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Ashley On - God Talk with Neale Donald Walsch
Author of "Conversations with God" and "God Talk", Neale Donald Walsch, was severely down in his life when God started communicating directly with him - radically changing his perspective and life going forward. God tells Neale that "We've got [him] all wrong."
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SPEAKER_01:Hello and welcome to the show. Today's show is with Neil Donald Walsh, who's the author of God Talk and also Conversations with God. It's a great program. You're going to find it very interesting. Neil was in a bad place in his life several years ago and found God giving him direction. And he goes on to change his life to follow that direction. And Thank you for having me. He means that God thinks that we've got them all wrong. What can we do about that? And where do we go from there? And he also talks about God being pure love. What does that mean? And how does that relate to us on a general scale? But it's a very interesting conversation. Hope you enjoy the show. Thank you so much. Hello, this episode is brought to you by Morrison Alley. Morrison Alley provides consulting focused around strategy, leadership, and team development, as well as AI implementations to streamline effectiveness or marketing solutions or app development, and then leadership development from our Fire and Rain leadership development team focused on executive leadership experiences and experiential learning. Check it out, morrisonalley.com. Thanks. Hello, Neil Donald Walsh. Thank you, and welcome to the show. Nice to meet you today.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you. It's good to be here. I appreciate the invitation and the opportunity. How can
SPEAKER_01:I serve you? Well, Neil, I just am fascinated with your book, God Talk, as well as Conversations with God, your prior works. We explore all kinds of different things here on the show, ways of new thinking, innovations, spirituality, health and wellness across the board, in the spirit of trying to help spread the word and build a better world. I just was glad that you accepted to be on the show today and wanted to talk to you about your book, God Talk, and other things as we go along. So why don't you introduce yourself first, and then we can just take it from there.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Hi, I'm Neil.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, I can give you a longer introduction. I've written a few books here and there, and I had an experience 30 years ago reading now. It's funny how time flies, but... I did have an experience 30 years ago in which I felt that I was actually communicating with the divine, having a conversation with God. And I was told in that conversation that we're all having conversations with God all the time. We're just calling it something else, an epiphany or a brilliant idea or a sudden insight or women's intuition, whatever words we want to use, but that we're all having the same experience where somehow out of the blue, something occurs to us But what I did that was different was I wrote it down. I wrote down what I was hearing, what I was receiving, if you please. And then I found myself in my mind asking other questions, and I would get other answers. And before I knew it, actually, by golly, I was involved in an on-paper dialogue, question-answer, question-answer, question-answer. So, you know, I never imagined that anyone else would ever see this, that anyone else would ever be privy to it. But then I was told, if you please, in the conversation, Neil, you will make of this one day a book, and it will be accessed by many people. And you know what I thought? No way in the world. There's no publishing company. I mean, I could self-publish it, but no publishing company of repute is going to publish a book because a guy claims that he's talking directly to Gus. It's not going to happen. Well, in fact, I sent it on a dare request. to a couple of publishers. I sent my handwritten notes, 0.5 copies of my handwritten notes and said, would you be interested in publishing this material? And by golly, if one of those people didn't call me back and say, we love it, we're going to put it out. And they said, it's a great work of fiction about a guy who imagines that he's having a conversation with God. I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. This is not a work of fiction. And the publisher says to me, Mr. Walsh, are you telling me you think this actually happened? I said, I know it did. That's why I sent it to you. But I totally get that you don't want to publish it because it seems strange and pretty weird. He said, no, we can put it out as a nonfiction book, but it's not going to find 500 readers because the average, as a work of fiction, you could find a lot of people thinking what an interesting story, but If you want people to really believe this happened to you, you're not going to find 500 readers. But we'll put it out, you know, just because we like the material. And you know what? He was right. The book they published did not find 500 readers. It found 5 million. Wow. In 37 languages. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying. So... When that happened, I realized, oh, maybe I should listen carefully to what I'm being told here. And maybe we all should. Maybe all of us should pay more attention to this whole process by which life communicates to life about life through the process of life itself. And then one day, I know you asked for an introduction. You didn't
SPEAKER_01:expect me to talk for a half hour. This is great. Just keep going. This is wonderful.
