Living the New Spirituality
An interview with Neale Donald Walsch
by Debbie Smoker
I don't know too many people who walk their talk the way Neale Donald Walsch does.
I interviewed him when Conversations with God was first coming out and he has since
become a household name. In the last decade, Neale has written 21 books, starred
in a movie called "Indigo" (written by him and James Twyman and produced
by Stephen Simon, soon to be released in 27 cities), and, along with his wife Nancy,
formed the Conversations with God Foundation, a non-profit organization whose purpose
is to assist people to re-create their relationship with God. His children's book,
"The Little Soul and the Sun" is in the process of being made into an animated
movie.
As if this isn't enough, Neale also travels extensively worldwide presenting lectures,
workshops and retreats. The idea of fame sounds glamorous to many people, but the
reality of it is very sobering. Famous people have a huge impact on society. And
as we all know, in this day and age much of media coverage thrives on mud-slinging.
Famous people get lied about and laughed at. The fact that we live in a world that
finds this entertaining speaks volumes.
Neale Donald Walsch knows who he is and why he's here, and nothing is going to deter
him from his mission. I believe he has a clear vision of the state of the planet,
a vision that is very muddled to many people. After all these centuries, the human
race is still living in illusions of separateness, of powerlessness, of fear, and
of victimization. We still don't really understand that we are great and powerful
divine beings and that we all are literally creating the world in which we live.
Neale gets it. Not only does he understand it, but he has devoted his life to helping
others understand it. And he is taking this much further than mere understanding.
He actually has a plan of action and is going around the world now, calling people
to help activate the changes we can make to create tolerance, compassion, love, equality,
understanding and peace.
Neale's book The New Revelations (Atria Books, 2002), reveals,
"There are five things you can choose now if changing the world, and the self-destructive
direction in which it is moving, is what you wish to achieve:
1. You can choose to acknowledge that some of your old beliefs about God and about
Life are no longer working.
2. You can choose to acknowledge that there is something you do not understand about
God and about Life, the understanding of which will change everything.
3. You can choose to be willing for a new understanding of God and Life to now be
brought forth, an understanding that could produce a new way of life on our planet.
4. You can choose to be courageous enough to explore and examine this new understanding,
and, if it aligns with your inner truth and knowing, to enlarge your belief system
to include it.
5. You can choose to live your life as demonstrations of your highest and grandest
beliefs, rather than as denials of them.
"These are the Five Steps to Peace, and if you take them, you can shift everything
on our planet."
One of the things I love most about all of Neale's books is that his messages are
brought to light in such a child-like manner. They are repeated in such a way that
anyone can grasp them. The messages are questioned over and over from what I call
our "dark age programming" until they make total sense. The new way of
perceiving is both loving and liberating. I'll never forget the thought I had after
first reading Conversations with God. I thought, "How could anyone read this
and not love themselves and others afterwards?" Until then, I hadn't realized
that I somehow needed to give myself permission to love myself. My strict religious
upbringing had me believing I was "unworthy" and "less than."
It was so disempowering. How can we serve and make a difference when we're living
in that state?
Neale will be a keynote speaker at Edge Life Expo 2004. He spoke to us about that,
and much more.
Neale Donald Walsch will speak in a special VIP session, to 200 people, from Noon
to 1 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 21, at Edge Life Expo 2004. Those who attend this special
session ($100 or $50 with Gold Card Access) will stay and enjoy premium seating following
the VIP session for Neale's Keynote address on "Living the New Spirituality,"
from 1:30-4 p.m. The New Spirituality, a concept inspired by the latest books by
Neale Donald Walsch -- The New Revelations, Tomorrow's God and the upcoming release
What God Wants -- is not a new religion. Rather, it is a movement advocating that
all religions and cultures regard each other in a positive light, and move from non-acceptance
to full embrace of each other's differences. General seating for the Keynote address
is $50 and $40. Tickets are now available at Uptowntix.com. Call (612) 604-4466 or
toll-free 1 (866) 390-EDGE (3343). Sales tax and services charges additional.
What are you going to be doing at Edge Life Expo?
Neale Donald Walsch: I'm going to be inviting the participants to join with me
in starting a revolution. It's going to be a spiritual revolution of the first rank
and I am recruiting members now for a revolutionary undertaking. I am quite serious
about this. I am not saying it lightly. I hope to generate a spiritual revolution
in the United States and around the world to begin creating on the ground the new
spirituality that's talked about in my book, Tomorrow's God. And so I will be challenging
the audience to do more than simply listen to or agree with the case that we need
this. I will ask them to commit to playing an active role in placing the new spirituality
on the ground in cities, towns and villages across the globe. I will be telling them
about the work of Humanities Team, which is one way, but not the only way, that they
can do that.
What is the work of the Humanities Team?
Walsch: It is just that, to place on the ground in cities, towns and villages
around the world the new spirituality as a functioning experience, as a functioning
reality. We're moving the new spirituality from a concept to an experience, so it's
not just a concept in someone's mind or on a page in a book, but an experience in
the lives of people everywhere. It seeks to do that through a number of programs,
including educational classes, emotional support groups and regular gatherings of
people on a weekly or bi-weekly basis who wish to celebrate the impulse toward the
divine in this particular way.
