

But beyond that,

Nothing more than a biological entity.

Nor is it possible,

Just possible that they're more than that,

That they're a spiritual entity having a body and a mind,

But that they are not their body and they are not their mind.

I love to stand up in front of audiences.

I tap myself on the chest and I say,

I know you think this is who I am,

But this is not who I am.

This is what I have.

I have this,

But I am not this.

I'm something much larger than this.

And until you understand that about yourself,

You will have no idea what in the hell you're doing here.

And I mean that literally what you're doing here in this hell.

What in this hell are you doing here?

And that's the biggest challenge facing humanity.

It's been the challenge facing our species for millennia.

And we're just now,

Because we're a very young species,

Enormously young,

We're a youthful,

One of the youngest species of sentient beings in the cosmos.

We're just now coming to a place where we can even begin to seriously ask these kinds of questions,

Much less answer them.

So that was really profound for me in that,

You know,

I asked a nebulous question and it distilled back to the answer,

Which is,

You know,

Our relationship with these fundamental four questions,

Which are based on our relationship with ourself and our identity,

Which,

You know,

Stems to one of the questions I have of the book,

You know,

Such a massive topic of conversation in terms of widespread systemic failure in terms of,

You know,

Seeing people as fundamentally different and the alienation that comes from that.

But then somehow the title of the book is,

You know,

The courage to truly be who you are,

Right?

It's like,

Like,

Who am I truly is one of the questions that emerges from that.

But then also the other question being,

How does something so nebulous come back to my relationship with myself and my identity as the,

As the key?

Those are the fundamental questions of life.

And most people have,

As I said,

Not even stopped to answer.

I beg your pardon,

Not stop to ask those questions,

Much less to answer.

That's why,

You know,

I've written 37 books,

Each book hoping to delve even more deeply,

To dive even further into the questions and the answers.

And so the question that comes up for me then is,

Do you feel that there is an inherent,

Like is it ignorance that is avoiding us from asking these questions?

Or do you think there's a palpable resistance?

Right.

And the reason I asked that is because in the title of the book,

It's obviously called daring,

Right?

So it takes a certain element of courage.

Is it to combat our resistance or is it to combat our ignorance?

What are we daring against?

What,

Why do we need courage to be ourselves?

I think,

My friend,

I think ignorance is a strong word.

I wouldn't use that word on a three-year-old for instance.

If I,

If I was trying to assess why a three-year-old acts the way a three-year-old acts,

I wouldn't say it's because she's ignorant because it's too strong of a word to use.

It carries too much energy,

Too much negative energy.

And it's not really an appropriate word to use for a three-year-old.

Well,

Guess what?

We are the three-year-olds of the cosmos.

We're a very,

Very young species.

Let me,

Let me just delve into that just a bit to give you an idea of how young we are.

Let's take the age of the earth as a yardstick,

As a measuring stick.

Let's place the age of the earth on a,

On a calendar year.

That's a good idea.

Let's,

Let's,

Let's say that the earth is,

The earth's age could be placed over a calendar year just to bring something that's so enormous in terms of numbers down to size,

Down to something we could grapple with in our minds.

So if we pretend that the earth was created and that it came into being on the first of January,

And if we pretend that today is the 31st of December of the same year,

Using that as a scale,

The first form of life,

The first sub molecular form of life,

The tiniest expression of anything living,

Did not arise on this third rock from the sun until the middle of February.

Other life forms,

Far more advanced than those single cell life forms,

Birds in the air,

Fishes in the sea,

Did not arise on this planet until November,

The third week of November.

It took that much time for evolution to produce that outcome.

Dinosaurs did not even appear on this planet until December the fifth on that scale.

Dinosaurs did not disappear from this planet until December the 25th on that scale.

And humanoids,

Not,

Not human beings,

But humanoids,

That is mammals that looked a little bit like us and walked on two legs,

Did not appear until December the 31st on that scale.

Human beings as we know them did not appear until half after 11 o'clock,

30 minutes before midnight on that scale of time.

And my dear friend,

Using that as a scale of measurement,

The whole of human history took place in the last 60 seconds of the year.

That's how young we are in relationship to the earth.

I'm not making this up by the way,

Anthropologists have put this together.

