Insight On the Journey/Pass It On! with Neale Donald Walsch

Explore modern spirituality, creativity, and self-development. Delve into the intersection of metaphysics and science through great conversations. Where do you find your truth? It's a Big Universe. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Big Universe. I'm Jim Lefter. I'll be your host today. I'm a spiritual journeyman, media producer type guy. I'm really excited to have today's guest on the show. I'm looking forward to talking with him about his insights and the wisdom he's passing down to the next generation in his latest book. Neil Donald Walsh is the author of over 40 books on contemporary spirituality. He's best known as the New York Times bestselling author of the internationally acclaimed Conversations with God series, which has been translated into 37 languages. Neil's latest book is Letters to a Young Seeker, Departing Thoughts from an Elder, which includes wonderful poetry by M. Clare. Check out his website at neildonaldwalsh.com. Hi, Neil. How are you? Welcome to Big Universe. Thank you. It's lovely to be here with you, Jim. And so I appreciate the opportunity to share with your audience. How can I serve? Well, you know, I'm going to start off with the standard question of why did you decide to write this book now at this point in life? Well, it was actually the idea of Nicole Watson and Claire. We share a partnership not only in this book, but in marriage. And she came to me one evening, we were having our evening together, and she said, you know, I've always been deeply impressed with a book called Letters to a Young Poet that was written 30 years ago by Rainer Marie Wilke, a wonderful poet in the Austrian tradition. And she said that it was a powerful, powerful book of letters that included messages about life. But the book was written at the earliest part of the last century. So she said, you know, maybe it's time to upgrade that with more contemporary messages for young people today. So she looked at me and she said, you know, you may want to consider writing a bunch of letters to a young seeker. And And then we could, you know, I could add some of my poetry to it to give it kind of a soft touch. And we could offer young people some ideas from the Conversations with God dialogue series. You know, things that you wish that you had been told when you were in your 20s or 30s. Didn't have to wait until you were in your mid-50s to come upon some of this wisdom and some of this information. Absolutely, yeah. I definitely wish I had got it, yeah. Yeah, so I said to my darling, I said, that's a wonderful idea. I sat down and I wrote 21 letters. I went through the nine CWG Conversations with God dialogue books. And I pulled out what I thought were 21 of the most important messages. Again, that I wish that someone had just said to me when I was 23 or 33 or even 40 for that matter. So we put it into the book, and she added some poetry from her collection. She's a published poet. And she added some poetry to the letters, and we wound up with a little booklet that contained what I think is messages for the mind and magic for the heart. Well, it's certainly wonderful. I love reading this stuff. And like you said, I do wish I had had some of these insights many years ago before I had to go through the process of Figuring it all out, but I appreciate it. Yeah, yeah. Learning the hard way. This is for young people to learn a little easier some of the major things that both of us have learned. But it took a long time in my life. I was really in my mid-50s before I could understand some of this stuff. So that's what the book is about. Letters to a Young Seeker. 21 individual letters. You know what I've learned, Jim, is that These days, if you can't put it into 120 words or less, nobody wants to even hear from you. So I wrote 12 very brief, short letters, each letter containing one, what I call remembrance. It's not even a message so much because what I think is that most people already have this information inside of them. They simply don't remember it. Because when people read the book, they say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I always knew that. I always knew that. But it brings up for them what they've been holding in the deepest reaches of their consciousness. For instance, just as an example, the very first message, the very first letter says, there's more going on here than meets the eye in this thing called life. And, you know, which for me was a major opening, Jim, because I thought as a young man, I mean, I thought life was about, okay, I got to get the car, get the car, get the job, you know, get the office in the corner with my name on the door, get the better car, get the better job, get the better partner, get, you know, and it was all about what I could gather. And I realized after my conversations with God, There's more going on here than meets the eye. It's not about just gathering and getting what I can gather and get. There's more going on here than meets the eye. And the book then describes what that more is. Awesome. And let's dive into some of that. But first, before we do that, I know most people are probably familiar with your Conversations with God series. Can you just give a very brief reintroduction to us? What was that about? How does that come into this? Well, what it was about was I was going through a very difficult time in my life when everything that bad could happen to me happened in the same 10-day