SPEAKER_03:Well, then one day I got a call. which rarely happens to a published author. Most authors, they write a book, they have an idea, they put it into a book form, and they try to find a publisher who wants to put it out. But in this case, my phone rang, and it was a publisher calling me, a lady who owns a publishing company, and she said, would you be willing to write a book for us? I said, well, what do you have in mind? She said, we'd like to have you write a book that explains to people how they can have their own experience like the one you claim to have had. Is it possible for the average person to have conversations with God? I said, well, of course it is. We're doing it all the time. We're just calling it something else, a point I just made. She said, well, could you write a book about that? I said, sure, sure, I'd be happy to. So I did, and she titled the book God Talk. And you know what she wanted to do? This publisher, she said, we want to make a point here with the book that it's not just one guy, one person out there in Oregon who's had this experience. We want to make it clear that it's common that people all throughout the world have claimed experiences of divine intervention, where God intervenes in their life in a very personal and direct way. So she put in an announcement. She put an invitation up on the internet inviting people who feel they've had a direct conversation with God or an intervention from the divine to tell her about it, to send her an email back. She said she got hundreds of emails from around the world, and she took 10 or 15 of the best ones, which she thought were the most interesting stories, and put them in the book, in the book that we were writing, that I was writing called God Talk, to prove to people that it isn't just this guy in Oregon, but it's people all over the world So the book contains a story of a mother whose ashes came through a vision of her child, a woman who was reassured of her health condition that would be healed, a scientist whose conversations with the presence of God dramatically changed his life. Lots of stories in that book from people around the world who are claiming, hey, Walsh isn't the only guy who's had this kind of intervention. So that's, you know, the brief introduction. of who I am and why I'm here, and I appreciate the opportunity to share that with you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you, Neil. That's great. Can you share with us, you know, obviously your point is that we can all talk to God and we're all doing that in our own ways. However, you know, not all of us have maybe are as aware of that, have it be so clear, and have the experiences such that you had. What about your background? Can you tell us, I mean, how were you raised in terms of your belief system and your faith and what got you to that point when you started having the conversation the first time that you did that?
SPEAKER_03:Well, good question. I've always believed in the thing called God. I was raised by my family as a Roman Catholic. My family were staunch Catholics. So they put me into a Catholic elementary school and And so I had received all of the Catholic doctrine all through my grade school years. But I got to tell you, actually, that when I was around 16 or 17, I really stepped away from all of that because I found it difficult to embrace, to continue to hold as my own truth, some of the things that the Catholic Church was teaching me. And so I started looking at other faiths because I didn't want to give up my entire belief in God. But I thought maybe it's just the doctrine of the Catholic Church that bothers me. And I checked into the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the Lutheran Church. I looked at the Jewish religion seriously. I took a look at the Muslim faith tradition. I found myself fascinated by Buddhism. I just really, you know, in my... late teens and early 20s, I was looking at all the belief systems I could get my hands on book-wise and reading stuff just to try to figure out what's going on with this thing about God. But you know what? There were so many divergent points of view. I don't know whether you're aware of it right now, but you can Google this. I'm not making this story up. There are 4,223 religions now being practiced on the earth. Not from the beginning of time, being practiced today. on the planet. So, you know, I finally decided, okay, obviously we can't agree on who and what this thing is that we call a higher power, but whether we can agree on it doctrinally or not, one thing is interesting. Surveys have shown, sociologists have taken surveys in country after country that indicate that eight out of 10 people would say yes when they're asked a simple question. Do you believe in some kind of higher power? So we can't agree on what the higher power is and what it wants and what it does if it doesn't get what it wants and all of that. But we do seem to agree that there's more going on here than meets the eye, that there is some kind of a higher power. So that's my story with regard to how it came to pass that I wrote that book, God Talk.
