The Complete Conversations with God

by Neale Donald Walsch

The challenge is one of discernment. The difficulty is knowing the difference between messages from God and data from other sources. Discrimination is a simple matter with the application of a basic rule: Mine is always your Highest Thought, your Clearest Word, your Grandest Feeling. Anything less is from another source.

The Highest Thought is always that thought which contains joy. The Clearest Words are those words which contain truth. The Grandest Feeling is that feeling which you call love. Joy, truth, love.

You will not have that for which you ask, nor can you have anything you want. This is because your very request is a statement of lack, and your saying you want a thing only works to produce that precise experience—wanting—in your reality. The correct prayer is therefore never a prayer of supplication, but a prayer of gratitude. When you thank God in advance for that which you choose to experience in your reality, you, in effect, acknowledge that it is there…in effect. Thankfulness is thus the most powerful statement to God; an affirmation that even before you ask, I have answered. Therefore never supplicate. Appreciate.

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 wraps 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.

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. I’m not sure I understand. 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. It is your soul’s only desire to turn its grandest concept about itself into its greatest experience. Until concept becomes experience, all there is is speculation. I have been speculating about Myself for a long time. Longer than you and I could collectively remember. Longer than the age of this universe times the age of the universe. You see, then, how young is—how new is—My experience of Myself!

Once in the physical universe, you, My spirit children, could experience what you know of yourself—but first, you had to come to know the opposite. To explain this simplistically, you cannot know yourself as tall unless and until you become aware of short. You cannot experience the part of yourself that you call fat unless you also come to know thin. Taken to ultimate logic, you cannot experience yourself as what you are until you’ve encountered what you are not. This is the purpose of the theory of relativity, and all physical life. It is by that which you are not that you yourself are defined. Now in the case of the ultimate knowing—in the case of knowing yourself as the Creator—you cannot experience your Self as creator unless and until you create. And you cannot create yourself until you un-create yourself. In a sense, you have to first “not be” in order to be. Do you follow?

You are, have always been, and will always be, a divine part of the divine whole, a member of the body. That is why the act of rejoining the whole, of returning to God, is called remembrance. You actually choose to re-member Who You Really Are, or to join together with the various parts of you to experience the all of you—which is to say, the All of Me. Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to re-member Who You Are. And to re-member who everyone else is. That is why a big part of your job is to remind others (that is, to re-mind them), so that they can re-member also. All the wonderful spiritual teachers have been doing just that. It is your sole purpose. That is to say, your soul purpose.

Do not condemn, therefore, all that you would call bad in the world. Rather, ask yourself, what about this have you judged bad, and what, if anything, you wish to do to change it. Inquire within, rather than without, asking: “What part of my Self do I wish to experience now in the face of this calamity? What aspect of being do I choose to call forth?” For all of life exists as a tool of your own creation, and all of its events merely present themselves as opportunities for you to decide, and be, Who You Are.

Now there are those who say that life is a school, and that these things which you observe and experience in your life are for your learning. I have addressed this before, and I tell you again: You came into this life with nothing to learn—you have only to demonstrate what you already know. In the demonstration of it will you function it out, and create yourself anew, through your experience. Thus do you justify life, and give it purpose. Thus do you render it holy.

No, not all the things which you call bad which happen to you are of your own choosing. Not in the conscious sense—which you mean. They are all of your own creation. You are always in the process of creating. Every moment. Every minute. Every day. How you can create we’ll go into later. For now, just take my word for it—you are a big creation machine, and you are turning out a new manifestation literally as fast as you can think. Events, occurrences, happenings, conditions, circumstances—all are created out of consciousness. Individual consciousness is powerful enough. You can imagine what kind of creative energy is unleashed whenever two or more are gathered in My name. And mass consciousness? Why, that is so powerful it can create events and circumstances of worldwide import and planetary consequences. It would not be accurate to say—not in the way you mean it—that you are choosing these consequences. You are not choosing them anymore than I am choosing them. Like Me, you are observing them. And deciding Who You Are with regard to them. Yet there are no victims in the world, and no villains. And neither are you a victim of the choices of others. At some level you have all created that which you say you detest—and, having created it, you have chosen it. This is an advanced level of thinking, and it is one which all Masters reach sooner or later. For it is only when they can accept responsibility for all of it that they can achieve the power to change part of it.

There is only one reason to do anything: as a statement to the universe of Who You Are.

But judge not, and neither condemn, for you know not why a thing occurs, nor to what end. And remember you this: that which you condemn will condemn you, and that which you judge, you will one day become. Rather, seek to change those things—or support others who are changing those things—which no longer reflect your highest sense of Who You Are. Yet, bless all—for all is the creation of God, through life living, and that is the highest creation.