That's how young we are in relationship to this planet.

Forget about the age of the cosmos.

In the age of the cosmos,

We're like one snap of a finger old.

And so to describe us as ignorant would be to describe a just born baby or a baby who's two weeks old as ignorant.

We wouldn't do that.

We would probably use the word innocent rather than ignorant.

So the answer to your question is that we have a resistance to asking those four questions because we're innocent.

We're too innocent to even understand the importance of the questions themselves,

Much less the importance of the answers that we give them.

Thank you so much for alluding to that.

So yeah,

Changing ignorance for innocence makes a lot of sense.

Thank you so much for the context in which you brought that to us as well.

And then the combination of our resistance through our innocence makes a lot of sense.

So one of the questions I've got then is,

Why now?

How come the work that if we are in that hour,

In that last 30 minutes,

We're having this conversation yourself and myself,

The book was written now,

The virus seems to be hitting us now.

There seems to be this shift that's kind of underfoot,

Underway,

This greater realization to bring ourselves to these questions.

Who am I?

Where am I actually?

Why am I in this place?

And what do I intend to actually do about that?

It seems like more and more people are having this conversation today.

And I think that's the lowest hanging fruit in terms of identifying that is just the widespread perception that your work is receiving.

Do you think that is because people can identify that a shift is necessary,

Even though they are not necessarily sure in terms of what that shift looks like?

Well,

Not only because they're recognizing that it's necessary,

But they recognize that it's happening.

There's an old saying,

Shift happens.

We have to be very careful how we pronounce that,

But it's very true that shift happens.

And we are seeing that now.

We are seeing things changing that we really honestly never thought would change in our lifetime.

We're seeing our values,

What we held as our values,

Our previous values being challenged and questioned at every turn.

And we're seeing our ideas about life and who we are as well challenged and changing because we have no choice because of what's happening in the exterior of our environment.

So yes,

I think that we are maturing.

That's a sign of our maturation.

We're still a very young species,

But we're not as young as we used to be.

And even as a child grows from one to two to three to four,

And sometimes with amazing speed,

I know like a six year old child,

All of us who know that child swear that he's got the intelligence of a 12 year old.

I mean,

He's just way ahead of himself is the point.

And so we are now getting to the place where as a species,

We're gathering the truth in larger gulps,

And we're taking larger swallows from the serum of ultimate reality.

And because we're growing,

We're simply maturing.

And that's what's happening right now.

And by the way,

I might add,

Not a moment too soon.

Yeah,

So one of the questions I've got from there is,

And you alluded to this a little bit in the book,

Then is the conversation about,

It's a beautiful story in there about the Rainmaker and how we all started worshipping the Rainmaker for bringing the rains in that tribal prehistoric context.

However,

We also forget to identify the fact that we were all collectively believing in the Rainmaker and that power of collective belief.

The question that I then ask is,

If we're going through this massive shift in awakening out,

Is the collective belief shifting towards that?

Are we collectively believing that a shift is unnecessary and is necessary and underway?

And if there's so much challenge that we're interfacing,

Have we called that in to some degree?

Yes.

The answer is yes to all your questions.

Can you tell us a little bit about the story?

Let me elaborate about that.

The story of the Rainmaker,

Let me just explain to our audience what that story is.

There was a drought,

A terrible drought in the caveman days at one point.

This is my assumption.

I don't have any historical record of this,

But this is my awareness of how religions and belief systems could have gotten started.

So let's pretend that there was a terrible drought and the tribe,

The caveman tribe was in danger of being eradicated.

They couldn't get it.

They couldn't grow food.

Everything was drying up,

Etc.

And the tribal leader,

The head of the clan,

Was always the most brutal and the most dangerous among them.

So he ruled by force.

They didn't want him to get angry because he'd get angry at the smallest thing anyway.

He was very,

Very angry.

He was in a very bad mood because of the drought.

So they tried to at least entertain him so he could be mollified.

And one of the entertainments they devised,

They got this guy,

Said,

Hey,

How about we just do a little dance?

Let's just do a little funny little dance.

Maybe he might find it enjoyable and he won't be in such a bad mood.

So this guy said,

OK.

He went off into the woods.

He got,

He snapped off a branch from a tree,

Which was not difficult to do because the trees were dry as anything.