SPEAKER_01:So you had a desire to... to have a relationship with God in some way. Or at
SPEAKER_03:least have some kind of understanding, if not a relationship with God. I don't think I had a desire to have a relationship with God, but I did have a desire to understand more about this thing that people call the higher power. Yeah, I wanted to know more about it.
SPEAKER_01:If I recall, were you faced with some troubling situation when you first had your first conversation? Were you... kind of at a turning point in your life, if I recall?
SPEAKER_03:That's what drove me to have my first experience of a conversation with God, actually. Yeah, I had what I laughingly refer to now in retrospect as the triple whammy. And for me, the triple whammy was there was a period of time in my life, now it's about 30, 35 years ago, but my relationship with my wife was breaking down It wasn't acrimonious. We weren't angry with each other. We just kind of agreed, you know, agreeably that we weren't doing as well together as we thought we might. And so we decided to go our separate ways. And I was very sad about that. We had two children together, and I was not happy about this experience. And I thought, well, okay, we can make this work. We can have shared custody and so forth. But actually, five days later, I lost my job. The company that I was working for, the corporation, sent down a memo from headquarters that they needed to lose some overhead so they had to downsize. And I was the last person they hired. They said, you know, we really love your work. We like exactly what you're doing, and you're doing it well, but sorry, seniority rules in this day and age. You're the last person we hired, first person out. Last person in, first person out. So I lost my job for no reason other than that the company needed to downsize. Now I've lost my relationship with my wife and lost my job in the same five-day period. But you know what? I'm a bounce backer. I thought, okay, I can handle this. I'm driving down the road, heading to an interview to get another job. And I knew I would get the job because the guy that let me go gave me a terrific letter of recommendation. He said, this is one of the guys we really hated to lose, but corporate headquarters insisted. So we let him go, but he's really good at what he does. And I know I'm going to get this other job. It just happened it was an opening somewhere else. I never got to the appointment, actually. A guy turns in front of me. He makes a left turn and he misjudged the distance between his car and mine. He was an elderly gentleman, about 86 or 87. And he wasn't quite paying attention that I guess. Anyway, he smashed right into me. And it wasn't what you'd call a fender bender. It was a total demolition of my car. My car was totaled. And I was nearly totaled. I wound up with a broken neck. And I didn't have just a hairline fracture in my neck. I remember the wording of the medical report. It said that I had severed a three-quarter inch of ulcer fracture of the seventh cervical vertebrae posteriorly. Actually, that's a break in your neck big enough to put a pencil through.
SPEAKER_02:When
SPEAKER_03:I woke up, In the hospital, of course, they sent me right away over there when I woke up. They anesthetized the wound. I woke up and the doctor looks at me and he says, you should be dead. He said, I got to tell you something. Eight people out of 10 who suffer that kind of a break in your neck die instantly because of spinal cord complications. He said, and those who don't die, the 2% who may not die, wind up paralyzed from the neck down. You suffered neither consequence. He said, man, you're a miracle patient. And he looks over at me. I'm lying on the table in front of him. He says, so what do you intend to do with the rest of your life? Wow. I thought he said, because you're a miracle, you shouldn't even be alive. So I'm like, whoa. Well, you know what? Life got worse. Because the little apartment that I was renting, I couldn't get a job anywhere. They fitted me with what they call a Philadelphia collar. It's a plastic device that you wear around your neck. And the doctor said to me, you are not to take this off for any reason until I tell you again. We're waiting for your neck to fuse back. We can do an operation, but they rarely succeed as well. When the body will heal itself, it's going to take a few months. So do not take this collar off for any reason because it's the only thing holding your head up. I said, okay, fair enough. But guess what? Nobody would hire me. I'd go in for job interviews right and left, and they would turn me down or not say anything. I'd never hear again. Finally, the seventh guy that was interviewing me said, Mr. Walsh, I've got to be honest with you. We can't hire you when you're wearing a therapeutic device around your neck. One wrong move on the job, we're paying your hospital bills for the next 10 years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:We can't afford to do it. Come in here when you're totally healed. We'd hire you in a minute. You've got all the credentials, all the qualifications, and all the experience that we need. So I was out of work and couldn't find another job. After about three or four months, the guy who had the apartment that I was renting, had a little flat above somebody's garage, said, I can't do it anymore. I couldn't pay the rent. I ran out of my savings. He said, I got to ask you to leave. I was evicted. So there you go. I'm living where? On the sidewalk. Nobody to take me in. I had too