Conversations with God: an uncommon dialogue (1995)
by Neale Donald Walsch

It wasn't that Neale Donald Walsch didn't believe in God.  He talked to God all the time.  But God never answered him ... until one day.

Walsch wrote a letter to God, "a spiteful, passionate letter, full of confusions, contortions, and condemnations.  And a pile of angry questions."  Then he paused for a moment, his pen held above his trusty legal pad.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, his pen began moving on its own.

God was answering his questions, and the result would be an "uncommon dialogue" between one ordinary man and his maker.

The story of how Conversations with God came to be written sounds remarkable ... until you realize that automatic writing has been known to metaphysicians for several hundred years.

In fact, channeling messages from God has been going on since human history began.  When the angel Gabriel relayed the text of the Qur’an to Muhammed, some might have wondered why this merchant and shepherd was chosen as the messenger of God.  Who knows how we got the belief that God only spoke to saints and spiritual giants; Joan of Arc and Bernadette of Lourdes were just ordinary peasant girls before they began talking to angels.

So, yes, God does speak to ordinary folk.  In fact, He's done it many times throughout history.

Okay, you might be thinking, that sort of thing might have happened in the distant past, when people were more superstitious.  But no one but a crazy television evangelist would claim to be receiving direct messages from God today, right?

Wrong.

You're not alone if you think that God fell silent sometime after the Renaissance. Science rose from Newton's apple and crushed spiritual vision.  But that is incorrect.  Spiritualists have been practicing automatic writing (the technique used by Walsch) for hundreds of years.  In fact, you can even learn to do it yourself.  Modern-day authors Esther and Jerry Hicks have published over ten books, five of which were New York Times bestsellers, thanks to their ability to channel "non-physical entities called Abraham."  Doreen Virtue's Angel Therapy contains channeled messages from the angels.  And earlier this century, psychic Jane Roberts channeled eleven volumes by an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical reality," known as Seth.

But don't assume that you have to know anything about metaphysics - or want to hear spirits - in order to channel.  The most famous channeled text of the past hundred years is A Course in Miracles (1975).  It was channeled by Dr. Helen Schucman.  She was an associate professor of psychology and a secular atheist.  When she began having visions, she didn't understand what was happening to her.  It was only with the encouragement and help of her colleague Bill Thetford that she did anything about the instructions being relayed by her inner voice.

So Neale Donald Walsch is neither the first nor the last person to "speak" to God through the written word.  That's not what's surprising about the book.

What's surprising about Conversations with God is how thoroughly God challenges and deconstructs everything ever said or written about him.  The religious authorities who painted Him as a judgmental, humorless, formal father figure who lays down rules for us to obey and demands worship were wrong.  They were only projecting an idea of God based on their experience of fathers who laid down the law at home and kings who demanded tithes and went to war.

In reality - according to Conversations with God - God is everything.  There is nothing He is not.  Our existence on this Earth is an act of creation, a deliberate choice by ourselves and God in order that we might know ourselves as brilliant candles in the darkness.  Yet in reality there is no darkness, only the truth of the Sun that is God.

Once we understand this - that there is the world of relative things, created so that we might know what we are, and then there is the world of truth, in which all is love and light and One - then we can fully and consciously engage in the act of creating our experience on this Earth.  For we are God's equals, not his servants.  We have the same powers of creation.  All that's required is a thought - an unrestricted, consciously chosen thought - and we can begin to create our paradise on Earth.

If you've read A Course in Miracles, many of the ideas in Conversations with God will be familiar to you.  It's a shame, I think, that the version of A Course in Miracles published by the Foundation for Inner Peace has been so heavily edited from its original version (known as the Urtext).  The Course, as channeled, sounded much like Walsch's conversation with God.  Unfortunately, because of the belief that God must speak in a more formal language, the Course went through several edits - by human hands - before it arrived at its present form, which is dense, formal, and not easily read.

So go ahead - read what Neale Donald Walsch asked God, and discover how God replied.  What would YOU do if God suddenly started answering your prayers?  Would you ask God the same questions?

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Quotes to Consider

"The Laws are very simple.

1. Thought is creative.
2. Fear attracts like energy.
3. Love is all there is." (56)

"Hitler went to heaven.  When you understand this, you will understand God." (61)

"If there were such a thing as sin, this would be it: to allow yourself to become what you are because of the experience of others." (62)

"...I (God) do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary for you to serve Me." (64)

"People assume that if God were to talk directly to you, God would not sound like the fella next door. ...That's part of the problem."

"Passion is God wanting to say 'hi.'" (102)

"...Suffering has nothing to do with events, but with one's reaction to them.  What's happening is merely what's happening.  How you feel about it is another matter." (105)

"...'Fate' can be an acronym for 'from all thoughts everywhere.' In other words, the consciousness of the planet." (106)

"We make real that to which we pay attention." (107)

"God's greatest moment is the moment you realize you need no God." (114)