The Complete Conversations with God

by Neale Donald Walsch

It is in the act of choosing to be, rather than simply being told that you are, a part of God that you experience yourself as being at total choice, which is what, by definition, God is. Yet how can you have a choice about something over which there is no choice? You cannot not be My offspring no matter how hard you try—but you can forget.

I do not show My goodness by creating only what you call perfection all around you. I do not demonstrate My love by not allowing you to demonstrate yours.

God the Father is knowing—the parent of all understandings, the begetter of all experience, for you cannot experience that which you do not know. God the Son is experiencing—the embodiment, the acting out, of all that the Father knows of Itself, for you cannot be that which you have not experienced. God the Holy Spirit is being—the disembodiment of all that the Son has experienced of Itself; the simple, exquisite is-ness possible only through the memory of the knowing and experiencing.

I use here the picturesque speech of your most recent scriptures. Much earlier holy writings placed this metaphor in a mother-daughter context. Neither is correct. Your mind can best hold the relationship as: parent-offspring. Or: that-which-gives-rise-to, and that-which-is-risen.

Some of your philosophers say a thing is not true for you until it is true in thought, word, and deed. When discussing time, you speak of three times only: past, present, future. Similarly, there are three moments in your perception—before, now, and after.

The world is the way it is because it could not be any other way and still exist in the gross realm of physicality. Earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and tornados, and events that you call natural disasters are but movements of the elements from one polarity to the other.

Your question infers that I choose these events, that it is My will and desire they should occur. Yet I do not will these things into being, I merely observe you doing so. And I do nothing to stop them, because to do so would be to thwart your will. That, in turn, would deprive you of the God experience, which is the experience you and I have chosen together.

there are no victims in the universe, only creators.

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.

At some level you have all created that which you say you detest—and, having created it, you have chosen it.

For it is only when they can accept responsibility for all of it that they can achieve the power to change part of it.

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.

The world’s natural calamities and disasters—its tornados and hurricanes, volcanoes and floods—its

You cannot change the outer event (for that has been created by the lot of you, and you are not grown enough in your consciousness to alter individually that which has been created collectively), so you must change the inner experience. This is the road to mastery in living.

Original sin is when your first thought about a thing is in error. That error is compounded many times over when you have a second or third thought about a thing. It is the job of the Holy Spirit to inspire you to new understandings, which can free you from your mistakes.

There are those who say that I have given you free will, yet these same people claim that if you do not obey Me, I will send you to hell. What kind of free will is that? Does this not make a mockery of God—to say nothing of any sort of true relationship between us?

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.

Even if I did hold the extraordinarily unGodly thought that you did not “deserve” heaven, why would I have a need to seek some kind of revenge, or punishment, for your failing? Wouldn’t it be a simple matter for Me to just dispose of you? What vengeful part of Me would require that I subject you to eternal suffering of a type and at a level beyond description?

I tell you there is no such experience after death as you have constructed in your fear-based theologies. Yet there is an experience of the soul so unhappy, so incomplete, so less than whole, so separated from God’s greatest joy, that to your soul this would be hell. But I tell you I do not send you there, nor do I cause this experience to be visited upon you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever and however you separate your Self from your own highest thought about you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever you deny your Self; whenever you reject Who and What You Really Are.

And so long as one of us holds the truth about you, the truth about you shall ultimately prevail.

No one else will judge you ever, for why, and how, could God judge God’s own creation and call it bad?

Should I therefore punish you for making a choice that I Myself have laid before you? If I did not want you to make the second choice, why would I create other than the first?

You would never experience your Self as being in what you call “trouble.” You would not understand any life situation to be a problem. You would not encounter any circumstance with trepidation. You would put an end to all worry, doubt, and fear. You would live as you fantasize Adam and Eve lived—not as disembodied spirits in the realm of the absolute, but as embodied spirits in the realm of the relative. Yet you would have all the freedom, all the joy, all the peace, and all the wisdom, understanding and power of the Spirit you are. You would be a fully realized being. This is the goal of your soul.

This is My plan for you. This is My ideal: that I should become realized through you. That thus, concept is turned into experience, that I might know my Self experientially.

Have you ever seen anything more perfect than a snowflake? Its intricacy, its design, its symmetry, its conformity to itself and originality from all else—all are a mystery. You wonder at the miracle of this awesome display of Nature. Yet if I can do this with a single snowflake, what think you I can do—have done—with the universe?

