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Neale Donald Walsch:
on “Wisdom and Clarity”

by Mary Grace McCord

At the auspicious age of 50, many people have to grin and endure a momentous “over the hill” birthday party at home or at work, taunted by friends and family who send bouquets of black balloons, and chuckling good-naturedly amid an odd recycling of irreverent gag gifts such as plastic vultures and age-exaggerating personal care products.

But back in the early 90s, Neale Donald Walsch faced quite a different experience to mark the milestone of entering his fifth decade.

Newly divorced, his next catastrophe was losing his home and the fragmented remains of his material goods in a fire. Then, breaking his neck in a near-fatal car accident, he quickly lost his job and health insurance. Amazed that his entire life could suddenly dissolve into homelessness, enduring lingering physical pain alongside a shattered spirit, Neale stumbled through 24-hour darkness like a huge wounded bear.

Was this hellish existence a gag gift from God?

Living in a tent community, collecting pennies-per-pound for trash that he foraged and recycled, one day Neale Donald Walsch wrote God a furious, anguished letter.

What does it take to make life work?

Never had he asked a more serious question, nor could he have dreamed of what would happen next.

“With my yellow legal pad in hand, I was amazed to hear God’s crystal-clear response. I knew I was hearing from God—which actually ‘sounded’ to me like my own voice—and He was patiently, lovingly, answering all my questions! My hand started scribbling down these responses, as if taking dictation straight from heaven.”

Miraculously, Neale soon heard about an out-of-town job opening, this itself being the first link in a much-improved chain of synchronicity. Next his transient fellow campers chipped in to buy their friend a bus ticket for the job interview.

Patching up his self-confidence, bluffing his way into a new job, Neale very wisely decided to stay in touch with God. As his growing litany of questions yielded voluminous new answers, these insights were bringing in the bright light of deeper understanding. As Neale’s long-troubled heart grew calmer and more peaceful, a symphony of kind faces now streamed into his field of consciousness.

These new people sensed a remarkable soul who they felt drawn to assist. Personal friendships led to powerful new helpers, friends in high places who were deeply intrigued by his remarkable story.

As his growing stacks of yellow legal pads piled into boxes, overflowing and multiplying into pounds of manuscript pages in need of a publisher, once again help arrived. During the second half of the 1990s, Neale Donald Walsch’s first book, Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, formed another Divine beginning.

From 1996 through 2006, Neale Donald Walsch has written 21 popular books—16 of which include the magnificence of G-o-d within their titles. Who says our troubled society isn’t listening intently for a word from God?

Neale Donald Walsch is now a world-renowned metaphysical author, speaker and film maker. Come meet Neale, along with AIHT students and graduates, faculty and staff, during Celebrate Your Life—Chicago, June 22–24.

Vibrations: Other writers have referred to you as a Messenger of God and also a personification of the slogan, “Question Authority.” If you could summarize the entirety of God’s messages to you over those three years that chronicled what is now a 10-book Conversations With God series, what would the first sentence be?

NDW: Now that’s an easy one. Are you ready? This is it. In all of our begging for situations, people and things, in humanity’s life-long attempts at deal-making, we think God wants us to agree to something, commit to some tit-for-tat rate of exchange, to do something in particular to set things right. But based on what I’ve seen, heard, and felt, here’s what I think is God’s first message: You’ve Got Me All Wrong! (Laughs)

Vibrations: In your book, What God Wants, readers are asked to ponder two basic questions of theology: “Who and what is God?” And then: “What does God want, and why?” So, tell us how the New Spirituality movement that you’ve described is ‘pondering past’ such basic questions.

Conversations with God collaborators Neale Donald Walsch (center), film director Stephen Simon (L) and the film’s hero, Henry Czerny as Neale (R) discuss the travails of a homeless man who, through the grace of God, regains everything he lost—and more..

NDW: The New Spirituality movement offers a theology of unity, not a theology of separation. The answer to “What does God want?” is…NOTHING AT ALL! God doesn’t want us to “become” one with Him (or Her), God created us to know, from birth, that we ARE INDEED one with Him (or Her). Nothing can change that, unless of course we forget the perfection of all that is, and thus start trying to retrace our steps and cop a deal and change other people.

Vibrations: After a lot of psycho-social research on a small group of super-bright young souls called “Indigo Children,” this phenomenon seems to have come into our understanding during your own time of deep discovery. With their highly intuitive, even supernatural, levels of self-awareness and Divine intelligence, talk about how these super-kids sparked your imagination to collaborate with James Twyman on a movie entitled Indigo.

NDW: My truth is that all experiences are common to everyone—but, what we need to do is just simply recognize that and have the audacity and courage and vision and willingness to assume that the highest thoughts which occur to us are probably thoughts held in common by the highest part of all human kind. No, not probably. They absolutely are.

Vibrations: So, what makes the Indigo child so brilliant and self-possessed is simply that they know, with deep conviction, that indeed they are God. Most of us don’t know that we are, or don’t remember. But they know it deep in their bones and they don’t dilute their inspired actions with intellectual hesitation. Their thoughts are prayers, instantly answered. At our church we’ve nicknamed the Indigo personality as “Little Transformers.”

NDW: They’re an antenna for the highest energy, at any time and under any circumstance. So, naturally they’re impatient when their thick-headed parents are trying to keep them out of harm’s way. There is no harm, when you follow Divine wisdom. It’s just that most human people can’t feel the magic carpet.

Vibrations: In recent years the messages in your books have taken their own magic carpet ride to become movies, the medium of our non-reading masses. At the end of today’s seminar, after a guided meditation in which the silent audience sought to “listen for the still, quiet voice of God,” you answered an attendee’s question with two simple words. The question was: What is the secret of your existence, within this lifetime?

NDW: It’s a good way to end, for now, because it’s a quite lot to do! I think my mission, this time around, is to seek and give wisdom, with clarity.

The Holy Experience Neale Donald Walsch offers a free downloadable 10-chapter e-book entitled The Holy Experience, available at www.nealedonaldwalsch.com The Holy Experience offers an important exercise in how to forgive ourselves: “It is easier for people to embrace the idea that God forgives them than it is to forgive themselves. We have a whole list of ‘wrongs’…and the real trick here is not to try to forgive and forget. Instead: Remember each wrong thought or deed vividly—for what you resist will persist and what is examined will cease to have its illusory form. Decide and affirm a sincere intention to never repeat this behavior again. Allow yourself to release any feeling of guilt, replacing it with sincere regret. “It’s time to just get over it,” he concludes. “All of us have made mistakes, which has nothing to do with one’s worthiness. Each of us is equally worthy: to see God, be loved by God, and experience a constant, daily, holy communion with Divine Spirit. “Indeed, part of this holy experience is understanding that the gift always is, always was, and always will be, 100% available and accessible to all people of all faiths.” The Secret In a 2006 film documentary aptly entitled The Secret, Neale Donald Walsch outlines 10 “self-limiting illusions” from his 2002 book, Communion with God. Reminiscent of a kindly schoolteacher, his lesson plan is based on moving students through the following false patterns to belief. “There is no such thing as failure,” he says; “no such thing as need or disunity, insufficiency, requirement, judgment, condemnation, conditionality, superiority or ignorance.” As described on Larry King Live during a recent panel discussion, The Secret includes interviews with scientists, inventors, psychologists, theologians, economists and philosophers such as John Gray, Jack Canfield, the Rev. Michael Beckwith and Joe Vitale, each of whom explains aspects of The Secret relating to health, prosperity, job success and love. The Secret and Conversations with God are both available on DVD.