much pride to ask the few people who might have given me a place. Because I thought, I can do this for a couple of bad weeks or maybe a month or so. I can make this work. I was out there actually for a year. Two weeks shy of one year to be exact. A year on the sidewalk, sleeping on the ground, in the rain, in the snow, in the cold, in the heat of the summer, without any income whatsoever, zero money in my pocket, going from person to person with my handout, asking if you could please give me anything, even a few coins. I could get through the day and I could maybe get a little bit of a bite to eat before the day ends. Please, just a quarter, a couple of half dollars, whatever you got. And I lived that way for a year of my life. So I discovered, oh, I see. Very interesting. This is how life works. Then I did finally get a part-time job. Some guy had pity on me. He said, okay, we can use you as a weekend fill-in. Because you've got a guy who doesn't want to work seven days a week. He's going to work Monday through Friday. We'll put you on his shift Saturday and Sunday. I said, fair enough. I get this weekend job, two days a week, earning just enough money to afford a little flat and not much else. That's it. At least I was out of the weather and it had a bathroom. I didn't have to leave myself in the woods. And so I was now, I know I'm living in this place and I woke up one morning. Sorry for the long story, but this is what happened. I woke up one morning at 4.23 in the morning and I'm thinking to myself, what the heck does life want from me? What's going on? And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? Is this never going to end? And as it happened, a tablet on the coffee table in front of me, I guess I was making grocery lists or whatever I was doing with it. And so I started writing for no apparent reason, just as a quasi therapeutic device. It's 4.30 in the morning. So I'm writing an angry letter to God. Dear God, what does it take to make life work? What have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? And I remember writing the words, tell me the rules. I'll play this silly game called knife. Just tell me the rules. How does it go? How does it work? I don't understand the rules. And then after you give me the rule book, don't change them every three weeks. And then I heard a voice. Actually, I could have sworn there was somebody in the room with me. I turned around. There's nobody there. I thought, oh, man, great. Now, not only am I out of a job and trying to find a way to get through, I'm losing my mind. I'm hearing voices. But the voice said, Neil, do you really want answers to one of these questions? Or are you just venting? And I recall thinking, you imagine, yeah, hello, yeah, I'm venting a little bit. But if you've got answers, I'd sure as hell like to know what they are. And the voice answered me. I mean, my thoughts came to my mind, and the thoughts said, Neil, you are sure as hell about a lot of things, but wouldn't you rather be sure as heaven? And I'm thinking, okay, what's that supposed to mean? And then the voice said, okay, take this down. I'm going to answer your questions. And I received the answer to the questions that I had asked, which brought up other questions. which brought to me other answers, which brought up other questions and other answers. And before I knew it, I was involved in an on-paper dialogue, back and forth, back and forth, question, answer, question, answer, question, answer. And I thought, you know, well, I don't know what I'm tapping into here, but it certainly is interesting. And I might as well ask all the questions I ever had about life. I'll start asking questions about sex. about relationship, about right livelihood, about how to find a good job, about economics, about money, about health, about diet, about parenting. I asked questions about everything I ever wanted to know more about. And by gosh and by golly, if I didn't receive the most astonishing answers. So I wrote them down because I didn't want to lose track of them. And I wasn't trying to write a book. It didn't even occur to me. I was having a very private, personal, sacred experience, if you please. And it never occurred to me that anyone else would ever read this stuff. But then I was told in the dialogue, as I mentioned a minute ago, you're going to make a book out of this. And I thought, well, we'll see about that. And that's what happened. Wow. Before I knew it, people were reading the book in 37 languages in countries around the world. And I was like, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, you talk about in God talk, you talk about, uh, you know, being God talking to you all the time and how you're called to certain things. Right. Well, I think that's why I'm talking to you here today. Right. Is, is the calling. I mean, if I don't think I know, I know that's why we're having this conversation as I felt the calling to, to reach out to you. And thankfully you received that calling and here we are. Right. And, and God put us together in that, in that fashion, I believe.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:What you mentioned earlier, you know, eight out of 10 people in the world believe in a higher power of some sorts. What do you say to the two out of 10 who don't, given your experiences and your life and your search and exploration of other religions and all of that that you've learned? What would you say to those other 20% of the folks who don't? for whatever reason, don't have a belief system like we do.
