Conversations About God With Neale Donald Walsch

This is a conversation not to miss! Neale Donald Walsch, best selling author of Conversations With God, and many other books, graciously came back on the You-est You podcast to share greater and deeper insights about how to connect with the divine and why we must start remembering our divinity now, and acting on it. It's a gift to share this interview and I hope it brings you increased peace, spiritual connection, compassion and the awareness of who you really are.

Transcript

Welcome, My big-hearted and soulful friend, To the USU podcast. I'm Julie Riesler, A Master Life Coach, Author of Get a PhD in You, Founder of the Life Designer Coach Academy, And host of this show. I am truly honored to have you here. In this show and in my community, You'll find huge-hearted, Ambitious individuals just like you with a big vision, A desire to live a life of meaning and purpose, And to help raise the consciousness of this planet. Whether I'm sharing a conversation with a fellow entrepreneur or spiritual luminary or a solo episode about navigating life as an empath, My goal is the same, To remind you to follow your heart's wisdom and creative spark and to turn your fear into faith. If your USU is calling out to fulfill a higher purpose, To help others actualize their greatness, You gotta check out my Life Designer Coach Academy in my show notes. It's time, Friend, To listen to your inner guidance, To honor your special gifts, And to birth your dream. You were born to be your USU. Ready to join me on this journey? Let's do it. All right, USU family, Here's the deal. I am going to give a really beautiful introduction in a moment. We are so blessed to have Neal Donald Walsh back here, But I thought it'd be kind of fun. Usually we do our intention setting kind of before I start recording, But I've been hearing from so many of you that it's powerful and inspirational and just sets the vibe. So I'm actually, We're going to just get into our intention first. This is something I love to do before any interview to really attune our energy to the divine and something greater. And so we're going to start here and then I will do the formal introduction. So Neal, Thank you for joining in again. This is just a gift for all of us. Thank you. It's lovely to be here with you. Thank you for the opportunity. Amazing. All right. Well, I'm just, I'd love to, Maybe we can co-create it together. I usually put my hands in my heart. If you want to do that, You don't have to. I'm going to close my eyes. If you want to close your eyes or not, We're just going to, We're going to tune in to this really high vibrational, Beautiful energy, Divine love. I know what you call pure love. Just connecting our hearts and the hearts of every single listener, Each of you, Just feeling gratitude and honor to being here and setting the intention that all that is spoken here today is for the highest good of you, Dear listener and of anyone that is tuning into this conversation at any time. And I'll just ask Neal if there's anything you would like to add to the intention. It would be my intention that just the right people are available and have made themselves available at the soul level to hear what they've come to really tell themselves through us. But in the end, We all know that we're simply talking to ourselves, Sharing with ourselves, Accessing our own wisdom and simply using the outer world as a means with which to do that. So it's my intention that we become clear about that, That we're aware of that, That there's no higher authority than the authority that lies within us, No higher wisdom than the wisdom that lies within us. And it will be my intention that we all benefit from the knowing of that and the experiencing of it in the moments just ahead. Beautiful. And so it is. And so it is. All right. I need to take a breath. That was really powerful. Thank you. Beautiful, Beautiful intention. And just, You know, Honestly, I'll just share this before I do. I'm going to share with everyone for those who might be new or haven't listened yet or haven't been honestly graced by your work and your words. The last time we spoke, I know we ended and I was like, I've got to like, I have so many more questions. I just want more time with you. And it's, I'm really grateful. And I love this reminder, This beautiful reminder that we all have this, This spark within that it's one conversation that we're all connected, That we're, It's a neat, It's like, We are family. We are family. We're all of this oneness. There's only one of us. Well, I like the way I expressed you. All things are one thing. There's only one thing and all things are part of the one thing there is. Yeah. All right. We're going to come back to that. I'm going to just for those that are tuning in and maybe you don't know Neil yet, Or if you do, If you've read Conversations with God, That's probably a book. I know that I've recommended that many, Many, Many, Many, Many times, As well as his newest book, The God Solution. But let me just share with you who we are getting to connect with today. We're just, I feel very blessed. Neil, You've really, Tap up being your USU, Your most authentic self, Your highest light. And you've really, You're living that in your inspiration to me. And I know, I know many, Many, Many souls in this world. So Neil is joining us. Neil Donald Walsh has written 39 books. You heard that right, 39 books on contemporary spirituality and its practical application in everyday life. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neil spent the majority of his early adult years thriving professionally, Yet searching for greater meaning in his life. He has said that this yearning led to a series of deeply personal spiritual encounters, Which he experienced as direct exchanges with the divine. A series of books titled Conversations with God emerged from those moments and has been translated into 37 languages. Seven books in the series reached the New York Times Bestseller list, Conversations with God book, One remaining there for over two and a half years. I'll just say that I listened to books one through four on repeat during the pandemic, Literally almost every single day on my walks. They've been completely game changing for me. How Al-Rad, Who is a dear friend and I believe has spoken with you too, Neil, Is a big fan of your work and had highly recommended the book and I am just so grateful he did. Neil's latest book is The God Solution. And this was published in 2020, Which really invites humanity to embrace a new global ethic based on a refined and clarified definition of God. I love this. So I think a place that I would love to start is, You know, You and I were chatting beforehand. I think this is actually