He just snapped off a branch and then he ran into the campfire area and he did his little dance for the head of the clan.

And he created a little instrument that,

And the leaves,

Of course,

Were very dry.

And so he kind of like made that kind of a noise.

And he used it as kind of a rhythmic device to dance to.

You know what?

As it happened,

As luck would have it,

The rains came in that exact second.

And the whole tribe couldn't believe it.

The head of the tribe couldn't,

Nobody could,

Even the dancer couldn't believe it.

Did you see that?

Did you guys see that?

And everyone assumed that because it began raining at that exact minute,

His dance,

The rainmaker's dance,

Is what must have caused the rain.

He thereafter was called the rainmaker.

And he was placed right alongside the head of the clan as the second most important person in the tribe because people assumed that he brought on the rain.

Now what was interesting about that is what people believe,

It's a metaphysical principle,

Whether it was the year one or the year 2020,

The metaphysical principle is the same.

As you believe it,

So will it be done unto you.

So their belief became a belief system.

And the rainmaker soon became known as a priest or an ulama or a rabbi or someone who had,

And if you do that,

If you fast in this way or wear these kinds of clothes or eat these kinds of foods or believe these particular things,

Then the universe will respond to you even as it responded to the rainmaker way back then.

So now we have rainmakers in different forms,

Shapes and sizes.

We call them religions.

We call them members of the clergy.

I don't mean to disparage people who hold those occupations.

I don't mean to make them wrong.

I just mean to invite us to question,

Is this really how the universe works?

If we go to mass every Sunday or if we refuse to eat pork or if we dress in a certain way and make sure our head is always covered or whatever we think we have to do to mollify the gods,

That will bring us the result and the outcome that we want to create in our lives.

It's just a snap of a finger above superstition in my view.

And okay,

Fair enough,

If that's the kind of God we have.

I was born and raised as a Roman Catholic and I don't mean to be,

As I said,

In any way disparaging of any faith,

Much less the Catholic faith,

But I can remember the priest telling me in catechism class that if we don't go to church,

To mass every Sunday,

Every single Sunday,

If you miss mass without an excuse,

If you have to take care of your sick mommy,

Okay,

Fair enough.

Or maybe you're 17 or 18 and you have a job and you can't go,

Fair enough.

But if you don't have an excuse and you miss mass because you just choose to play golf that Sunday,

Or you choose to do something else,

If you die before going to confession and you don't confess that sin,

Guess what happens?

You're going to hell.

And I checked the Catholic church just a few months ago to make sure I wasn't misrepresenting its teaching.

Well,

Maybe that was 70 years ago when I was a child,

But in fact,

The church still teaches that.

It is a fundamental teaching of the church that you must attend mass or if you miss mass without a legitimate excuse and die,

You're going to hell.

That's one example I could cite similar examples in every religion on the face of the earth.

This is one level above superstition.

We actually believe there is a place called hell and we believe in a deity who would send us to hell for missing mass last Sunday.

Excuse me,

But I don't think so.

Yeah.

And I think the powerful thing for me is through all the throughline through all your teachings actually for me has been that,

You know,

It reconnects that separation that we have from the concept of God,

The idea of God,

The experience of God back to our direct intimate relationship with that experience.

I know you've been asked in the past,

Like what gives you,

Pardon me,

I'm not asking this question,

But the audacity to think that,

You know,

You can speak in the,

In the tongue of God,

Like as,

As,

As the mouthpiece of God to which,

Yeah,

You responded very eloquently in the past.

Everybody can,

There's nobody who cannot because there's nobody who's separate from that which is divine.

But you know what?

I have not,

I have not put words into God's mouth.

God has put words into mine.

And if,

If,

And I'm not the only person with whom that's happened.

Many,

Many people,

I mean,

Thousands of people,

Probably a couple hundred thousand people over the course of human history have experienced that God has put words into their mouth.

We call that inspiration.

We call that the process by which people are inspired to declare and announce concepts and ideas,

To share concepts and ideas that they believe in their heart to be true and that they believe in their heart to have been inspired by the divine.

Let me give you one simple example.

Throughout human history,

We have wondered where did Thomas Jefferson get the idea for the words in the Declaration of Independence here in the United States?

