Lori: Welcome to Fine is a 4-Letter Word. My guest today is Neale Donald Walsch. Welcome to the show, Neil.

Neale: Thank you, Lori. It's lovely to be here with you. How may I be of service?

Lori: Yeah, well, let me ask you the first question that I love asking my guests because I want to establish some groundwork, some basis for where you're coming from. And that question is, what were the values and beliefs that you were raised with that can that contributed to you becoming who you became as you grew into an adult and into who you are now?

Neale: Gosh, that's an interesting question. Bunches of answers. First of all, I was raised, I have wonderful parents, although they were totally different. My mother was soft and gentle and sweet and kind of humorous and funny. And she chuckled a lot and she and she had a lot of positive attitudes about life. My father was almost the exact opposite in a gentle way. He wasn't a mean person, but he was, you know, businesslike and looking at life in kind of a, you know, different way than from the way my mother looked at it. And you know what's interesting? They called each other pest and poison.

Lori: Really?

Neale: Yeah, well, my mom, my mom nicknamed my father pest because she said, you're just such a pest. You're such a pest. And my father nicknamed my mother poison. He said, because you're poison to me. I can't get away from you. You're like poison. One taste of you and all I want is for the rest of my life. So they call each other pest and poison. And they had a very sweet relationship. But the values. OK, my father gave me the value.

You can do anything you set your mind to. You know, always do your best. If I ever had a failing of any kind or something that didn't work out the way I wanted it to, he would always say to me, did you do your best? And I would say, yes, I did. And he would look at me and say, son, that's all that life can ever ask of you. Never fail to do your best.

He also said, you know, he would also say things like, nothing can stop you if you really want to do whatever you want to do. So don't let anything stop you. So he was, you he was a very positive thinking person in that way.

Lori: Is that how he lived his life?

Neale: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, he was a union. He was a union president. He was he was the president of a labor union for years. And so he was he was a leader of men. And I would would go to when I was 11, 12 and 13 years old. I'd go to he would take me to the union meetings. Just he said, sit in the back of the room and just, you know, just watch. Don't don't talk.

And I would watch my father run a meeting of 150 or 200 guys who belonged to the union. And boy, then I saw what it was like to have leadership right in front of my face because he took no nonsense from anybody and everyone respected him. And even when they had a difference of opinion, they expressed it in a respectful way because that's what he required. And so he got it.

My mother, her point of view was soft and gentle and everybody's nice and be nice to everybody. you know, and so she and she laughed a lot. And she was just a charming person with a very deep belief in God. She had some illness problems later in her life. And I can show she we were raised in the Roman Catholic faith.

I was sent to a parochial school. And that was my theological background. And I'm very grateful for it because it gave me a belief in God, even though I didn't embrace later on in my life a lot of the specific doctrines, but it did send me into my adult years with the belief that there was more going on here than meets the eye. Yeah, you know, there's something going on and I call it God.

But I had some challenges with what the church was teaching me. so when I was around 16 or 17, I kind of stepped away from the Catholic theology. But I did never step away from my belief that there's a God. I simply didn't think that God was the kind of entity that the Catholic church was telling me about. I'm going to give you a little example so you can get a sense of what I'm talking about. When I was nine years old, I was in third grade.

And the priest came into our parochial school every Wednesday and taught the children what they called catechism. He taught us the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. And he was a very nice gentleman. And he was telling us once one Wednesday about what he called mortal sin and venial sin, the various ways that we can offend God. And I saw I raised my little nine year old hand. I remember this moment vividly because it was such a seminal moment in my life.

I said, Father, can you give me an example of what a mortal sin is, which is the most severe kind of offense? And I thought he was going to say, well, sure, you're murdering someone or stealing someone's life savings or some kind of a huge offense. He said, certainly, son, missing mass on Sunday is a mortal sin.

And I'm nine years old and my nine year old mind is trying to get a hold of a God who would say that, you know, if you miss Mass on Sunday, you're going to hell because it's a mortal sin and mortal sins were punishable by eternity in hell unless they were, of course, the Catholic doctrine. If you went to confession and confess your sin and if the priest gave you absolution and you did your penance, then you would be absolved. but, you know, and you know why it struck me that that hard.