interesting to just go right in this space of, You know, It's easy to hear your the list of 39 books, Especially the Conversations with God being such a huge, A world, You know, One of the leading books in our world of all times. And many people don't realize that this did not happen overnight. This was not, You know, An overnight success, So to speak, That this was 35 years in the making. And I think it can be very easy for many of us to see somebody who's really successful or putting out incredible works in the world and compare ourselves to that. And I just, I'd love to hear maybe for you to share a little bit about your journey and how this has been, This has been a path, This has been, You didn't just show up and write these books. I'd love to hear more from you about that. Well, Let me say so that we're clear that the Conversations with God experience was a brand new experience. That was not 35 years in the making. That was a suddenly arising spiritual experience. What was not new and what did take 35 years was my ability to use or engage in and with the media, The publishing business, Radio business, Television, And writing, I mean, The writing process, Writing to be read by others. Not very many people, I mean, Relatively speaking, There are not very many people who have had the life experience of writing and needing to write to be read by others. Nothing trains you how to write better, Faster, Or cleaner than for instance, Writing for a newspaper where every day there's a deadline. If you're on a daily paper and I was writing for a daily paper for years in the earliest days of my working life, I was a cub reporter, What they call a cub reporter for a local newspaper in a town called Annapolis, Maryland. And I wrote for a small city paper, But they came out every day. And so I had to write copy every day and I had to learn how to write on deadline, To write precisely, To write concisely, And to write with discipline. That is to get it done when I said I would get it done. Because if you miss the deadline in a newspaper, Then they go to press without you and they'll fill the space they have reserved for your story. They'll fill it with something else. I remember learning, Julie, Once as a young reporter, I filed a story literally 10 minutes late. The deadline was 10 o'clock. We had an evening paper. The deadline was 10 o'clock in the morning and I filed it like 10 o'clock or 10 minutes late. And the managing editor at the time just threw the paper, I typed it out. We didn't have computers in those days. We were using actual typewriters, But he just threw it out. He said, Walsh, This is a newspaper, Not a history book. And if it was 10 minutes late, It was history. It's too late. So I never missed a deadline from that day to this, Whether it's a deadline of publishing a book, That a book is expecting the manuscript on a certain day at a certain time, Or anything that I've submitted to anybody else where they're looking for the copy, They need the copy. So I learned all about that. I learned about the broadcasting business. I was in radio when I was 19 and I had a broadcasting career for almost 24 years. And I was a syndicated national talk show host on the radio. So I did that as well. Now I bring that up because, As I said, It had nothing to do in particular with the conversations I've got experienced, But it did give me media savvy, I want to say. So when I was invited to be interviewed on the Today Show with Matt Lauer or on other major television programs, Oprah and the rest, I wasn't scared out of my mind or nervous because I had had a wealth of experience in front of the camera and behind the microphone. So none of that was new to me. And then thirdly, I wound up doing a lot of work semi-professionally and professionally for a paycheck in the theater. I wound up doing a great deal of directing and performing on stage. I performed in probably 56 or 58 individual productions, Everything from full scale musicals like The Music Man, Camelot, And so forth, To so-called strange shows, Mysteries, And regular comedies. So I've been on stage a lot. And again, When you're on a stage in front of an audience that's paid to watch you and paid good money to see what you're offering, You need to show up. Of course, You need to be on time. You need to have your lives learned. You need to have the direction down. You need to have the confidence to stand in front of an audience and do what you're being paid to do and deliver the goods, So to speak. So with that background, I was totally prepared, I want to say almost uniquely prepared to have an experience such as the conversations with God experience, Which fell upon me in a sense, Like sudden rainstorm, Which fell upon me totally unexpectedly and without my ever dreaming of such a thing. But when I started being interviewed about it or being asked even to write additional material around it, All of that skill set had been acquired, As you say, Over 35 years. So in that sense, It took me 35 years to get an overnight sensation. I was able, You know, When I would get a request from the New York Times, Could you write an opinion piece? Or could you give us a column about, You know, The spiritual implications of the present situation? Oh, Sure. I sat down, I wrote that in about 25 minutes, And sent it to the New York Times. So not bragging, But you asked the question. So just letting you know that I feel that I was given the skill set that would be required of someone who finds himself in the spots that I found myself in. I never would have dreamt, Never would have dreamt that what has occurred would occur in my life. That was a pure blessing and an extraordinary occurrence in my life. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I'm thinking, You know, For the listeners, Oftentimes, I think of the image of a tapestry, You know, Where at the back you have the knotted, It looks kind of funky, And it's almost like all those experiences, Writing and getting used to deadlines, And, You know, The 10 minutes too late, It's like, You turn it over and wow, It's a, It's this beautiful tapestry that really primed you. And for those listening, You just never know what are you doing now? How are you being now that could be priming you for, You know, That blessing for each of us? Love this experience that you shared. And one of my questions, I want to come, I want to come into, I want to talk about the God solution, But I, If it's okay, Would love to talk about this experience that you had, The conversations with God experience. I've listened many, Many times. And I've just, I've thought about what was that like to have that come through you? And how has that, How did that change your perception of being human? I was going through probably the worst period of my