Hell is the opposite of joy. It is unfulfillment. It is knowing Who and What You Are, and failing to experience that. It is being less. That is hell, and there is none greater for your soul.

The direct answer to your question is, yes, you may do as you wish without fear of retribution. It may serve you, however, to be aware of consequences. Consequences are results. Natural outcomes. These are not at all the same as retributions, or punishments. Outcomes are simply that. They are what results from the natural application of natural laws.

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.

Emotion is the power which attracts. That which you fear strongly, you will experience.

Thought is pure energy. Every thought you have, have ever had, and ever will have is creative. The energy of your thought never ever dies. Ever. It leaves your being and heads out into the universe, extending forever. A thought is forever.

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

Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God. In highest Truth, love is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. When you move into the absolute, you move into love.

Enlightenment is understanding that there is nowhere to go, nothing to do, and nobody you have to be except exactly who you’re being right now.

That is why Masters are imperturbable in the face of what others might call calamity. A Master blesses calamity, for the Master knows that from the seeds of disaster (and all experience) comes the growth of Self. And the Master’s second life purpose is always growth. For once one has fully Self realized, there is nothing left to do except be more of that. It is at this stage that one moves from soul work to God work, for this is what I am up to! I will assume for the purposes of this discussion that you are still up to soul work. You are still seeking to realize (make “real”) Who You Truly Are. Life (I) will give you bountiful opportunities to create that (remember, life is not a process of discovery, life is a process of creation).

This is the answer to your question, “If love is all there is, how can man ever justify war?” Sometimes man must go to war to make the grandest statement about who man truly is: he who abhors war. There are times when you may have to give up Who You Are in order to be Who You Are.

Never do anything in relationship out of a sense of obligation. Do whatever you do out of a sense of the glorious opportunity your relationship affords you to decide, and to be, Who You Really Are.

Less pain without more wisdom defeats your purpose; does not allow you to experience infinite joy—which is What I Am. Be patient. You are gaining wisdom. And your joys are now increasingly available without pain. That, too, is a very good sign. You are learning (remembering how) to love without pain; to let go without pain; to create without pain; to even cry without pain. Yes, you’re even able to have your pain without pain, if you know what I mean.

The usual method of creation for most human beings is a three-step process involving thought, word, and deed, or action. First comes thought; the formative idea; the initial concept. Then comes the word. Most thoughts ultimately form themselves into words, which are often then written or spoken. This gives added energy to the thought, pushing it out into the world, where it can be noticed by others. Finally, in some cases words are put into action, and you have what you call a result; a physical world manifestation of what all started with a thought.

It is therefore true that nothing happens to you or through you that is not for your own highest good.

The human race will change course, that much I can promise you. The only question is whether that course change will come about as a result of coercion or cooperative and open-minded exploration.

You cannot hold in “you,” because you are as boundless as the Universe. Yet you can create a concept about your boundless self by imagining, and then accepting, boundaries. In a sense, this is the only way you can know yourself as anything in particular. That which is boundless is boundless. That which is limitless is limitless. It cannot exist anywhere, because it is everywhere. If it is everywhere, it is nowhere in particular. God is everywhere. Therefore, God is nowhere in particular, because to be somewhere in particular, God would have to not be somewhere else—which is not possible for God.

The inability to experience the suffering of another as one’s own is what allows such suffering to continue. Separation breeds indifference, false superiority. Unity produces compassion, genuine equality.

Have You said all You’re going to say about time? I’ve said all you need to know. There is no time. All things exist simultaneously. All events occur at once. This Book is being written, and as it’s being written it’s already written; it already exists. In fact, that’s where you’re getting all this information—from the book that already exists. You’re merely bringing it into form. This is what is meant by: “Even before you ask, I will have answered.”

Everything that’s ever happened—and is ever going to happen—is happening now. The ability to observe it merely depends on your point of view—your “place in space.” If you were in My place, you could see it All—right now!

Do not waste the precious moments of this, your present reality, seeking to unveil all of life’s secrets. Those secrets are secrets for a reason. Grant your God the benefit of the doubt. Use your Now Moment for the Highest Purpose—the creation and the expression of Who You Really Are. Decide Who You Are—Who you want to be—and then do everything in your power to be that.

For shame is not virtue, and guilt is not goodness,

not with lust, for lust is not passion; and not with abandon, for abandon is not freedom; and not with aggressiveness, for aggressiveness is not eagerness.