It's not a big thing probably in Australia,

But I can tell you in the United States,

The Declaration of Independence is held as a revered,

Honored document.

And even after he wrote it in his time,

People have recognized,

Wow,

Just the languaging alone is so eloquent and the truths within that document,

All men are created equal.

To cite one of a dozen statements I could give you from that document.

And people came to him and said,

Mr.

Jefferson,

Where did you get those words?

I mean,

How would you?

He said,

I was inspired.

And if he had said I was inspired by God,

No one would suggest that that couldn't be true.

So in fact,

People have suggested that they have been inspired by God throughout human history.

Moses made the exact same statement.

He came down from the mountain top and he said,

Here are some ideas you may want to look at,

10 thoughts,

10 ideas.

We started to call them 10 commandments regrettably because they weren't commandments,

But they were certainly guidelines,

10 suggestions.

And when he brought them down,

They said,

Who are you?

Where did you get this from?

He said,

Well,

God spoke to me on the mountain top.

And interestingly enough,

No one questioned that God spoke to him.

And no one questioned Jesus as well.

So we have made a statement on our planet that God definitely has spoken directly to human beings.

God has inspired human beings to speak and to know the truth.

We just think that he stopped doing it in the olden days.

He doesn't do it anymore.

He now suffers from a case of celestial laryngitis.

And he no longer will speak to anybody.

But there's no question,

Most human beings who believe in the scriptures believe that God has spoken directly to human beings.

He just stopped doing it way back then.

But what I have been told and what many,

Many others living this day have been told is actually,

Wouldn't it be interesting?

Wouldn't it be interesting if God never stopped speaking to us?

If God in fact is speaking to everyone,

Not just the hallowed few,

Not just the Pope,

Not just the Archbishop of Canterbury,

Not just the head of the chief rabbi,

What if God is speaking to all of us all the time?

What if the problem is not that God isn't speaking to us?

What if the question is,

Who's listening?

I love that.

Thank you so much for bringing that home.

So integrating God into our day-to-day experience seems to be the call to action here.

And in that,

The call to action then being,

If we see God in our day-to-day experience,

Can you help me reconcile some of the things that come to mind?

Let's say,

For example,

There are some challenges in the world.

There are active acts of terrorism around the world.

And when we talk about alienation and then connection,

I don't see people that are committing those acts of terrorism as me committing those acts of terrorism.

And a big part of me doesn't really want to identify with that.

How do we then reconcile the fact that,

Yes,

There is God in my day-to-day experience and I'm interconnected into everything,

But yet there are things happening that I believe I wouldn't choose to have as part of my experience?

Because God has given every human being free choice,

Free will.

The greatest gift from the divine is that God has allowed us to act as she acts.

That is,

God says,

I am the creator of my own reality.

And guess what?

So are you.

And the gift I've given you collectively and individually is the ability and the power to create your own collective reality.

And so,

And some of you are,

In fact,

Acting in ways that you think are divine.

You know,

When you ask if you were to ever take a terrorist aside and say,

Why do you do that?

Why have you done that?

Why are you committing these acts of terrorism?

You know,

I'm going to share something with you that's going to be kind of difficult to grasp or to believe,

But I'm going to say it anyway.

Because I was told this as well in conversations with God among many statements that have been challenged by others.

God said to me in the dialogue,

Every act is an act of love.

That is everything that every human being from the beginning of time throughout human history have ever done to this very day has been an act of love.

And if you look deeply into it,

You will see that the immutable truth of that.

Nobody does anything that they did other than for the reason that they love something.

If you asked a terrorist,

Getting back to where I was a minute ago,

If you were to ask a terrorist,

Why did you do that?

What do you love so much that you felt you had to hurt me in order to continue expressing your love for it?

What principle,

What idea,

What concept,

What religion,

What faith,

What belief do you love so much that you felt you had to hurt me in order to protect it or to defend it or to hold on to it?

Because that's what a terrorist would tell you.

A terrorist wouldn't tell you,

You know,

I did that because I just really love being a bad person.

Terrorists will tell you,

I think I'm a good person for having done that.

I'm defending the faith.