period. My relationship with my Zen wife, lovely lady, we decided amicably that our relationship simply wasn't working. Our marriage wasn't turning out the way we had hoped it would. So we agreed to part company. It made me very sad, but I was willing to move forward. But Jim, five days later, the corporation I worked for let me go. They released me because the company I worked for needed to downsize. And I had the least amount of seniority. I had only been hired two years prior to that. So I lost my wife and lost my job in the same five-day period. But wait, the world wasn't done with me yet. As I'm driving to an appointment for a new job interview, and by the way, I should say that my former employer, my boss wrote me a sterling letter of recommendation telling anyone who read it that I wasn't let go because I wasn't doing well. He said I was one of his best employees, but that it was a seniority thing and he had to follow the seniority rules. So last in, first out. When is the downsizing taking place? So I had this glowing letter of recommendation in my hand, and I'm certain I'm going to get the other job that I had been invited to interview for. I never got to the interview, Jim. An elderly man made a left turn in front of my car as I'm driving down the road. He misjudged the distance between our two cars, and he decided he needed to make a left turn. Well, he smashed right into my car, and my car wasn't just... had a fender bender, and my car was totaled. And I wound up being pulled out of the wreckage, and I had a broken neck. Wow. It wasn't a hairline fracture. I still recall the wording on the medical report. It said I had suffered a three-quarter inch avulsion fracture of the seventh cervical vertebrae posteriorly. Jim, a three-quarter inch break in your neck is big enough to put a pencil through. Terrifying. When I woke up at the hospital, they put me under immediate anesthesia because I was in terrific pain. But when I woke up from the anesthetic, the doctor said, you know, I've just seen a miracle happen. Most people who have a three-quarter inch break in their neck die instantly on the spot because of spinal cord complications. And the few who don't die wind up being paralyzed from the neck down. Wow. He looked at me and he said, Mr. Walsh, you have suffered neither consequence. What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Because you're a walking miracle, medically speaking. And I never thought about life in that context, of course. So, you know, and I couldn't get a job anywhere, you know, but they had fitted me with what's known in the business as a Philadelphia collar. It's a plastic collar that you wear from, you know, the top of your chest to the bottom of your chin. And it's the only thing holding your head up. And the doctor said, you will not take this off for any reason until I tell you to, because it's the only thing holding up your head right now. So, you know, but I was going to job interviews one after the other, and no one would hire me, even though I had a glowing letter of recommendation. I couldn't understand why I wasn't getting hired. And finally, the seventh man to interview me said, Mr. Paul, we can't hire you when you're wearing that therapeutic device on your neck. Obviously, you've got some kind of a handicap situation. One wrong move while you're on the job and we're paying your hospital bills for the next 10 years. You come to us when you're back in one piece and we hire you in 30 seconds. So I couldn't get hired anywhere. And I couldn't pay for the small little apartment that I was renting when my wife and I split and went our separate ways. And I was evicted by my landlord. I can't blame him because I couldn't pay the rent anymore. I paid the rent for three or four months, but then my savings ran out. I didn't have like a hundred grand in the bank. I had like eight or 10 grand, but my savings ran out. So then I couldn't pay the rent. And he said, I got to ask you to go. My friend, I wound up living on the sidewalk. I had nowhere to go. And I lived on the sidewalk as what they call a street person. It was two or three bad months. I was out there on the sidewalk for a year. Wow. I didn't know that. I didn't remember that from your story. Wow. I lived on the street for a year of my life. I did have a tent. My former wife did let me have the family tent so at least I could get out from under the rain. But there's no heater in the tent. It's pretty darn cold in February, and the ground is just as hard under a tent as it is outside. So I'm lying on the ground in the cold, and I'm walking the streets every day with my hand out, going from person to person, asking if you could spare even a few coins that I appreciated. And I wound up living that way for a year of my life. But then when I finally found a little part-time job somewhere I got back into a one-room flat on top of somebody's garage. But it was, hey, out of the weather. And so I woke up one morning. I was in there about, oh, two or three months, Jim. And I woke up one morning at 4.23 in the morning. And I thought to myself, you know, what have I done to deserve a life like this? Why is it one thing after the other? And I started screaming in my head to God, what do you want from me? What is it that I don't understand? And that's when I heard a voice in my head. It was kind of a voiceless voice. It sounded like the sound of one's own thoughts. It didn't sound like a man or a woman or a child. But the voiceless