When you live as a three-part being, you come at last into balance with yourself. Your concerns include matters of the soul: spiritual identity; life purpose; relationship to God; path of evolution; spiritual growth; ultimate destiny.

What enlightenment and evolution do cause you to drop is your addiction to sex, your deep need to have the experience, your compulsive behaviors. So, too, your preoccupation with money, power, security, possessions, and other experiences of the body will vanish.

That is well said. Yet, I repeat, you must take care not to smother yourself in laws trying to guarantee people a chance to breathe! You cannot legislate morality. You cannot mandate equality. What is needed is a shift of collective consciousness, not an enforcer of collective conscience.

This one simple change—seeking and finding peace within—could, were it undertaken by everyone, end all wars, eliminate conflict, prevent injustice, and bring the world to everlasting peace. There is no other formula necessary, or possible. World peace is a personal thing! What is needed is not a change of circumstance, but a change of consciousness.

You cannot find it in your heart to “live simply, so that others may simply live.”

How does the Law of Love You spoke of earlier work? Love gives all and requires nothing. How can we require nothing? If everyone in your race gave all, what would you require? The only reason you require anything is because someone else is holding back. Stop holding back!

Embrace every circumstance, own every fault, share every joy, contemplate every mystery, walk in every man’s shoes, forgive every offense (including your own), heal every heart, honor every person’s truth, adore every person’s God, protect every person’s rights, preserve every person’s dignity, promote every person’s interests, provide every person’s needs, presume every person’s holiness, present every person’s greatest gifts, produce every person’s blessing, and pronounce every person’s future secure in the assured love of God. Be a living, breathing example of the Highest Truth that resides within you.

This group has detached itself from the need for material things. It is concerned with spiritual truth, spiritual reality, and spiritual experience. The people in this group see life as a spiritual encounter—a journey of the soul. They respond to all human events within that context. They hold all human experience within that paradigm. Their struggle has to do with the search for God, the fulfillment of Self, the expression of truth. As they evolve, this struggle becomes not a struggle at all, but a process. It is a process of Self-definition (not self-discovery), of Growth (not learning), of Being (not doing).

The first mark of a primitive society is that it thinks itself advanced. The first mark of a primitive consciousness is that it thinks itself enlightened.

am saying that the struggle between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has been going on forever and is epidemic on your planet. It will ever be thus so long as economic interests, rather than humanitarian interests, run the world—so long as man’s body, and not man’s soul, is man’s highest concern.

Be the miracle for which you pray, be the strength for which you call out, be the love for which you yearn, and be the change you wish to see. Be it. Be all that you seek for this world and end your search at last, knowing that everything for which you looked, you always possessed, but simply could not experience until you gave it away.

Most people believe if they “have” a thing (more time, money, love—whatever), then they can finally “do” a thing (write a book, take up a hobby, go on vacation, buy a home, undertake a relationship), which will allow them to “be” a thing (happy, peaceful, content, or in love). In actuality, they are reversing the Be-Do-Have paradigm. In the universe as it really is (as opposed to how you think it is), “havingness” does not produce “beingness,” but the other way around.

Even fear is an outgrowth of love, and when used effectively, expresses love. Fear expresses love? In its highest form, yes. Everything expresses love, when the expression is in its highest form. Does the parent who saves the child from being killed in traffic express fear, or love? Well, both, I suppose. Fear for the child’s life, and love—enough to risk one’s own life to save the child. Precisely. And so here we see that fear in its highest form becomes love…is love…expressed as fear.

From a macro perspective, there is no separateness, and from “way back there” all the particles of everything merely look like the Whole. As you look at the rock at your feet, you see the rock, right then and there, as whole, complete, and perfect. Yet even in the fraction of a moment that you hold that rock in your awareness, there is a lot going on within that rock—there is incredible movement, at incredible speed, of the particles of that rock. And what are those particles doing? They are making that rock what it is. As you look at this rock, you do not see this process. Even if you are conceptually aware of it, to you it is all happening “now.” The rock isn’t becoming a rock; it is a rock, right here—right now. Yet if you were the consciousness of one of the submolecular particles inside that rock, you would experience yourself moving at insane speed, first “here,” then “there.” And if some voice outside the rock said to you, “It is all happening at once,” you would call it a liar or a charlatan. Still, from the perspective of a distance from the rock, the idea that any part of the rock is separate from any other part, and, further, is moving around at insane speed, would appear to be the lie. From that distance could be seen what could not be seen up close—that all is One, and that all the movement hasn’t moved anything. You have it. You have a grasp of it. What you are saying—and you are correct—is that life is all a matter of perspective. If you continue to see this...