I'm defending a principle or I'm defending an idea or I'm fighting to hold on to my own culture,

To my own story,

To my own understanding.

I'm fighting to hold on to what I held dear because I love it and because I love that belief system and that understanding.

If you turn to it,

That's why I love the story of Jesus on the cross.

He turns to the thief next to him.

See,

Christ understood.

He understood that the thief was a good person at heart.

These only steal because they love what they're looking at and they can't think of any other way to get it into their possession.

So they steal it.

And Jesus understood that,

Which is why he was able to say with impunity,

On this day,

You will be with me in paradise.

So it's not his place to judge the motivation of the thief on the cross.

It was his to merely understand how a person could do such a thing and how a person who is operating at a level of a three-year-old in particular could do such a thing.

So I tell you this,

Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master.

You elaborate on that,

Understanding and forgiveness.

Replaces forgiveness.

Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master.

Let me use my example of a three-year-old again.

I'm at the kitchen table and my granddaughter is turning three.

It's her birthday.

Her mother has prepared a birthday party,

Invited all the children from the neighborhood in and all the grandparents and we're all at the table.

And mommy pours a glass of milk for everyone around the table because we're going to have cake and milk,

Of course.

So then mommy brings out the cake.

And my three-year-old granddaughter is so excited.

Oh my gosh,

My favorite cake,

My favorite cake,

Chocolate cake.

Mommy made me chocolate cake.

And she reaches for the cake and accidentally knocks over the glass of milk,

Which knocks over the next glass of milk,

Which knocks over the next child's glass of milk and the next and the next until before you know it,

The table is awash with milk.

And I,

As the grandfather,

Turn to my granddaughter and say,

What's the matter with you?

Go to your room.

You should know better and don't come out of your room for the next 16 years.

I will teach you to misbehave in that way.

Of course,

The grandfather immediately punishes the child,

Right?

Wrong.

The loving grandfather would do that.

True.

Not only does the grandfather not punish the child,

The grandfather will not even forgive the child.

No grandfather turns to the child and says,

It's okay,

Sweetheart.

I forgive you.

Forgiveness is not part of the equation.

Not only would the grandfather not punish the child and not forgive the child,

What the grandfather would do in the moment of the child's action is actually embrace her and hug her and tell her it's okay,

Sweetheart.

You made a mistake.

It's all right.

It's all right.

Grandpa loves you.

And so does everybody else.

Happy birthday.

Happy day on which you are birthed as a new you who understands and experiences what unconditional love truly is.

I want to tell you something.

I believe in a God who's at least as nice as my grandfather.

Thanks a lot.

You know,

You know,

My friend,

I could be wrong about all of this.

I admit that I acknowledge it in front of every audience I ever addressed in front of every media person I've ever talked to.

I could be wrong about all of this,

But I don't think so.

Neil,

Thank you so much for sharing that.

I think that's really profound in terms of the greater level of awareness that you then have greater level of understanding that you have.

We have to ask the question,

Why doesn't grandpa punish the child or even forgive the child?

Why does the grandpa actually comfort the child in the moment of her action?

Because the grandfather understands how a child could do such a thing.

Therefore we see that understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master.

Put that on your bathroom mirror and remember it every day for the rest of your life.

Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master.

And the next time you think that you have to forgive someone for something they've done to you,

Look deeply to see if you can understand how or why they could possibly have done that.

And what was I loving?

One last sentence that doesn't,

By the way,

Justify it.

It doesn't condone it,

But it does allow us to understand how it could have happened.

And also reconciling that with what you were saying before in terms of they were operating out of love as well for something that caused them to.

.

.

Of course,

She loved to talk to cake and she reached it.

Or the terrorist loved a particular principle or concept or idea or thought about himself and about his nation and about his religion or whatever we are in love with,

We will defend to the death.

Because we don't know what we're doing.

We don't understand even ourselves until the day comes when we do.

That's what you're doing here.

That's why your program is listened to by thousands of people.

Because you're one of those who is saying to the world,

Hey,

Look,

There's more here than meets the eye.

Is it possible that there's something we don't fully understand about God and about life?

The understanding of which would change everything?

If you think that that's even possible,

Join me again for my next program at this same time because I have more to share with you.

And you're one of those people.

Yeah,

That is a profound question.

