Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Vol. 1

by Neale Donald Walsch

If you believe that God is some omnipotent being who hears all prayers, says “yes” to some, “no” to others, and “maybe, but not now” to the rest, you are mistaken. By what rule of thumb would God decide? If you believe that God is the creator and decider of all things in your life, you are mistaken. God is the observer, not the creator. And God stands ready to assist you in living your life, but not in the way you might expect. It is not God’s function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.

Fear is the energy which contracts, closes down, draws in, runs, hides, hoards, harms. Love is the energy which expands, opens up, sends out, stays, reveals, shares, heals. Fear wrap our bodies in clothing, love allows us to stand naked. Fear clings to and clutches all that we have, love gives all that we have away. Fear holds close, love holds dear. Fear grasps, love lets go. Fear rankles, love soothes. Fear attacks, love amends.

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek, therefore, not to find out Who You Are, seek to determine Who You Want to Be.

School is a place you go if there is something you do not know that you want to know. It is not a place you go if you already know a thing and simply want to experience your knowingness. Life (as you call it) is an opportunity for you to know experientially what you already know conceptually. You need learn nothing to do this. You need merely remember what you already know, and act on it.

Let’s start here. The soul—your soul—knows all there is to know all the time. There’s nothing hidden to it, nothing unknown. Yet knowing is not enough. The soul seeks to experience. You can know yourself to be generous, but unless you do something which displays generosity, you have nothing but a concept. You can know yourself to be kind, but unless you do someone a kindness, you have nothing but an idea about yourself.

So long as you entertain the notion that there is something or someone else out there “doing it” to you, you disempower yourself to do anything about it. Only when you say “I did this” can you find the power to change it. It is much easier to change what you are doing than to change what another is doing.

The first step in changing anything is to know and accept that you have chosen it to be what it is. If you can’t accept this on a personal level, agree to it through your understanding that. We are all One. Seek then to create change not because a thing is wrong, but because it no longer makes an accurate statement of Who You Are. There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement to the universe of Who You Are.

Pain results from a judgment you have made about a thing. Remove the judgment and the pain disappears.

No, that would defeat the purpose of the encounter. The purpose is to create your experience—and thus, create your Self—in the glorious moment of Now. You do not, therefore, choose the life you will experience ahead of time. You may, however, select the persons, places, and events—the conditions and circumstances, the challenges and obstacles, the opportunities and options—with which to create your experience. You may select the colors for your palette, the tools for your chest, the machinery for your shop. What you create with these is your business. That is the business of life. Your potential is unlimited in all that you’ve chosen to do. Do not assume that a soul which has incarnated in a body which you call limited has not reached its full potential, for you do not know what that soul was trying to do. You do not understand its agenda. You are unclear as to its intent. Therefore bless every person and condition, and give thanks. Thus you affirm the perfection of God’s creation—and show your faith in it. For nothing happens by accident

A thing is only right or wrong because you say it is. A thing is not right or wrong intrinsically.

You may even believe in the struggle long enough to create a whole religion around it. This religion will teach that struggle is the point of it all. This is a false teaching. It is in not struggling that the process proceeds. It is in surrendering that the victory is won.

The First Law is that you can be, do, and have whatever you can imagine. The Second Law is that you attract what you fear.

The Laws are very simple. 1. Thought is creative. 2. Fear attracts like energy. 3. Love is all there is.

You are in a partnership with God. We share an eternal covenant. My promise to you is to always give you what you ask. Your promise is to ask; to understand the process of the asking and the answering.

It’s your words about it—“I’m broke,” “I haven’t a dime,” “I don’t have any money”—that dictates how long you stay broke. It’s your actions surrounding it—feeling sorry for yourself, sitting around despondent, not trying to find a way out because “What’s the use, anyway?”—that create your long-term reality.

What you resist persists. What you look at disappears.

You see, 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.

There is nothing scary about life, if you are not attached to results. You mean if you don’t want anything. That’s right. Choose, but don’t want.

I tell you this: You always get what you create, and you are always creating. I do not make a judgment about the creations that you conjure, I simply empower you to conjure more—and more and more and more. If you don’t like what you’ve just created, choose again. My job, as God, is to always give you that opportunity. Now you are telling Me that you haven’t always gotten what you’ve wanted. Yet I am here to tell you that you’ve always gotten what you called forth. Your Life is always a result of your thoughts about it—including your obviously creative thought that you seldom get what you choose.