life, And what would be, I think, Difficult for me for anybody, Because all three of the major aspects of my life were, In a sense, Falling apart at once. You know, Most people, If they're having a little challenge in their relationship, But at least the job is going well, And their health is okay. Well, They may have a challenge at work, But at least things are not too bad at home. And their health is, Or maybe they're having a health problem. But you know what? I had challenging relationship, Health problem, And problems at work. In fact, I was downsized. I was fired. They didn't call it being fired because you're fired for a cause. They call it being laid off because, But, But so I was out of a job, Suffering health issues and having major challenges in my relationship all in the same three months period. So I was given what I like to call the triple whammy. Or to put it another way, Julie, Nothing was going right. I mean, N-O-T-H-I-N-G, Nothing was going right in my life. Then to make matters even worse, I was hit in a car accident. A man turned in front of me and, As an older gentleman, And he made a left turn right in front of me. I guess he misjudged, I mean, He admitted that he misjudged how far away from me I was. Was not driving fast. In fact, I'm a habitually slow driver. I'm a kind of slow poke. And I was a slow poke that day. I was driving like 23 miles an hour. But boy, He just thought I was further from him and that he could make the turn safely. Well, He didn't make the turn safely. So the interesting thing about the conversation with God experience is that it followed my life completely falling apart. Everything, As I said, In my life was not working. And in that car accident that I was telling you about, I actually was just a little fender bender. I actually broke my neck. Yes, They took me to the hospital and they diagnosed it immediately as a broken neck. But the doctor said to me, Neil, This is not a hairline fracture. This is a three quarter inch avulsion fracture of the seventh cervical vertebrae posteriorly. In other words, The break in my neck was large enough to put a pencil through. And the doctor said, You're very lucky to be alive. And not only are you lucky to be alive, But you're unbelievably fortunate not to be totally paralyzed from the neck down. This break in your neck had to be in just the right place to not produce either death or paralysis. But you're not going to get off with nothing. You're going to be probably in therapy for two or three years, But at least you don't have one of those two outcomes. And in fact, They gave me a therapeutic collar, Which is known in the business as a Philadelphia collar. I'm not sure why, How that city earned that, But they gave me a Philadelphia collar, Which is a divisive plastic collar that holds your head up because they tried to explain to me that your head is now like a basketball being held at the tip of a pin. There's nothing to support your head. So they said to me, You will wear this collar 24 hours a day. You won't take it off to shower. You won't take it off to go to sleep. You will not take this collar off for any reason. So I had to wear that collar for almost two years, About 18 or 19 months. And I was out of work, Not because of the accident, But for a totally different reason. The company that I worked for, The radio station that I worked with, Was downsizing. So I was last in, I was the newest employee, Last in, First out, Seniority, You know, Wins the day. So I was out of it. And then my relationship for totally different reasons was falling apart as well. So now all of these things were happening at one time. I couldn't find work anywhere because I was out of work. When I would go to apply for a job, They'd see me walking in with this contraption on my neck and nobody would hire me because they said, One guy was honest enough to tell me, You know, Mr. Walsh, You're qualified, But you're a walking insurance claim. One wrong move and you could be, We could be in a huge insurance claim. We can't go there. So you're not hireable for that reason. Then he would say to me, He said, You can do me a favor and don't tell anybody my name that I told you this because we're not supposed to be sharing this with people who are applying for a job. But he said, I got to just tell you under the table, Nobody's going to hire you. Wait for your walk, You know, You just had a broken neck three months ago. So I soon ran out of money, No savings. And Julie, As you probably know from watching the movie, Because they made a movie of my life, I wound up living on the sidewalk. I had nowhere to go. So I wound up living on the street and not for a couple of tough weeks or a bad season, But for an entire year. I spent a year on the sidewalk with no place to go. Nobody could take me in. My family lived 16 states away. My father had passed away and that was not an option. My former wife was angry enough with me to say tough, Tough luck kid. So I was, She couldn't take me back in. She had been down with her life. I had nowhere to go. So I was walking the streets, Holding out my hand to people saying, Could you spare anything, Even a quarter? I swear to God, Even a quarter. If I got a quarter from everybody I asked today, I might have enough at the end of the day, Five or $6, If I'm lucky, So I can buy a bag of French fries and maybe a cheeseburger and eat something. So I was, I was awakening every day without 30 cents in my pocket, Not knowing how I was going to eat, Much less get through the day in any other way. I lived that way for a year. Finally, I had a small break. I did get a part-time job at a local radio station. I saw an ad in the newspaper. Of course, I was scouring the newspaper every day for ads and I couldn't, By the way, I couldn't buy a paper. You think it was simply just go to the newsstand and drop a quarter in. A quarter to me was a huge amount of money. I had to wait. I would grab newspapers out of the trash bin. I did use them. I used them as mattresses. I would get four or five newspapers and put it on the ground so it has something at least a little bit softer to sleep on. And then I saw in the one of the local papers in the classified section said help wanted weekend radio fill-in and announce. And I thought, How many people in this community can have that kind of experience? I'm going to walk in there with like 20 years experience. So I did. I had to walk on foot. It was a long walk, But I did walk to the radio station, Asked to speak to the program director, Got in the interview, Told him I'd like to apply for the job. He was saying, Why should I hire you? I said, Well, You know, I've had 20 years experience for radio. He said, Well, You're way overqualified, Way overqualified. You're not going to want to work on