voice said, Neil, do you want answers to all these questions? Or are you just venting? And I'm thinking, And I even said out loud, you know, yeah, I am venting, but if you've got answers, I'd sure as hell like to know what they are. And the voice in my mind said, you are sure as hell, Neil, about a lot of things. But wouldn't you rather be sure as heaven? And I said, okay, what's that supposed to mean? And the voice said, write down everything I'm telling you. I thought, well, okay. So I got out a little notebook. It was a yellow legal pad, actually. And I'm writing my grocery lists and so forth on there. So I started writing an angry letter to God. What does it take to make life work? What have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? Tell me the rules. I remember writing, tell me the rules. I'll play this silly game you call life. Just tell me the rules. How does it work? And I was given answers to all those questions. which brought up other questions, which brought up other answers, which brought up other questions. And before I knew it, Jim, I was involved in an on-paper dialogue with God that I never, ever dreamt anyone else would ever see. I wasn't trying to run a group. I was having a, I hate to sound precious about it, but I was having what I considered to be a very sacred personal experience. But then I was told in the conversation, Neil, you will make of this one day a book, and it will be accessed by many people. And I thought to myself, that's crazy. I said, now I gotcha. Because now I can test, I can test it out. Because if this really is, I thought it was God talking to me. But I realized there's no publisher in the country going to publish a book because a guy up in Oregon Claims that God is talking to him. Come on. So I thought, OK, you know, we'll see. We'll see about that. And I actually Xeroxed, went to a Xerox copy in place and put down a few pennies and had my notes Xeroxed and sent my handwritten notes to a small publisher on the East Coast. Jim, I got a call two and a half weeks later. We want to put this book out. I said, you're kidding me. You're going to put a book of handwritten notes, the guy talking to God? He said, well, it's a great work of fiction. I said, oh, you're not publishing it as a work of fiction. And the man said to me, Mr. Walsh, are you trying to tell me you think this actually happened to you? I said, that's why I sent it to you. Yes, of course it happened. These are notes that I received. took during the actual conversation. I consider that I had a conversation with God, and that we're all having conversations with God. All the time, we're simply calling it something else, because we don't want to be ridiculed or marginalized. So we call it, people call it, you know, women's intuition, or a psychic hit, or I had an epiphany, or I had a sudden insight, but nobody walks around saying, I had a conversation with God. And I wound up, you know, calling it that because I was told that I should send it to a publisher. And the publisher said, okay, we'll put it out as a nonfiction book, but it's not going to find 500 readers because people are not going to rush to a store because some guy up in Oregon claims that God is talking to him. And he was right. The publisher was absolutely correct. The book did not find 500 readers. It found 5 million. Wow. Not bragging, just saying what happened. And it wound up being translated into 37 languages. Amazing. And then it wound up making the New York Times bestseller list. And it wound up continuing to find readers for many, many, many, many years. For 30 years, the book is finding readers even to this day. Yeah, I mean, I have to say it did have an impact on me too when I first read it. I mean. I think we have this idea of what we're told God is. What it allowed me to do when I read the book was to say, okay, you know, maybe there are other ways to look at this God concept, to look at this higher power rather than what I've been taught from the beginning as it's this guy in the sky judging us and that sort of thing. So that really helped me. Well, thank you for telling me that. I'm humbly grateful. to know that you feel that way. And honestly, Jim, again, not bragging, just saying, I've received hundreds and hundreds of emails and letters through the years from people telling me essentially the same thing, that it relieves them to finally know that God was not a judging, condemning, punishing deity who would refuse to allow us to return to heaven, if you please, if we didn't follow the rules. And you all did. And you emphasize that everybody has these conversations. You were just saying a few minutes ago, everybody has this divine connection to the source that we can connect with if we decide to. Is that right? Not only is that right, but to expand on that thought one step further, we not only all have that connection, we are all a part of that oneness. We have the connection because I'm told that every, sentient being in the cosmos, not just on this planet. There is, of course, life on other planets, but every sentient being in the cosmos is an individuation of divinity. So we're not just simply connected to what we call God. We are a part of the primal energy that we call divinity. And we call forth the wisdom that lies within us. I want to jump into that place where you were that many of us get to. I certainly have been there. We get to that point where you say, with everything that goes on, nothing matters. This doesn't