Were you to see the symmetry of it, the perfection of its design—from the largest body to the smallest particle—you would not be able to hold the truth of it in your reality. Even now, as you get glimpses of it, you cannot yet imagine or understand its implications. Yet you can know there are implications—far more complex and far more extraordinary than your present comprehension can embrace. Your Shakespeare said it wonderfully: There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

If I do not go within I go without

If a snowflake is utterly perfect in its design, do you not think the same could be said about something as magnificent as your life?

The world exists exactly as it is so that you may make these judgments. If the world existed in perfect condition, your life process of Self creation would be terminated. It would end. A lawyer’s career would end tomorrow were there no more litigation. A doctor’s career would end tomorrow were there no more illness. A philosopher’s career would end tomorrow were there no more questions.

I want what you want. The day you really want an end to hunger, there will be no more hunger. I have given you all the resources with which to do that. You have all the tools with which to make that choice. You have not made it. Not because you cannot make it. The world could end world hunger tomorrow. You choose not to make it.

Nothing, nothing is more gentle than Nature. And nothing, nothing has been more cruel to Nature than man. Yet you step aside from all involvement in this; deny all responsibility. It is not your fault, you say, and in this you are right. It is not a question of fault, it is a matter of choice.

Yet if you cannot all agree on something as basically simple as ending the killing of each other, how can you call upon the heavens with shaking fist to put your life in order?

Yet salvation does not mean saving yourself from the snares of the devil. There is no such thing as the devil, and hell does not exist. You are saving yourself from the oblivion of non-realization.

Of course, when entire societies think a certain way, very often astonishing things happen—not all of them necessarily desirable. For instance, a society living in fear, very often—actually, inevitably—produces in form that which it fears most.

Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God.

So go ahead now. Ask Me anything. Anything. I will contrive to bring you the answer. The whole universe will I use to do this. So be on the lookout. This book is far from My only tool. You may ask a question, then put this book down. But watch. Listen. The words to the next song you hear. The information in the next article you read. The story line of the next movie you watch. The chance utterance of the next person you meet. Or the whisper of the next river, the next ocean, the next breeze that caresses your ear—all these devices are Mine; all these avenues are open to Me. I will speak to you if you will listen. I will come to you if you will invite Me. I will show you then that I have always been there. All ways.

Yet hold to your beliefs, and stay true to your values, for these are the values of your parents, of your parents’ parents; of your friends and of your society. They form the structure of your life, and to lose them would be to unravel the fabric of your experience. Still, examine them one by one. Review them piece by piece. Do not dismantle the house, but look at each brick, and replace those which appear broken, which no longer support the structure.

Yet seek to fight in a way which harms no one. Harm is not a necessary ingredient in healing.

If there were such a thing as sin, this would be it: to allow yourself to become what you are because of the experience of others. This is the “sin” you have committed. All of you. You do not await your own experience, you accept the experience of others as gospel (literally), and then, when you encounter the actual experience for the first time, you overlay what you think you already know onto the encounter.

In most cases, you don’t want to make your parents, your schools, your religions, your traditions, your holy scriptures wrong—so you deny your own experience in favor of what you have been told to think.

Most of you, therefore, spend the bulk of your adult life searching for the “right” way to worship, to obey, and to serve God. The irony of all this is that I do not want your worship, I do not need your obedience, and it is not necessary for you to serve Me.

You are a three-fold being. You consist of body, mind, and spirit. You could also call these the physical, the non-physical, and the meta-physical. This is the Holy Trinity, and it has been called by many names.

Space is likewise divided into three: here, there, and the space between.

It is defining and describing this “space between” that becomes difficult, elusive. The moment you begin defining or describing, the space you describe becomes “here” or “there.” Yet we know this “space between” exists. It is what holds “here” and “there” in place—just as the eternal now holds “before” and “after” in place.

Thought is the first level of creation.

This has not occurred by coincidence; this is not happenstance. It is all part of the divine plan—for you could not claim, create, experience—Who You Are if you already were it. It was necessary first for you to release (deny, forget) your connection to Me in order to fully experience it by fully creating it—by calling it forth. For your grandest wish—and My grandest desire—was for you to experience yourself as the part of Me you are. You are therefore in the process of experiencing yourself by creating yourself anew in every single moment. As am I. Through you.

I tell you this: all you see in your world is the outcome of your idea about it.

Good. You should, since we know that right now you are not living your highest vision of yourself. Now, having seen the differences between where you are and where you want to be, begin to change—consciously change—your thoughts, words, and actions to match your grandest vision.

So—do you want your life to “take off”? Begin at once to imagine it the way you want it to be—and move into that. Check every thought, word, and action that does not fall into harmony with that. Move away from those.