a weekend fill-in basis. It's three hours Saturday and three hours Sunday. I said, You don't understand. I'm desperate. I will not only work three hours a day on the radio, I'll clean the bathroom. I'll clean the toilets. I'll take out the trash. I'll be your janitor. I'll do, Give me work. I'll do anything. Now, Fortunately with this Philadelphia caller, It didn't matter. I could be on the air because he could see that there wasn't any kind of demanding job. I could sit there and say, You know, 20 after four o'clock, 45 degrees outside and be a really good radio announcer. So he heard me and he loved my work after about four months on the weekend. He hired me full time because they lost a full time announcer. And so pretty soon I was back at work. But, And here's where the story begins. Sorry to give you a 45 hour answer to a three minute call. But now here's where the story begins. I'm going to work and they're using me so much at work on the air, Off the air, And I'm working like 12 hour days, But I'm not really making that much money. I was making enough money to afford a little, Little cabin behind someone's house. Some rich couple had a little mother-in-law place behind behind and it was empty and I was able to rent it. So it didn't cost that much. But here I am sitting in this little cabin and I woke up one morning and I remember thinking to call me out to God, What do you want from me? What do you want from me? What does it take to make life work? I've obeyed the rules, Maybe not all of them, But I certainly haven't committed any major offenses against God. What does it take to make life work? And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? Help me understand what's going on here. And there was a yellow legal pad on the coffee table in front of me. I had gotten out of bed and gone to the living room in my frustration. And I began writing an angry letter to God just to get it off my chest. So I'm writing this very angry letter and I'm asking these questions. Okay, You know, What does it take, Underlining take three times, To make life work? I've done everything I was told by my society, By my culture I need to do. And that's when I felt a voice, I heard a voice, Or at least I thought I heard a voice. My experience was I heard a voice saying, Neil, Do you really want answers to these questions or are you just venting? And I remember thinking, I was laughing. Yeah, You think I'm venting? Yeah, Yeah. But you know, If you've got answers, I'd sure as hell like to know what they are. And then I heard a wise crack coming back at me. Wouldn't you rather be sure as heaven? I said, So what is that supposed to mean? I'm sitting here talking to myself. Yeah, But I started to write down what I was hearing in my head. Because I didn't want to forget what I was being told, Because it all sounded so fascinating. So I started what I would call an on paper dialogue, Question, Answer, Question, Answer, Question, Answer, Which went on the entire day. It was 4. 30 in the morning, 4. 23 in the morning, When this thing started when I woke up in the middle of the night. But this was, I didn't have anywhere to go, I had no job in the works. I'm sitting there all day, Having this conversation on paper. And I was fascinated by what I was, I want to say receiving. No matter what I asked, The answer would come. That even sometimes, Even before I finished the sentence of my question, I remember even writing at one point, Whoa, Whoa, Slow down. And it did. The voice actually slowed down. The information slowed down. But I was given all those answers that you see in the first third of what became book one. But at one point in the process, Which I considered to be a very personal spiritual event, I wasn't sitting down to write a book. I didn't wake up that morning thinking, I know, I think I'll write a book. All conversations were gotten, That never happened. So I was told in the dialogue, You will make of this one day a book. And many people will have access to it. And I remember, This is all in handwriting, I was not a computer writing this by hand. And I remember thinking, Oh really? See, Now I got you. I remember the moment vividly, I said to myself, Now I got you. Because that's measurable. That's not conceptual, It's not theoretical, It's not an idea. It's a statement of fact. This, You will make of this a book, And it will be accessed by many people. I thought to myself, Well, We'll see about that. Now I'm going to test you. I thought I'm going to test God. Because, You know, There was something I could measure the outcome of. And I thought it's not going to happen. This is ridiculous. Of course it's not going to happen. What am I going to do? Send my handwritten notes to a publisher. I could just see this guy walking out to the workroom floor, Talking to his staff, To the editors out there. Hey guys, Hold the presses. I got a guy here who's talking to God. It's not going to happen. Of course it's not going to happen. They're going to label me. It just came out of the loony bin. So I sent it off to a couple of publishers just to see what would happen. And the phone rings, Because of course I put my phone number on the manuscript, The phone rings and it's Bob Friedman from Hampton Roads Publishing Company saying, We want to publish this book. I said, You're kidding me. No, No, I think it's interesting enough to get, To at least get published. So to be some, We got to change the title because no one's going to buy a book called Conversations with God. People are going to be put off. The title is very presumptuous. You know what? I had the nerve to say to the guy, Either publish it by that title or you don't publish it at all. Because my experience was it was a conversation with God. How else are you going to publish it? Do you think it's my wisdom? You know, Some kind of life principles by Neil Donald Walsh or whatever you think you're going to put that. I said, No, You're going to publish it and I'll write it forward to it explaining how the experience occurred. But you're going to call it, Publish a Conversations with God or you won't publish it. He said, Okay, It won't sell 300 copies, But people could be pretty pushed away from it. But you know, It's interesting enough to us, We'll put it out. And he's right. It did not sell 300 copies. It sold 3 million in 37 languages. Because it was flying off the shelf. He could not keep it on the shelf. Who would imagine such a thing? It didn't even occur to me. So all of a sudden people in New York were calling me saying, Do you have any sisters like that at home? The whole story and I said, I'm continuing the experience because I didn't stop having the experience. So I had been continuing to write and I had written enough material to submit what they called book