When people say, "In what particular way?" I'm talking about a new brand
of spiritual expression that allows us to experience our natural impulse toward the
divine in a way that does not make each other wrong for how they are doing it, in
a way that does not speak of exclusivity, that is in a way that excludes no one.
It's a way that is all-inclusive, which we believe is the essential nature of God.
We believe that God is an all-inclusive God, an all-inclusive deity who really has
no reason in the world or out of it to exclude anyone, least of all excluding someone
by virtue of the brand name of the religion to which they belong. We do not intend
to create a new religion in the world, but we do intend to create a new spiritual
movement in the world. There is a decided difference between the two.
A new religion would, of course, be a whole new set of dogmas and doctrines and teachings.
Whereas, a new spirituality seeks to enhance and expand the teachings and the understandings
of the world's existing religions. It seeks to enhance those religions in such a
way that they allow themselves and give themselves the room to drop away any particular
specific teaching or doctrine that would suggest there is only one way to experience
the divine, either in this life or thereafter. We are deeply sensitive to the fact
that now, in the latest Harris Survey of two weeks ago, 70 percent of Americans believe
that religion poses the most serious obstacle to peace in the world.
If that's not a wake-up call, what is? We, as individuals, must now get conscious,
as each of us can make a difference. So, are you going around the world now, starting
this revolution?
Walsch: Actually, the Revolution Tour started October 1. We call it the Evolution
Revolution, and from now on I'll be talking in these terms I'm sure for the next
several years. I really aim to change the face of the spiritual experience of humanity.
So many of us have read the "Conversations with God" series and have
benefited from them. What are your latest books about?
Walsch: The two books that are pertinent to this particular outreach are The
New Revelations and Tomorrow's God. These books are companion pieces. Revelations
came first. Tomorrow's God came next. One leads into the other. Those two books combined
really contain the cosmology and the constructions that support what I'm calling
the New Spirituality.
The New Revolutions also contains a five-step plan for peace in the world. We call
it the Five Steps to Peace. People have been downloading it now off the website for
many, many months. We are suggesting that people become modern day Martin Luther's
and take the five steps to peace and tack them up on church house doors, as Martin
Luther did with his 95 theses in 1517 in Wittenburg, Germany, which started of course,
the first Reformation. Our intention is to stimulate the second great Reformation
of world religion. That is our intention, our goal and our purpose. We intend to,
in fact, inspire the second great Reformation of world religion. The Five Steps to
Peace can be taken from our web page in 27 different languages.
It is now time for a call to action.
Where did you launch this tour?
Walsch: We kicked off the tour in Mexico City. Then went go to Bermuda, then
Toronto, then to New York state, Cleveland, Pennsylvania, and several other places.
And I just got back from Hong Kong.
Aren't you exhausted? How do you keep going? That's a grueling schedule!
Walsch: I'm a bit tired. But I'm committed and I have a burning desire to really
bring a message that one believes will change the world. I don't want to sound arrogant
or grandiose, but I do believe that this message can change the world. The messages
in The New Revelations and in Tomorrow's God are right on point in the context of
what is happening in the world today.
The very first words of The New Revelations are "We need a new God." And
God answers, "I know." The old God isn't working anymore. Tomorrow's God
makes a flat-out prediction that the human race will create a new God, that is, a
new understanding of who and what God is, in the next 25 to 30 years. This is a very
short period of time. The Renaissance, of course, changed everything on this planet.
The Renaissance lasted approximately 300 years, from the 1400s through the 1600s,
and changed the face of human experience. It changed everything: our political systems,
our economic systems, our social systems, our spiritual understandings and systems
of belief and practice. It really changed the way we lived our lives on this planet.
But it took 300 years to do that.
We know that the new renaissance, the second-grade reformation, will take one tenth
that time, approximately 25 to 30 years, because there has been a tenfold increase
in the speed with which we can transfer and assimilate and put into function new
data, new ideas and revolutionary new concepts. So we expect that it will take about
25 to 30 years to fundamentally alter the social systems, the spiritual understandings,
the economic and political systems that drive the engine of human experience on this
planet.
This is a long-range plan that we are inspiring and instigating here. We don't expect
that it will be done, as they said in John Kennedy's inaugural address, "All
of this will not be accomplished in the first 100 days, nor in the first 1,000 days,
but let us begin."
Do you have any parting message for Edge Life readers?
Walsch: It's time to shift gears and move into committed activity as spiritual
activists of the first rank on this planet. If we're unwilling to do that and insist
upon remaining passive, and largely watch the world spin and watch it go by, we will
concede tomorrow to those who are creating the terrorism today. So the question before
humanity right now is whether we want to concede tomorrow or create tomorrow.
For more information, visit www.cwg.org
Debbie
Smoker is based in Madison, Wisc., and is available for speaking, doing readings
and workshops. She is the author of Turn On Your Magic Eyes and Joy Of Jamaica, the
first of two books in a series about a man's spiritual evolution. Call Debbie at
(608) 833-0102 or e-mail dsmoker@execpc.com. Check out her website at www.dsmoker.com.
Copyright © 2004 Debbie Smoker
|