Going back to one of the questions that you asked before,

Which is what have you loved so much that your actions,

Deeds,

Thoughts ended up hurting others?

I asked myself this question at one point and I started to realize that a lot of the things that were misconstrued by others or perceived as challenging for other people in regards to my existence as part of their reality.

Wow,

That's a really interesting way to articulate that but I'm trying to articulate something that's difficult to articulate,

I think.

It came back to me that a lot of it was to do with my own selfishness.

And that selfishness for me.

.

.

All love is selfish.

Yeah.

See,

We have to understand that.

The only kind of love that's not selfish is God's love.

And that's because God needs,

Wants,

Demands,

Requires and asks for nothing in return.

But to the degree that we ask for anything in return from anybody,

Even I smile at you,

Please smile back.

To the degree that we ask for,

Expect or hope for anything in return,

Then love is selfish.

But when we understand that,

We begin to learn how to step into the expression and the experience of unselfish love,

What I call pure love,

Which asks for nothing in return,

Expects nothing in return,

Requires nothing in return,

Hopes for nothing in return and needs nothing in return.

Because if I am who I imagine myself to be,

An aspect of divinity,

Then I must be love personified.

I am love.

How can I need to get love back when I am that which is love?

Love therefore requires no love in return.

Love simply hopes for and desires the opportunity to share what it is more broadly,

More widely,

More expansively with more people as life goes on.

I want to empty myself out of all the love I am so that on my dying day,

I can say I'm empty.

I gave all the love I had to give.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

I could of course be wrong about all of this,

But I don't think so.

The tempering of it.

I love it.

Thank you.

Can I ask,

How do we,

In your opinion,

Are there tools that we can help us integrate that unconditional,

That pure love into our daily expression of love?

Of course there are.

The most obvious tool has been given to us thousands of years ago.

Do unto others as you would have it done unto you.

It's a very simple tool.

We don't have to look for new tools.

We've been told how to do this,

But if you want a couple of new tools,

I can give you a couple of new tools.

There are two questions that I ask myself.

Whenever I'm encountering any moment or incident in particular in my life,

Especially if it's one that I may be puzzled about or maybe even have a mild disagreement with.

For instance,

Let's just say I'm in the kitchen,

It's the morning,

And my beloved wife,

Who's a wonderful,

Marvelous,

Lovely person,

But is simply having just a little bit of a tough thing.

Maybe it's one of those mornings when she just not quite has it together,

Or she often might say,

I'm not being myself today,

Which is closer to the truth,

By the way,

Than we could ever imagine when we are not being ourselves.

I'm so sorry I'm not being myself.

But anyway,

Let's just pretend I'm in the kitchen and a few words are exchanged between my wife and I,

And she's wrong and I'm right about whatever we're discussing,

Which of course is inevitably true.

I'm always right and she's always wrong.

But if we take that as a given,

The first thing I look at,

I'll be used as a tool,

You're asking about tools,

The first tool that I use is I ask myself what I call life's magic question.

And by the way,

I ask this not only in a moment that's a little unpleasant like that,

But even in a moment where I have a choice.

Do I really want to watch that television program?

It's been suggested that I go to a cocktail party Tuesday night,

Do I really want to go to that cocktail party?

Or do I'm in a restaurant where I really want to order this particular dish?

Any moment of choice at all,

What I call choice points in life,

I ask myself this question.

What does this have to do with the agenda of my soul?

That puts what's in front of me in a brand new context.

I no longer consider it the way I have been considering it in my mind.

I consider it in the context of if this had something to do with the agenda of my soul,

And I assure you that it does,

Or it wouldn't be there,

Then what is it?

What does this have to do with the agenda of my soul?

Now if we use the example I began with,

My wife and I are having a little bit of a tiff early in the morning,

And I asked myself,

What does this have to do with the agenda of my soul?

I can look deeply into what the agenda of my soul is,

And I can choose to call that forth and bring it into the moment,

And then interact with my wife in an entirely different way than I might interact with her if I was still in my mind.

But of course,

In order to behave this way in real life,

You've got to be out of your mind.

I mean literally out of your mind.

So that's one tool that I've come to use.

Another tool,

Since you've asked about tools,

I have a second one,

It's also a question.