SPEAKER_03:I say to them, you know what? Stay true to yourself. Or as Shakespeare would have put it more eloquently, to thine own self be true, and it follows as to night to day. Thou then canst not be false to any man. So be true to yourself. I have no need of what I say to those people. And by the way, I do encounter them. Sometimes they show up at my lectures and Just to see, you know, just to see what this guy's all about. Or maybe their spouse, their husband or their wife drags them over because one of them read the book and, no, you got to hear this guy. You got to hear this guy. So they show up in the back of the room at the lecture and they stand up and they say, oh, come on, Mr. Walsh, really? You want me to believe that you talk to God? Give me a break. And I say to them, you know what? I don't need you to believe that. I don't need you to believe anything. I don't even need you to believe there is a thing called God. Oh, and by the way, here's the good news. God doesn't need you to believe in God at all as well. God does not need you to believe in God. You're not going to get punished. You're not going to get sent to hell. You're not going to be condemned because you say you don't believe in God. So if you don't believe in God, then don't believe in God. You know what? Do what works for you. But what has worked for me is my belief in God and in the gift that God has given me, the gift of metaphysics. the gift of free will and the gift of the ability to use my mind as a tool with which to create my ongoing daily reality. And if you want to know more about that, then I say to the person, and if you want to know more about that, you're welcome to read my books. And if you think it's a bunch of hogwash, then toss it away. I mean, literally throw the book out. I invite you to throw the book away. But a lot of those people, the 20%, and show up in my lectures and my workshops, they actually do read the book. And you know what? A few of them write me letters or emails saying, I find this fascinating. Maybe I'm going to change my mind.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. What an impact. What an impact.
SPEAKER_03:It's been interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Do these... conversations or sessions with God continue to this day? Oh,
SPEAKER_03:sure. We're all having them all the time,
SPEAKER_01:as I mentioned.
SPEAKER_03:And the answer is yes, in the way that I've been having them, because I refuse to not use this connection in the way that I've used it. So I've continued to write books. I've written 41 books. And right now, I'm writing a book even as we're speaking. I'm writing another book, because I just can't shut up. And I want to make sure that what I'm experiencing and what I'm receiving, if you will, is shared with as many people as possible.
SPEAKER_01:Now, you mentioned something in God Talk about God being pure love. Can you maybe expand for our audience a little bit? What do you mean by pure love?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'd be happy to. I wrote a book on that particular subject specifically. The book is called The God Solution. And in The God Solution... I offer this idea. The way to solve humanity's problems, since 8 out of 10 people believe in a higher power of some kind, is to redefine what that higher power is. Because here's the challenge. The challenge is that most people who believe in God believe in a God of judgment, condemnation, and punishment. Either you do things God's way, or you're in big trouble. So, and, you know, The rules are different for every religion or from religion to religion, but they all have their own rules. So what I was told is to invite the world to redefine God as pure love. And when I said to God, okay, what's pure love? God said, pure love is a love that needs, expects, requires, and demands nothing in return. We can't even love the person on the pillow next to us with that kind of purity. Much less can we imagine a God who loves us that way. Because we've been taught about a God who's just the opposite. No, no, no, no, no. You don't understand. God needs certain things. He needs you to obey the Ten Commandments. He needs you to go to Mass every Sunday. He needs you to go to confession. He needs you to do this. He needs you to do that. He needs you not to do this, not to do that, not to do this, not to do that. He's got lots of rules, and boy, you better obey those rules or you're going to be in big trouble. So we've been taught about a different kind of God. Not a God of pure love, but a God of Conditional love. I love you if. And what God said to me in the book, God's Solution, is I don't love you if. I love you because. I love you because you are my child, my creation, a part of me. There's no separation between us. And so I love you completely, even as you would love a child of your own. And so, pure love is your opportunity to experience me and yourself in a way that you've never experienced either one of us before. And so, by the way, incidentally, the book, The God Solution, is available to anybody who wants it. If somebody sends me an email saying, could I have a copy of that. I can't send a hard copy. Obviously, I don't have thousands of them in my garage, but I do have it on my computer, and I can send people the author's manuscript in a digital file, and I'll send it to anybody who writes me and asks for it, no charge, totally free. You want the author's manuscript? I'll send it back to you by return email. The book is called The God Solution.