two. And then came book three and so on and so forth. So the process continued for a number of years until ultimately nine Conversations books were produced. But then I stopped. I stopped arbitrarily. I just said, Okay, Enough. Because people were starting to mix up who I am and what the book was saying. And they started thinking that I was the messenger of the message that I was leading the message. They started putting me in a very difficult spot. So I said, No, We're not going there. I had I had a spiritual experience. Fair enough. But we're not going to make me, You know, The coming of whatever, The next big savior. And we're not doing that. So I had to stop. I chose to stop writing those kinds of books. But I wrote a series of other books about these nine books. And I wound up writing 30 books explaining various aspects and messages of the Conversations of God books to produce 39 books altogether. The last book, Which is The God's Solution is my final book. I won't be writing any more full length books. I'm done. I said I did what I said I would do because at some point I promised that I would continue to put this information out into the world. As long as I felt that it was really benefiting somebody. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Wow, I'm like sorting. I have so many questions and thoughts for you. I think one of the first questions that I'm sometimes I can hear questions that people are asking or what I think they might ask. And, You know, There's this whole idea of channeling, Right, Of connecting and channeling and. . . And this is not a channel book, By the way. I say write in the book. This is not a channel book. Yeah, Yeah. Let me ask you this. Are you able to dial up or to connect with God in this way? I know you talked about that. Yes, The answer is anytime I want to. And the answer is so is everybody capable of doing that. Yes. I was told in the dialogue, No, God said because I asked God very early on. By the way, Let me just take one step back and explain why I said this is not a channeled book. As people popularly understand it, The phrase channeling means that the entity has taken over your body, And is now speaking through you. That was not my experience. I'm not going to sit here and say, Yes, God took over my body. And I began speaking in the first person voice of God. So I do not claim it to have been a channeled book. And then people say, You know, Writers and interviewers, Well, If it's not a channeled book, Then what would you call it? I would call it inspired writing. Like Matthew, Mark, Luke, And John, They would never say they were channeling. But they would say they were inspired writers, That they were inspired to keep a record of what they were hearing and what they understood to be told. And so I said I would call it inspired writing, But not channeling. There's a huge difference. I already forgot the other question. What was the question I was supposed to be answering? Yeah, So thank you for clarifying that. That actually, Well, So thank you. And the next question was, You can dial this up, You can connect at any time. Oh, Yeah, Yeah, I was told, Yes. And really, I think page six, Page nine of 4000 pages of dialogue, On page nine, I said, Why me? If I really am communicating directly with God, Why me? Why would I be chosen? God said, Oh, Sweetheart, I'm talking to everybody all the time. You aren't the chosen one. I'm talking to everybody all the time. The question is not to whom am I talking? The question is who's listening? And what you're doing that's different from other people is you're listening and you're listening very carefully. You're actually taking notes and writing down the messages that you're receiving. That's the difference. But I talk to everybody all the time, But they're calling it something else. You know, An epiphany, Or women's intuition, Or, You know, A psychic hit, Or, You know, They'll come up with whatever name they have to come up with whatever label they can use to avoid being marginalized, To avoid being ridiculed, Or at least talking to God. So they come up with, But she said, No, I'm talking to everybody. They're simply calling it something else. I love what you're saying. And you know, It's interesting to me, Neil, What I what I imagine is, You know, I think a lot of times, Especially those that are into spiritual development and growth and consciousness, We think like, All right, I got to get into a state, I got to do these things I got and it sounds like you woke up and got your legal pad and just started asking questions like I didn't hear, You can do rituals, You can do those things, But it doesn't have to be complicated. No, Not at least not from my experience. Yeah. But I was, You know, A place of deep frustration. I was, You know, At the end of my rope. And I also want to say to people, You don't even have to be there. It's not necessary to be at the end of your rope. It's not necessary to be so frustrated and so upset about life. But in my case, That's what motivated me to sit down in front of a legal pad and just write an angry letter. I don't know who I thought I was writing a letter to, But I just wrote down, What does it take to make life work? I was so angry. I can recall that I was pressing down so hard with my ballpoint pen. If you had turned over five or six pages, You'd still see the impression on the back of the paper. That's how hard I was writing. That's how mad I was. What do you want? I remember writing vividly. What do you want from me? Right. Wow. You know, One of the things I love because I've listened to it so many times, And I'm curious if you heard both female and male, I love that you had, First of all, The narrators, Those that you had. Ellen Burstyn and Ed Asner, Both of them. And they didn't want to do that either. It was another good example. The audiobook publisher, They really wanted to do the audiobook. They wanted to use me as my own voice, And they wanted to use Ed Asner as the voice of God. And I said, Well, We have to have a female voice of God as well. They said, No, That's going to be too confusing to people. I said, No, No, We've got to use a female voice of God. They said, How are you going to do that? Why would you want to do that? I said, Why? I can tell you why. The last thing I want to send to people is the message that God is male. And that if you don't have a penis, You can't be divine. Well, Now that I think about that, Part of that may be true. But in any event, We call some actresses, We got a hold of their agents, We talked to Shirley McLean, She would have loved to have done it, But she was booked with other projects during that time, So she couldn't do it. But then we found Ellen Burstyn, God bless her. And she happened to be free during that three month