My Soulful Conversation With Neale Donald Walsch

By the age of 22, I was filled with more questions about life than answers, so I began a journey for spiritual knowledge that most books I'd read by that time didn't answer. I was also faced with the challenge of finding peace even while in the midst of having what most would perceive as having everything. Yet, I was empty, lost, lonely, confused, and in inner turmoil.

Somehow, I made a connection with a like-minded friend on MySpace, Aaren Kindle. He began to recommend me book after book that I would read, finished in days, and then asked for more. Then came the suggestion to read Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch; this is when everything changed. After reading every copy in that series, I found myself. I found myself in Neale because he asked questions I would ask. I found myself in God because God, I felt, answered questions not how I expected but in ways that somehow made perfect sense. I also received answers to questions that I'd had since childhood.

So, here I am 8 years later about to interview Neale Donald Walsch live and reliving memories of what felt like our first encounter. In the week leading up to it, I reviewed spiritual questions I might ask him. But with every question I came up with, God gently answered and reminded me of the relationship I almost forgot I had. I decided to take a different approach because I still felt the nudge to ask Neale questions, which turned into a one-on-one conversation that I will never forget.

Saba Tekle: Are we choosing how God communicates with us?

Neale Donald Walsch: I think it's the reverse. I think that God is choosing how God communicates with us and that God will stop at nothing. God speaks to us in an endless variety of ways -- communicating with us, through us, as us, in a non-stop communication from the divine -- and I have this idea that God chooses ways that would make God's communications ultimately clear to each of us within the context of our own ability to understand and to receive those messages.

For instance, this very telephone call.

ST: There is someone out there who wants to make a difference like you, but may feel he or she is not "chosen" because they can't "hear" God? What is your message to them?

NDW: Everyone is chosen. There is no person who is not chosen. Everyone can hear God. There is no person who is not hearing God, but there are many people who imagine they are not hearing God for a wide variety of reasons.

God's communications come to us in an infinite variety of ways, an endless variety of ways, including this column that people are now reading in the Huffington Post through which God is saying to everyone, "I'm talking to all of you, all the time. I'm talking to you right now through this column in the Huffington Post. It's not a question of to whom am I talking to. It's a question of who is listening, and for that matter, who believes that they're actually hearing from me."

For I tell you this, you will dismiss my very communication in the very moment that you're receiving it. Even as people who are reading the Huffington Post right now will read these very words and deny that they are coming to you from the source of divinity within you.

ST: We are all one, you've said it many times. Why does it seem that we have to be alone, meaning take this path alone, or separate ourselves from everyone to see that we are all one or even begin to feel it?

NDW: Because when we are with other people, especially with more than one or two other people, when we are in the large group or moving about our life in the world at large we are caught up in the energy of the collective consciousness. And the collective consciousness projects an energy of separation that we are in fact not all one, but we are separated from each other in a sense from life itself in that we can observe life.

ST: In the world that we live in today, how do we find a balance between our souls and work life? It seems at times my soul wants to do everything for free, but my ambition/flesh doesn't. How does spirituality and business, or our soul and business, mix?

NWD: First, you have to get rid of the cultural story that there's something wrong with money. The problem is, the root cause is again our cultural story -- all the good things should be done for free; only bad things are done for money. "Money is the root of all evil" is the teaching, and so the highest part of us wants to not charge anyone for anything because we want to give it away as a gift to humanity.

In this, our culture has it completely and utterly backward. We should pay the highest salary and provide the grandest income for the people who are producing the greatest good. But we've got the ratio of good to income utterly reverse on the earth to a point that's made specifically in Conversations with God -- "Why are you doing that? Why are you demonstrating that you value the least, what you say is the most important."

Wow. But that's an example of how backward our species is. See, we have a very young immature species that doesn't understand the simplest things. This is really simple stuff. So, it's a backward society that we live in.

ST: You've been in this industry for quite sometime.

NDW: What is the industry that I am in?

ST: As a spiritual leader, as a new thought leader, as an author, as a speaker...

NDW: I sure hope spiritual leadership is not an industry. Oh God, help me...

ST: Lol. What I want to ask is is there anything that disappoints you since you've embarked on this journey as an author, as a writer, as a spiritual leader when you are being introduced to working with other people? Have you experienced disappointments on your journey?

NDW: As a human being, I would be less than human if I wasn't disappointed in something that happened through the years. So the answer is of course. Of course who would say no, except maybe Jesus? However, when I'm in my more elevated place when I look at things from the perspective of my soul, the answer is no; I'm not disappointed, only when I come from my limited mental human perceptions, which are very limited. But as I shift my perceptions to the perspective of the soul, the answer is no I'm not disappointed.

Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master. Remember that always. Put it on your mirror in lipstick or soap. Understanding replaces forgiveness in the minds of the master.

ST: How much of your continual success as an author is from planning? Does every book just fly off the shelves?

NDW: I don't plan anything in my life, least of all the so-called, as you called, success of my books. I am not concerned with what you phrase as the success of my book. I am not concerned with success at any level. My only concern, if I have any concern at all, is with getting the message that I've been offered to share to as many people as I can, as fast as possible; and I'll do that by any means -- by writing books, by giving lectures, by producing workshops, by talking to people in groups anywhere from fifteen hundred to fifteen, or having an individual conversation with a sweet young woman who is writing a column for the Huffington Post. I don't measure the success on how it's all turning out in anyway because I don't care. All I care about is... Neale, are you using every moment of your day in a way that serves the agenda of your soul?

To read or listen to the full interview go to: http://sabatekle.com/blog/conversation-with-neale-donald-walsch/.

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