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome. In my email, if you want to email me, for listeners who are interested in that, I'll get that to Neil, is dash.grace at gmail, D-A-S-H dot G-R-A-C-E at gmail. Thank you, Neil. That would be fantastic to share with our listeners. What you were talking about there really resonates with me in terms of the vengeful, angry God that we were taught about. that the you know still people are talking and being taught about um you know as a young child i would never forget i mean it just one of my earliest memories is just not not understanding why are we here at this church every sunday and we have to have a fear of god and the whole thing just never made sense to me because it's like what what kind of god would you have to fear And I really think that that's such a disservice to humanity because it just never made any sense. I don't know. I don't want to get into the hypotheses as to why that's in the Bible. The Bible is full of all kinds of stuff like that that really turns off and is a disservice to humanity, as I said. But a lot of people believe every single thing in the Bible
SPEAKER_03:is... Not just the Bible. The Quran, the Bible, the Gita. Yeah. the Upanishads, the Hebrew section of the Old Testament. You know, guys, the doctrines of every religion on the earth, not just the Bible, teach the same thing. Either obey God's commands or you're in big trouble. Some religions even tell you what you can wear and what you cannot wear and what you better not wear and what you should wear. And if you're a female, you must have your entire face covered at all times when you're in public. And by the way, speaking of being in public, you may not leave your house alone unless you're in the company of an adult male relative. Otherwise, you cannot leave the house. And this is the rule. This is not simply a cultural idea. This is the spiritual
SPEAKER_01:idea. Yeah. So pure love really changes things drastically. To put it
SPEAKER_03:mildly.
SPEAKER_01:One of the other things that I wanted to mention to you is just something that I've also found the more that I've explored and learned about the reality that we are all one with God. I found that in conversations with some folks, even with close friends who I've known for a long time, that can be a very... controversial concept. And I believe that it's, you know, in my experience, it brings up a level of accountability within, you know, in the conversation. If we are truly God and we are all have God within us, then we all should be a lot more accountable to what we do and to each other, right? And that turns off a lot of people I've seen. Have you seen that in your experiences or can you expand on that? on my experience there a little bit for our audience?
SPEAKER_03:Well, of course. And when I brought up these very same thoughts in my interaction with the divine, when I said in my conversations, God, much of what you just said here, God said to me, Neil, I'm not saying that you are God in the sense of being the totality of God. I'm simply saying that you are a part of God. I said, you know, help me understand more clearly. God said, okay, look, Have you ever been on an ocean liner? I said, sure, I have. And God said, okay, have you ever seen a wave on the ocean? I said, sure, I've seen a wave. God said, is the wave something other than the ocean? Or is it merely an arising in individual form of the ocean? In powerful expression, beautiful in its expression, but never disconnected from the ocean. It's simply an individual expression of the ocean. And When that individual expression is complete, the wave simply recedes back into the ocean whence it came. Can you visualize that? And I said, wow, nobody ever put it to me quite like that. And I said, well, you are a wave on the ocean of God, so Neil, go out there and make waves. And so that's the analogy that I've been given, and that's what I understand is meant by the statement that we are all one, that we are all a part of that which we call God, and we are individual expressions of the divine, and that we are not only one with God, but one with each other. And once we embrace, if we ever do embrace, the notion that we are one with each other, that we're not separate from each other, we're all part of the same essential essence. If humanity could ever embrace such a notion that we are all one, the world would change virtually overnight. We couldn't do in Ukraine what we're doing, having an argument over a borderline and killing thousands of people because we can't agree on what the border between two countries should be. What's going on in the Gaza Strip would not be happening. We've had armed conflict on this planet for all but 5% of recorded history. Because we can't find a way to stop killing each other when we disagree with each other. I mean, come on, folks.