period. So she and Ed got together in the studio with me, The three of us sat down in the studio together and read the book she read. And we separated the words of God into sentences, Sometimes he broke the sentence in the middle. He would start the sentence and she would finish it, Just to make it clear to the listener that we weren't making a statement that God is male or female, But that God does not have a particular gender. After we did that, After, Not before, Because they didn't want to do, But after the audio publishers thought it was a genius idea, Because it worked so well, It worked so well that the publishers were saying, Wow, Why didn't we think of this? Maybe the way to do it. It actually added up a really special dimension. I got to tell you as a female who's spiritually on a quest of connecting deeper, It was, And I love Ellen's voice to both of their voices. It was so, It made it, It's hard to explain, But I felt like it's so loving and it felt so, There was a wholeness to it, To feel this voice being male, Female, Both. It changed the playing field. It changed, It was so powerful. I was so thankful that you did that. And it felt right. It felt aligned. One of my favorite things about listening, I listen often, And this probably brings us to even today where we are in the God solution. I was listening, Gosh, 2020 is quite a shift for our planet, Obviously, To put it like mildly. And I felt very, In some ways, Very grounded in other ways. It was a lot of unease. And I just would listen over and over and over again to your books. One through four is what I could get on Audible, At least I was listening to just on ongoing. And yeah, I wanted to say loved hearing both of their voices, But it's such a powerful dialogue. And I know that you've written now 30 other books to really go into the different aspects of the conversations with God. I am curious, Taking, I mean, You've written so much, You've experienced so much. How do you think this God solution, The idea of pure love, How do you think that is connected to what we are experiencing right now on the global level? And what might be the solution or the lesson for humanity? I just, I'm so curious what you feel about that. I think most of the problems in the world today, Not all of them, But a great many of the major problems in the world today are arising out of our behavior, The way we behave with each other, Nation with nation, Race with race, Religion with religion, Culture with culture, Gender with gender, Rich with poor economic status. We just have this way of behaving with each other that has created and produced many, Many of the problems. To give you an example, What I mean, Okay, We have a pandemic, Fair enough. And we've developed a vaccination that we hope can at least help. I'm not going to get into the whole argument about that. But the point is that the vaccination has been created. We can't even find a way to make it equally available to all the nations on earth. The poor nations of the world can't even get the medication that the people who are making it are claiming it is effective. So that kind of behavior that says, No, It's us and not them, It's us and them, Us and them, And we can do it and they can't. That kind of alienation, That kind of separation, That arises out of our understanding of what it means to be divine, Believe it or not. Because eight out of 10 people in the world today believe in a higher power. That's statistically proven by the surveys that have been taken over the past five years. Eight out of 10 people say yes, They believe in a higher power. There's something more going on here than meets the eye. But we can't agree about this higher power. So everyone is trying to model their behaviors and our religions teach us this. By the way, When I say our religions, That's not a small statement. There are 4, 300 organized religions on the face of the earth. Check it out. You can Google that. I didn't make that number up. There are 4, 300 organized religions on the face of the earth. And most of them are teaching the same fundamental thing which is we are invited by God to act like God. That is to, I want to say, Become God-like and imitate God's behaviors, To use God's behaviors as our own and to use that as a model. Okay, Fair enough. But the problem with the model is that it's mistaken. We have allowed ourselves to believe virtually every one of those 4, 000 religions believe that God is judgmental, Condemning and punishing. So if you don't do what God wants, Then you're going to be judged. And if you're judged, You'll be found to be guilty because you didn't wear a hajib, You didn't cover your whole face except for a slot which God wants you to cover if you're female, Or because you didn't go to mass on Sunday because you're Catholic and you're supposed to go to mass. By the way, Not going to mass is sin. It's not just you decided not to go to church on Sunday. It's considered a punishable offense. So we believe in a God who says, What? Instead of going to mass on Sunday, You went out and played a round of golf? I'll get you for this. And that's the formal teaching of the Catholic Church. I'm not making that up either. So I'm simply illustrating that we have created a God who we say is judgmental, Condemning and punishing. Therefore, We get to be judgmental, Condemning and punishing with each other. Because we're saying, Hey, What's good enough for God is good enough for us. And it's that precise behavior which has created minimally eight tenths of the world's human created problems. We simply don't know how to get along. We simply refuse to get along. We've gotten to the point where we're acting like little children. We're acting like playground kids. You know, Our missiles are bigger than your missiles. And talking to each other with insults and calling that leadership. So because we've simply misunderstood what it means to be godly and what it means to be godlike. We're using the wrong model. So the book, The God Solution says we have a God dilemma on earth. The God dilemma sounds like this. If there really is a higher power, If there really is a God, Why is the world such a mess? And why has it been such a mess, Not just the past two years, But for thousands of years? We've had wars, Violence, Anger. It's not been easy going for a long, Long, Long time. Why if there's a God? And the question is answered with what I call the God solution. It's not because God's job is to fix things. God's intention is to give us the power to fix things. God's intention was to infuse the power of divinity within the experience of every sentient being in the cosmos. All we have to do is use the higher power that we all agree exists. But we can't use it the way we think that God uses it because we're wrong