matter. Nothing matters. And that shifted for you. And it kind of brings me into what you refer to as the inner awareness number two. Nothing has any meaning save the meaning you give it. Can you elaborate on that? What you're saying with that and how that changes our perspective on nothing matters. Well, yes. I mean, to me, in my own life, I came to the conclusion that the only way things mattered, the only meaning anything had was the meaning that I was giving it. And I learned that by giving it different meanings. For instance, just as an example, Jim and I have had more than one marriage. Right. Actually, I've had more than two marriages. But I really ruined six marriages by not understanding who and what I am, what anything meant. Nothing has any meaning, save the meaning you give it. And the meaning that I thought I should give, the meaning that I thought those events had was that I simply couldn't love anybody. I didn't know how to love anyone. It was all my fault. But of course, that wasn't true. You know, I was I have some challenges, of course, in my personality, but it wasn't necessarily true. So then I decided after my sixth failed marriage to give it a different meaning. What if it didn't mean that I was simply an utter failure as a human being that couldn't hold a relationship together? What if it meant that there's more here going on that meets the eye? And that relationship had a different purpose, a different, as the French would say, a different raison d'etre, a different reason for being. And so I decided that this thing called human marriage is totally different in terms of its purpose than I thought it was. But the purpose of marriage was not to get as much as I could get out of the relationship. but to find and create a platform in which I could express and experience my true identity as an individuation of divinity. So I could step into pure love. Not to get pure love back, but to love someone in a way that they didn't need to give anything back to me if they didn't want to. Because pure love says I need Expect, require, and certainly demand nothing in return for loving you. I don't love you because of what I can get out of it. I love you because of who I see across the room, whether I get any return from it or not. So, you know, we're taught by other people that, you know, Earth is a school. We're learning, you know, what to know about life. Some people have the idea that there's a soul contract, you know, that we've made this bond to be able to go through life. Some people believe in a destiny set up for us. How does your thought or approach differ from that idea, or does it? Well, it does partially, but not completely. I do think there is such a thing as a soul contract. You know, for instance, when I met my present spouse, we have been together for 18 years. In fact, we celebrate our 19th anniversary in just a few weeks. Congratulations. Well, thank you, because for me, that's a record. To be with one person for 19 years says something about the changes that I have made. So I've come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as a soul contract. And you know how I know, and my wife and I both agree on this. I just happened to be with a group of people, and she was one of those people. And I knew as soon as she walked into the room, the first time I saw her, my first thought was, boy, here we go again. We've done this before. And she told me later when we started dating that, in fact, she had the same thought. It was love at first sight, but it wasn't our first sight. We knew each other from a previous lifetime. That was her thought. So we came to understand that we did have some kind of a soul contract to do it again. And again, we are each other's other, which is why I had rings made with the word O-T-H-E-R engraved on the rings. She's my other and I'm her. But now, having said that, to respond to the larger context of your question, I did not believe that there is a preordained series of events in our whole life. You know, I'm going to have this kind of a job. I'm going to live in this city. I'm going to meet this person. I'm going to have this number of children. I could tell you the gender of them and so forth. So it's my understanding that there's no preconceived agenda. Okay. So we're creating life as we move through it. And we might have a contract with a person or two. We might have a soul contract, which we just talked about. But we do not step into a written script that's already laid out for us. And we're just living like stepping into a movie and playing a part in a movie. So that life is a process of creation from moment to moment. Even as you and I are creating this very experience that we're having right now. When we realize that we're creating each experience in our life moment to moment. with each experience being brand new and providing us with an opportunity to serve the agenda of the soul, which has nothing to do with get the guy, get the girl, get the job, get the car, get the name on the building, none of that. The agenda of the soul, in my understanding, is to simply announce and declare, express and fulfill, demonstrate and experience who we really are. Who are we really? I mean, I know we're part of divine. We're an individuation of divinity. Right. That's who we really are. Who we really are is pure love. Who we really are is pure love. But, you know, it almost seems too good to be true. When I was told that in my conversation with God, I said to God, you know, it