SPEAKER_01:Did you have a conversation with God about that? Of course. Why do we continue to do that?
SPEAKER_03:Because of fear. We think that the only way to get our way, or to solve our differences, if you please, is to use force. So we've been using force, all kinds of forms of force, not just military force, economic force, social force, spiritual force. We've been trying to force people one way or another to do what we think they should be doing. And we do it because we are afraid of what will happen if we don't get our way. So fear is the motivating factor. I can't get my way unless you come my way and do things my way. If you choose my way, no problem.
SPEAKER_01:Why does God allow us to be, allow some of us to rule over others with fear? Why is that part of the experience that we need to
SPEAKER_03:have? Because God has given us the greatest gift of all, the same gift he would give our own children, free will. If God wanted us to be nothing more than minions in a kingdom... where you bow down and do whatever God says and everything's fine, and if you don't, then you're in trouble. If God wanted us to be minions in the kingdom, he would never have given us free will. But what God wanted us all to experience was the ability to create our own reality so that we could also experience what it's like to be the creator, because God wanted us, every part of God's self, God wanted all parts of itself to experience the totality of itself in terms of its definition as the creator of its reality. So in order for us as God's children, if you please, to use a metaphor, in order for us as God's creations to experience ourselves as divine, we would have to have be given free will to create individually and collectively our own reality. And that's precisely what we've been doing on this planet. hopefully we will continue to evolve sufficiently if we don't self-annihilate before it's too late hopefully we can evolve sufficiently to agree that we're acting insanely and we can create a different reality on this planet
SPEAKER_01:isn't that what ascension is all about right those who say we're the vibration of the earth is changing and collectively we are ascending to higher levels is that Is that what you're talking about as well?
SPEAKER_03:Well, yes. Sometimes people think of ascension in a different way. They think of leaving the body, you know, as Christ ascended into heaven. But if we're using ascension as to mean the same thing as elevation, the elevation and the expansion and the growth of our consciousness, conscious expansion, yes, then I would say, yes, that's my understanding.
SPEAKER_01:One of the things that, you know, you talk about free will, right? And in the book, I believe you talk about one of the steps is people being willing, right? What do you mean by that in terms of what can people do to be willing? Like what can people do to help others be willing?
SPEAKER_03:Well, willingness is one of the six steps that I placed in the book about having your own conversation with God to put it into context. That's what willingness is about. And when I discuss what do I mean by willingness to have our own conversation with God, we have to be willing to buck the system. We have to be willing to say, I know that the cultural story out there of humanity and the religious story and the social story and the economic story and the philosophical story, I understand that the entire story tells us, guys, you can't have your own conversation with God. Come on. I mean... You're not the Pope. Maybe God talks to the Pope, fair enough, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Chief Ulama, or the head rabbi, or somebody with some kind of credentials. But God isn't going to talk to the first baseman for the New York Yankees. I mean, give me a break, much less you, Neil. Who do you think you are anyway? So in order for us to accept the fact that God would talk to all of us, we have to be willing to buck the system and to stand up in the face of, you know what religions tell us? Many religions tell us if we claim that we are hearing directly from the divine, that God is speaking to us and through us, we're committing blasphemy. We're committing heresy. Some religions can put you to death for simply making such a claim. So what I mean by willingness is we have to have the courage and the bravery to stand up against that whole cultural story and to say, I'm sorry, guys. I understand that in your idea, even those of you who do believe in God, do not accept the fact that God talks to human beings. Well, maybe he talked to Moses. Okay, fair enough. And gave Moses the Ten Commandments. But he doesn't talk... Well, maybe he talked to Jesus for a couple of hours and maybe made Jesus the son of God, but he doesn't talk to... Well, maybe he talked to Muslim, Muslim leader Muhammad, bless his holy name. So he probably talked to Muhammad, but he doesn't talk... Well, maybe he talked