about how God uses it. And this is the culmination, I call it, I think it's the day new law, The culmination of the conversation with God dialogues and of all the books. Because the point of the book, The God Solution is that we need to redefine God. We need to find a new way to understand this higher power that we all see exists. And we can redefine God with two words, Pure love. Now that's spiritually revolutionary. People might say, Well, What a simplistic idea. But in fact, It's theologically revolutionary because not one of the major religions on the earth believes that God is pure love. They will say, Well, Yeah, We all agree God is love. Everyone says God is love. I said, No, I didn't say God is love. I said, God is pure love. And there's a difference between love as we human beings understand it and pure love. And then somebody in my audience will say, All right, What's the difference? The difference is that pure love needs, Wants, Expects, Hopes for, And demands nothing in return. It needs nothing back from us. Therefore, Although I know it's sacrilegious to say it, God doesn't care if we go to Mass on Sunday or not. He's not going to throw us out of heaven and throw us into hell. Oh, And by the way, That's to teach the church says that if you miss Mass on Sunday without a legitimate excuse, That you have to work. Okay, Fair enough. If you're caring for a sick parent to go off and play a round of golf, No, No. If you get hit by a car on Monday and you die on Tuesday on your injuries, You're going to be in purgatory on Wednesday. Purgatory is not exactly hell. It's like hell, Only it's not forever. I found a couple of marriages like that. Think about it. But in any event, And if it's a really big offense, We're actually going to go to hell. Like, You know, There are a lot of big offenses. And so, So, But if we were to change our definition of God, If we could get all the world's religions to agree on at least one foundational principle that God is pure love and requires demands, Expects nothing in return, That would impact the whole human understanding of life. It would change our whole basic philosophy. We change our politics, Our economics, Our spiritual understanding and our social interactions. Everything would change because we'd start interacting with each other in a way that said, I need, Require, Expect and demand nothing in return for the love I'm going to give you. Now the question is, Can human beings actually do that? Do we have the ability to actually do that? Is it asking too much of us? But that's the God's solution. And we are told that actually regular human beings do have the capacity to act in this way. So we have to come to a conclusion. Were the great messengers of all time, Both female and male throughout the years, Were all the great messages just a hoax? I mean, You know, When, When, When, When one of the great messengers said, Do unto others as you would have it done unto you, Was that just a clever one liner or was that actually a workable philosophy, A workable ethic? Could anybody actually live under that ethic? And can you actually forgive your enemies? I mean, If you do have somebody who's done something to you that did not feel so wonderful, Aren't you supposed to get it back? We have a get it back philosophy. We've got to get it back. You know what? We actually kill people in the United States and other countries as well. We kill people intentionally to teach people that killing people intentionally is not okay. We call it the death penalty. And we fail to see the sickening contradiction. We think, You know, Oh, You know, Neil, Neil, It's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. So we have to kill people to stop people from killing people. We have to use violence to put an end to violence. We have to use anger to bring an end to anger. Completely ignoring Einstein's concept. Einstein, Albert Einstein made it very clear a few years ago. He said, You cannot solve any problem using the same energy that created it. But why listen to Einstein, The stupid guy like him? What the hell does he know? Why listen to one of the other credible thinkers of our time who actually said to us in direct words, Love, Love, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you and do good to those who would do you evil. And raise not your fist to heaven and curse the darkness not, But be a light unto the darkness that you might know who you really are. And that all those whose lives you touch might know who they are as well. Now, When I quote scripture in that way to audiences, They say, Well, Yeah, It's all very lovely. If love your enemies, Do good to them. But the average person is the way I, You know, The savior could say that, But the average person, Then I say to my audience, Let me see if I understand. Are you telling me that what Jesus told us, That he was a hoax? Are you telling us that he gave us, He was selling us a bill of goods that the average person actually couldn't do? Or are we willing to admit that no, No, His suggestions were applicable by the average person or he wouldn't have mentioned it when he would spend his whole life giving us false hope? Or is the issue not with the message, But with the fact that we simply refuse to follow those recommendations? And that's what I call the God solution. How about if we act the way we've been invited by all the great messengers to act? What would it take for us to stop our primitive barbarian behaviors? Let that be our question for the day. Mm, Very powerful. That was, Um, I'm just, To all our listeners, To you, My dear friend who's listening, This is the question. This is the question. You know, As you're speaking, Niel, What came to me was, Um, It's, It's kind of what you talked about, What Einstein said. It, This, This pure love, You know, This not needing, Expecting, Demanding, Judging, Anything, Anything, Anything. And I know in your conversations with God, I remember there's a piece about people who've committed horrific events and the idea that, That, That all, You know, It doesn't mean they're judged at the end, That there's, This is pure love, Meaning all human beings, All of us, All, Everyone is, Is really under this rubric of pure love that, And to really kind of take on that question of what would, You know, When I was reading your book, I was thinking, Oh, It's really the question also is what would pure love do here? How would it be here? And you just said that so elegantly. It means we can't solve the issue with what, With the same issue. Like, Like you said, With the death penalty, With, With, Uh, These feelings of judgment of us versus them. And we started the podcast, The interview this way that we're all one. And that to me, That's part of what we're talking about is seeing everybody, Everybody