Whenever I see anything outside of myself that I really don't agree with,

Whether it's the terrorist that you're talking about,

Or anything at all that I don't agree with,

I ask myself,

Is there anything that I'm seeing over there that I can find over here?

Inside of me?

The answer is almost always yes.

There's always,

You know,

My dear friend Elizabeth Kubler-Ross,

God bless her,

God rest her soul,

She was a marvelous human being,

And I worked for her on her staff for a couple of years.

She used to put it this way,

She used to say,

Neil,

There's a little bit of Hitler in all of us.

You wanted me to not think that I had somehow escaped from the worst of life,

But that everything that I have condemned and abhorred and judged exists inside of me at some level,

Maybe not at the same level,

But at some level,

It all exists in all of us.

So she allowed me to ask myself a fundamental question.

If you can forgive that in yourself,

Are you willing to forgive that in another?

When you see across the room,

Can you treat it if you would like someone to treat it when you see it in yourself?

And have you ever experienced a moment in your life when really,

Honestly,

Even by your own assessment,

You would say the worst of me just showed up?

That's really the worst of me.

That's not only,

That's not who I am.

It's just,

I just had a really bad moment.

Have you ever had a moment like that?

And most people would say,

Yeah,

Of course I've had a couple of moments.

I can recall,

I Neil can recall a moment like that back in 53,

Maybe back in 1951 or somewhere,

Maybe it must've happened before there was a joke.

It was last week.

So this morning,

But exactly.

And if most of us can say,

Yes,

I've had moments like that.

Then I think,

How would I like to be talked to?

What kind of energy,

What I wish were coming my way when I'm not at my best.

You know,

I want to say something to you about my,

My,

My darling wife,

Because I've said this to her many,

Many times.

I'm I'm,

I'm blessed to be married to an angel,

But I've told her what it's like to be married to an angel.

She said,

Oh honey,

That's very sweet of you to say that.

But you know,

We all know I'm not an angel.

I said,

No,

Yes you are.

Because you know what,

Let me tell you something,

Darling.

I can keep anybody in the room when I'm at my best,

But who's going to be in the room when I'm at my worst and you have never left the room.

That tells me all I need to know about you.

And that's how God is.

That's how angels are.

God doesn't leave the room when we're at our worst.

I could of course be wrong about all of that.

Feels right.

But I don't think so.

No.

I don't think so either.

But there are those who say,

No,

Neil,

You've got it wrong.

You're going to hell because when you're at your worst,

If you don't repent,

If you don't change your ways,

If you die in that state of sin,

God will punish you.

God will send you to everlasting damnation.

Not just a few years,

Not even just a few centuries,

Not even just a few millennia.

Get this straight,

Neil.

Finally,

You will be in eternal fire and brimstone because you missed mass last Sunday without excuse.

And there are people who believe in a God like that.

What I've gone around the world saying to people is what we need right now is what I call a civil rights movement for the soul.

Releasing humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent,

Angry and vindictive God.

I've heard you say beliefs are synonymous with our spirituality.

Can you elaborate that on this tangent a little bit further?

Of course,

Spirituality is just a larger word for belief.

Spirituality is a word that simply we use when we want to talk about our most sacred beliefs.

But they are about what we believe,

What we believe about God,

About ourselves,

About life,

About the process that we call life,

About why we're here and what happens after we end this life,

If anything happens at all.

It's our belief.

So spirituality is the larger word that we use to refer to the notions that we hold about all of those larger questions.

And you sometimes think,

Well,

You know,

They're not really important.

I mean,

You know,

We think about it from time to time,

But it doesn't have much to do with our daily life.

But it would shock people to realize,

I've talked to people in groups and sometimes they're surprised at how many of their most fundamental spiritual beliefs dictate the actions,

Choices and decisions they make in their everyday life,

In their business life,

In their relationship life,

You know,

And in their life in general.

For instance,

I'll give you just one thought,

All's fair in love and war.

That's a great statement that we've heard throughout human history,

All's fair in love and war.

Oh,

Really?

Really?

What an interesting belief.

And one could come up with 100 beliefs like that,

To the victor go the spoils.