feels too good to be true. And God said, sweetheart. If God can't be too good to be true, who can? So you are a part of that which I am. And you are an expression of pure love. And to the degree that you choose to demonstrate that, to that degree you will experience it fully. And to that degree your whole life will be different from anything you ever thought it could possibly be. That's been my experience since my conversations with God. Why am I coming into this experience? To allow myself the opportunity to, in fact, experience and not simply to know who I really am. God explained to me, because I asked God the same question, and she said, Neil, it's very simple. When you're living in the realm of the spiritual, which you do between lifetimes, you've had many reincarnations, not one or two, but hundreds. through all eternity. But when you are existing in the realm of the spiritual, you can know who you are, but you can't experience it because there's nothing else except who you are. In the realm of the spiritual, which is appropriately called paradise or heaven or nirvana, all you experience is freedom, joy, and love, which is who you are. You are an expression of freedom, joy, and love because you are an individuation of God or Allah or Yahweh or whatever word you want to use to describe the primal energy. But if you want to actually experience what it's like, not just to know who you are, but to experience who you are, you move into the realm of the physical. You reincarnate. You become a physical being once again. And why? Because in the realm of the physical, there is that which you are not. There is that which you are and that which you are not. In the realm of the spiritual, there is not that which you are not. There's only that which you are. Pure freedom, joy, and love. And in the absence of what you are not, what you are is not. That is, it can't be experienced. And I said to God, okay, okay, I need you to explain that to me. What are you saying to me? God said, Neil, you're six feet tall, correct? He said, yes, of course. You know, you better, you ought to know. God said, of course I know. You're six feet tall. But here's what I want to ask you. Do you enjoy being six feet tall? I said, yes, I've always enjoyed being a six foot tall person. It's felt good to me. God said, but what if you lived in a world where every tree, every plant, every blade of grass, every building, every other person was precisely six feet tall? Supposing you lived in a six-foot-tall world. where everything was six feet tall. How would you know what it's like to experience being six feet tall? So you've placed yourself in a place because in the absence of what you are not, what you are is not experienceable. Therefore, you will call in what you are not so that you can experience who you really are. Therefore, she said to me, now with this new understanding, become clear. 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 really are as well. Which, of course, is what every master has told us through the centuries. What are some ways we can find ourselves back to that place? What are some things we can do? Well, you know, I wrote a book on this topic. You might have. The book is called God Talk. Yeah. And it lays out six steps forward. that we are invited to take, through which we can have an actual conversation with God. And of course, we're having it all the time. We can do it with a level of awareness. The six steps are possibility. Number one, we must agree that it's such a thing as possible. We don't have to be the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or some saintly person in order to have an interaction with the divine. Number two, worthiness. We have to admit to ourselves that we are worthy. that each one of us is worthy of having such an interaction with the highest power. Step number three is willingness. We must be willing to overcome the cultural bias of our species, which says, oh, come on, come on. Nobody actually talks directly to God. I mean, come on. Even our religions tell us that if we claim that we're talking to God and God is talking to us, that we're a blasphemer. Yeah, definitely. That's pushed pretty hard in a lot of religions. So even our religion tells us we shouldn't be saying that. Step number four, wakefulness. Stay awake. Because you could be having the experience of communication from the divine in any moment of your life. For instance, you could be watching a podcast by a guy named Jim. And you're being told this right now. Which takes us to step number five, acceptance. Do not reject the messages that you're receiving from the divine and say it was just your imagination or that you're making it all up and that it can't really be true. And then step number six, discernment. To be able to discern the difference between messages that are coming to you from the divine and messages that are coming to you from other sources, especially in this day and age with the internet being what it wasn't even 25 years ago. These days we're being inundated with messages from everywhere. So we have to discern the difference and be clear on what is actually information coming to us from that aspect of divinity that resides within us. You talk in the book about, you know, that there's a benevolence to this energy, this divine, this. In my experience, I'm clear about it. When I feel that the messages that I'm receiving always cause me to feel free, joyful, and expanded. That I'm a larger version of myself