as being, As being in that oneness. And then to have compassion, The most compassionate question. And I was given this in conversations with God as well, To ask the other person who you feel has offended or hurt you, What hurts you so much that you feel you have to hurt me in order to heal it? That's, Can you repeat that one more time? That is so powerful. What hurts you so much? What hurts you so much that you feel you have to hurt me in order to heal it? Why didn't somebody, Why didn't somebody, Some worldwide leader stepped in front of the terrorists after 9-11 flew airplanes into buildings and killed so many people? Why didn't the president of the United States say, Okay, Wait a minute, I'm not making you right. I'm not saying that we condone it, But I do want to at least understand it. What hurts you so much that you feel you have to hurt me in order to heal it? By the way, That's the question that the Pope, John Paul II asked the man who tried to assassinate him a few years ago. John Paul has since left his body. He has celebrated his continuation day, But he was in a motorcade in Rome and the man shot him six times and amazingly he survived. All six boats, By the way, Hit him. The man didn't miss. He got him in the arm and the chest and got him in the neck. He was hit by six boats, But the Pope survived. Naturally, They jumped on the guy and threw him in jail for life in Italy. But the Pope wanted to know. So he actually went to the man's jail cell and he said to the man, Can you just help me understand? What hurts you so much that you felt you had to hurt me in order to heal it? And he listened to the man's complaints about what he thought the Catholic Church had done to his own religion and how the Church had hurt his religion and his faith and his culture. And the Pope said, You know, I hear you. I don't agree with you. I don't condone what you did. I can't approve of your solution. But given your experience, I can understand how you would do such a thing. And he gave the man his papal blessing. In Novo de Patria, The Holy Spirit is sent to him. And he gave the man his forgiveness. Not because what he thought the man did was right, But he saw the man's weakness and the weakness from which the man came that caused him to act the way he did. And the Pope blessed him in order to heal him of his dysfunction. You know the end of that story? They became pen pals. The Pope and this man exchanged letters from the Vatican to the jail cell for seven years back and forth. I'm not making this up. You can check it out in history. This is history. It was covered by the media. And after seven years, The Pope requested the civil authorities in Rome to grant the man a pardon and to release him from prison, Which the civil authorities did. Holy Moly. Love, Love, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Yeah. And do good to those who would do evil to you. And be a light unto the darkness. And do unto others as you would have it done unto you. So the Pope did what he did. To be a living example, An average human being can live. Even somebody who's been shot six times can find it within themselves to live these principles. The average person would say, Well, Of course he's the Pope. What do you expect? Come on guys. As the Pope said, I'm a regular human being. I go to the bathroom three times a day. I have to eat three times a day. I have to breathe the air. I'm a normal human being. These messages that have been given to us by all the great spiritual teachers, Not just one, Because they're all saying the same thing, Each in their own way. These messages are applicable and usable. We just have to decide to do it. It's not that difficult, But it begins at home. I'll end with this because people say, Well, You know, Again, I can't change the world. Nobody's asking anybody to change the world. But how about if you simply changed the way you are in your own house, The way you are with the person across the room, To say nothing of the person across the street, Or the stranger around the corner. What if you simply acted that way in your own life? If you, None of us did that, It would create such a groundswell. It would produce a theological revolution. People would say, Oh, Wait a minute, Wait a minute. The human ethic is changing. Something has happened. That's the opportunity. But I was given in conversations with God. I was invited to undertake three missions. Mission number one, Change the world's mind about God. Mission number two, Give people back to themselves. Mission number three, Awaken the species. That's our opportunity. All of us can decide to awaken this species in the ways that are available to us. If we find it a worthwhile endeavor, Or you could just go bowling, Or play a game of bridge and judge each other and make each other wrong and continue living the way we've been living for the past 25, 000 years. Up to you. Up to you. Wow. That is your call to action, USU dear friend, Soul family. I really, I feel like what I can feel is this conversation is going to ripple around the world and everyone listening, You're listening, I just encourage you to listen again. We will have notes. Ask yourself these questions. This is our call. And I do believe everyone that's attracted to hearing this is part of this conversation around shifting the way of being, Of adding more light. I really do. Yeah, Shift happens. It sure does. It sure, Especially with what we just talked about and with you, Neil. I, No words, Just thank you. You're welcome. Glad we had a chance to share this time together. We honor you and do my friend, Thank you for listening, For tuning in, For really, Really feeling into the message that Neil talked about, For finding ways to make this part of who you are, Taking that opportunity to really love and honor everybody and to remember the essence of higher power is you, As you, As all of us. Thank you so much. On behalf of everyone, I'm going to say we love you and just honor you. Thank you. Bye for now. I'm so honored to be part of your journey. Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope it inspires you to remember who you really are and who you chose to be in this lifetime. If you're interested in becoming your USU, I would love to guide you. Please check out my website for additional information on how we can work together. And if you feel moved, My friend, Please subscribe, Rate and review this podcast so that more big-hearted individuals can find these inspiring conversations. Here's to loving and being your USU.

Reviews

This is the most enlightening conversation I have heard in a while. I cannot wait to listen again. Thank you!

Words cannot explain that power within🌈🙏

Wonderful interview! Definitely putting Conversations With God on my to read list.