We could come up with 100 beliefs like that,

That really dictate the choices and decisions we make,

Sometimes unconsciously,

Without us even thinking about it,

Because we've been trained that way,

Because we've been trained to embrace those beliefs.

The reason I find that really powerful is because we may see some taboo in unpacking our spirituality,

Because it may be prescribed to us,

Which a lot of this conversation has been about,

You know,

Not necessarily taking on the spirituality that's,

You know,

Prescribed to you,

But you know,

Forming your own intimate relationship with God.

It seems like it's much,

I'm much more ready just in my own awareness to unpack my own beliefs at certain times,

Even though that's not always my first thing to go to.

I don't necessarily bring it back to first principles,

Which is what you've,

What I hear is being a sweet beckoning towards.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that all of our beliefs are false or unworthy to be held.

You know,

The world's great religions have taught us many wonderful things and many accurate and true things about life itself,

And about deity.

So it's not like everything that religions of the world has offered us is worthless,

Quite to the contrary.

But it's time now,

I think,

To take a close look at all the most important and fundamental,

And I use the word advisedly,

The fundamental elements of our world's religions,

To see if it's possible that there's something we don't fully understand here.

The understanding of which would change everything.

And as we continue to ask that question,

The essential path appears,

Would you say?

Yes,

We begin to say,

Oh,

I see,

Maybe there's more here than meets the eye,

Or as wonderful William Shakespeare put it,

In the words from the play Hamlet,

There are more things in heaven and earth Horatio than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Doesn't stop poor old Horatio from trying though,

Does it?

Neil,

So I see the essential path as being a massive call to be the responsibility to be fundamentally who we are.

And what I'm gathering is our essential nature is much greater,

As you said,

By that metaphor of standing up on stage and saying,

Hey,

I know you think this is me as you touch your skin suit,

Your body,

That this is who I am,

But there's so much more to the eye or the experience of what is actually here than is me.

And thank you so much for taking the time to bring just such a nebulous conversation in terms of fundamentally the massive challenges we have today.

Bring it back to help me further realize that it does actually start with me and my relationship with myself and fundamentally the questions that I'm asking of myself and then also others that I'm interfacing with and what expectations I have of them and learning to see them with the love and tender care I would afford myself and extending that to them.

Can I ask you the manifestation of the essential path?

I've got this question,

Which just just dropped in through inspiration.

What does inspired evolution mean to you?

In terms of inspired evolution to me means evolution that's based on two things and not three things is based on our,

Our here and now experience,

Our here and now highest desire.

It's not based on the third thing,

Our understandings from the past.

We have to be willing to release and let go of our understandings from the past,

Not to abandon all of them,

But to temporarily release them and then reevaluate them to look at them again and see which ones are worthy to behold,

To be held onto and which ones we are now going to just let go of.

And so evolution is a process by which we really step into our here and now highest thoughts,

Our grandest desires about tomorrow.

Let me give you an example about things that when we question our beliefs,

The biggest belief we question is to believe in our oneness.

We still think that we're separate from each other.

We still think that I'm standing over here and you're standing over there.

So long as we imagine that there is more than one of us here,

Rather than a single entity simply expressing an individuated part,

The parts,

It's like it's as if we are fingers on the hands of God.

If you look at your hand,

God said to me,

Neil,

Hold your hand up in front of your face and look at your hand.

There are five fingers there.

Each of them are individuated.

That is the each look different,

Function differently and are in fact different from each other,

But they're in no way separate from each other.

They're all part of the same hand.

And that is the exact relationship between you and every other living entity in the universe.

You are like a wave on the ocean of humanity.

You're an expression,

A singular expression of the ocean.

You're not the ocean itself,

But you are in no way separate from the ocean.

You're no way other than the ocean.

And so when you see that you and the ocean are one,

Then you will begin to understand your relationship with every other sentient being on your planet and by extension in the cosmos itself.

And then you begin to treat each other as if that were true.

You begin to treat the other person as if they were you simply in,

As you put it,

A different skin suit.

Wow.

Thank you so much for sharing that because that brings into perspective,

There is no longer that conversation of forgiveness as you were mentioning.

And it almost even for some,

Like,

I can't say eradicate,

But also,

I'm stretching for a word that's not coming to me,

But almost nullifies the conversation even around compassion.

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