to Buddha for a minute, but he didn't... Well, maybe he talked to Mother Mary and to Catherine of Genoa and to Joan of Arc and to Julian of Norwich and to Mother Teresa and maybe... maybe he even talks to hosts of radio and television podcasts like Ashley. Now, no way in the world would God talk directly to Ashley. Come on. Would God stoop that low? Which is one of the six steps in having our own conversation with God. Step number two, worthiness. To accept the fact that all of us are worthy, not just Moses, not just Buddha, not just Mother Mary or Joan of Arc, but that all of us are worthy to receive and are receiving communications from the divine. As I said a moment ago, we're simply calling it something else because we don't want to get into trouble with God. So we call it an epiphany, a sudden insight. But you know, God speaks to us in a thousand different ways across a million moments in a lifetime. The chance utterance of a friend we just happen to meet on the street by coincidence. The words on the billboard as we turn the corner around and we see 12 words, giant words on the billboard that just happen to direct our attention to precisely the question we've been looking at in our mind for the past three weeks. The overheard conversation in a coffee shop. As we listen to two other people at the next table arguing about some philosophical point that we've been exploring and looking deeply at for the past five years. And here they are talking about it. So God talks to us in a million different ways. The lyrics of the next song you hear on the radio. How many times have you been driving down the road to have the radio on and suddenly realize, wait a minute, the lyrics of that song are talking right to me. Right now. It's what I'm going through right now. So God is talking to us in a thousand different ways across a million moments. And it's as simple as that. None of us are more special than the other one. So we now get to pay attention. Pay attention to what you're hearing. Don't deny it. Don't claim it's not happening. Just listen. Be awake. Stay awake. Wakefulness is the fourth step. And I talk about it in the book. Stay awake and watch these messages come to you. Many, many ideas that will hit you. In the middle of the night, you wake up and go, of course, of course I've got to do that. Or of course I've got to avoid doing this. A feeling you get about certain decisions you have to make. Where does that feeling come from? So, we're all having conversations with God all the time, not just the Pope.
SPEAKER_01:It's wonderful. I think it's important for us all to, like you said, to be awake, to think about it like that. You have to be able to be present and aware and pause before reacting in any situation in order to see God in a lot of ways in those situations. If we don't slow down, we might miss it.
SPEAKER_03:And how can I express, pause to ask myself, how can I express pure love in this moment right now? Especially when I'm confronted by a person with whom I dramatically disagree. How can I disagree agreeably Is there any way, I mean, do differences have to create divisions? Do contrasts have to create conflicts? Does opposing points of view have to create oppositions? You know, what is it here that we don't understand? Surely there ought to be a way for us to have a different idea about things without hurting each other verbally or worse yet, physically. in response to the differences that exist between us wow whatever happened to the french statement which was a statement of great wisdom indeed
SPEAKER_01:might be a great place for us to stop um neil thank you so much for your time i um i wonder if you have any final words from you or from god that you'd like to share
SPEAKER_03:God gave me a five-word message to share with the world whenever I had a chance to, and I promised that I would. Here's God's five-word message to the world. You've got me all wrong.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. Thank you, Neil. I would love for you to hang on for a second. I'll stop the recording. It's been great talking to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us. I look forward to reading even more of your past works and your future works.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you, my friend. It was lovely to be with you and I appreciate the opportunity.
SPEAKER_01:Hello, this episode is brought to you by Morrison Alley. Morrison Alley provides consulting focused around strategy, leadership and team development. as well as AI implementations to streamline effectiveness or marketing solutions or app development, and then leadership development from our Fire& Rain leadership development team focused on executive leadership experiences and experiential learning. Check it out, morrisonalley.com. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks for listening to Ashley On, nothing but the truth for a better you and me.