in the next moment than I was in the previous moment. So I feel expanded. I don't feel restricted or limited or reduced. And I don't feel fearful anymore. Fear leaves the experience completely. I don't become afraid of anything or anyone. Because I know that I'm not even afraid of dying. Because I know that even if I do the thing that we call die, which is not possible, nobody ever dies. Death is simply a change of address. We simply return to the realm of the spiritual. During which we can choose to reincarnate once again. and come back into the realm of the physical, which most of us choose to do in order to complete the process called evolution, the evolution of our soul. In Inner Awareness No. 7 in the new book, you talk about pain and suffering are not the same. It feels like we're hitting a wall or things are hurting, and we suffer because of what's going on. What do you mean by pain and suffering are not the same? I was told by God, Neil, pain and suffering are not the same thing. Pain is simply a physical or emotional experience. Suffering is your decision that what's happening shouldn't be happening. And I said, you know, can you give me an example? I certainly can give you an example. You've been there. A woman giving birth. You were in the room, Neil, when your lady gave birth to triplets. Three of your nine children. And you were there when the triplets were birthed. And you watched the mother of your triplets experience real pain. Because birth can be painful. But even as she was experiencing the pain, tears of joy were rolling down her cheeks because she understood that the pain was part of a process by which she was bringing forth new life in the world. So you saw, Neil, a person experiencing tremendous pain and joy at the same time. So suffering is simply your announcement of a thought you have that what is happening shouldn't be happening. But when you understand that everything that is happening can be used as an opportunity for you to announce and declare, express and fulfill, demonstrate and experience who you really are, then you realize that every moment of your life presents you with an opportunity. Know experientially who you really are. It feels like there's a lot of pain happening. There's this upheaval, and some people think that it is a rebirth, and other people think it's the end of everything, and we are suffering. How do we turn the concept around? How do we remember how to traverse in this time with the insights and principles that you've put forward? With a simple energetic tool. Because again, I asked God that question too. You're asking all the questions I asked God. I think a lot of people ask these questions for sure, yeah. And she said, Neil, gratitude. Gratitude is the attitude. It's the energy that you can project into the universe that you're existing in the realm of the physical, that can allow you to experience every encounter, even the unwelcome ones. Once again, an opportunity for you to experience who you really are. So are we collectively getting that opportunity now to make that decision? That's exactly what's happening. There's a book called The Storm Before the Calm. We've often heard about the calm before the storm, but this is what God called. The Storm Before the Calm. And it describes why what is happening now is occurring and how it's a prelude to the transformation of our species, to the elevation of our species. If we are willing to undertake the task, we can help the first domino to fall. And when the first domino falls, All the rest of the dominoes will follow. Or as Indira Gandhi put it quite simply, be the change you wish to see in the world. As we deal with these world issues, some people, spiritual sense people say, we should just ignore this stuff. It's not really real. We should not only not ignore it, we should pay attention to it and decide, is this who I really am? Is this who we as a species really are? Is this the choice that we choose to make over and over and over again? Or is it time for us to make a new decision so we have the opportunity now to move through our life and to other people's lives in a way that allows them to change the cultural story of humanity? So look, my friends, today at every thought that you hold consistently Have you worried that you speak consistently in every action that you take? Your life is an announcement of who you choose to be and who you choose for all of us to experience. Are you hopeful for humanity? Are you hopeful for this next generation that's coming up? Very much so. I think we are on the verge of a transformation of our species. And I'm very, very hopeful. And I'm convinced that our transformation is about to take place. We are now experiencing the storm before the calm. Thank you so much for coming back on Big Universe. It's been awesome to have you. I have a million more questions, as I always do. We'll have to talk again soon. I hope we can. Thank you very much for the opportunity and for the invitation. Neil Donald Walsh is the author of over 40 books on contemporary spirituality. including his latest book, Letters to a Young Seeker, Departing Thoughts from an Elder. Check out his website at neildonaldwalsh.com. Thank you for joining us on Big Universe. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks for joining us on our Big Universe podcast. For more info, check us out at mindbodyspirit.fm and search all of the episodes at biguniversepodcast.com. Keep exploring your truth. It's a big universe.