Lori, it was that very Sunday, even though I was an altar boy and rarely missed mass. But this particular Sunday, I missed mass because I was on the softball team at our playground and it was our playground citywide, kind of like the world series of playgrounds in our city. And my manager said manager of the team, so you're not going to miss it. The game is to be game on Sunday.

It's 11 o'clock on Sunday morning, Neale, we need you out there in right field. So so I said, well, OK, great. So I and I miss mass. I thought it's no big deal. I go to mass every every single day. But but. I miss mass that particular week, and this is the week the priest is telling me, you know, so so I'm realizing, my God, I've committed a mortal sin. And if I were to die before I go to confession.

I'm going to go to hell. really believe this is a guy with the white collar and he was an authority figure. And I believe what he was what he was saying to me. And we didn't have confession in our in our parish except once a week. Saturday afternoon is from one o'clock till four. So I'm thinking now this is Wednesday. I'm going I've got to get through Thursday, Friday, Saturday, you know, until four. What am I going to do? What happens if? And I was really scared. I was actually I was frightened and I was every night I was.

Wednesday night, Thursday night and Friday night I'm praying. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep if I should die before I wake. I pray the Lord my soul to take them cry. Please God forgive me. But I was taught that only the priest could give me absolution. So of course I went to the confessional and I was so scared. I said, what if I were dying on the way to confession? And I asked the priest that. I said, well, what if I was, you know, going to confession, but I maybe got hit by a car outside the church. He said, I'm sorry, son, if you're absolved of your sin, you would go to hell. I go to hell for missing church one Sunday of your life. So, know, that doctrine stayed with me for years. I was nine years old when I was hearing this. Somewhere between 14 and 15 years of age, I thought that can't be what a loving deity would do.

Does he have to use fear to fill the pews? And so that was a seminal moment in my belief systems' involvement. I'm not sure if that answers your question, but you've got to be careful with me because you're going to ask me 30 second questions and I'm going to give you seven minute answers.

Lori: I'm okay with that. I appreciate the stories. So yeah. And so you started questioning the doctrines.

Neale: Yeah, I'm 14, 15 years old.

Lori: Did you, but you stayed in Catholicism until like, what point did you start?

Neale: Somewhere around 17 or 18, you know, I decided, you know, maybe I was 19, but somewhere in that my later teenage years, I decided, you know, there's gotta be another way to receive God into my life. So I began to explore, frankly, other faiths. I looked at the Methodist faith, I looked at the Lutheran faith, I looked at Presbyterian church, and I actually attended a Presbyterian church.

And I became a lay preacher in the first Presbyterian church where I lived. And a very young lay preacher when I was 19 years old, I was preaching on Sunday morning because they had a program in that church. They would allow a member of the congregation to deliver certain sermons. So I mean, I was really still into theology, but not into Catholicism, but I was still into Christianity.

Because I was in these various Christian denominations. And then I had a second awakening when I was in my early 20s. I thought, wait a minute. Are you telling me that God would send every one of the billions of Muslims and the billions of Hindus and the millions of Jews and the millions of Buddhists? Are you telling me that every? Wait a minute.

And I looked up the numbers on the internet. recall the moment I did it. I saw that Christians, the Christian church claims about one third of the world's God-believing people, about one third are Christians. That means that two thirds of the world's people are gonna be sent to hell by God because they're not coming to God through the right doorway. Either you believe in Jesus or you're going to hell. And again, I thought, golly.

It just doesn't feel like, you know, so I began investigating other religions, other denominations. I looked at Judaism and I thought maybe I should be a Jewish person and join the Jewish faith. And I looked at, you know, I looked at the Buddhist philosophy and I looked at a little bit of Hindu belief systems. And then I decided, you know what?

There's too much going on here. There are there are four thousand two hundred and twenty three religions now being practiced on the face of the earth. Not from the beginning of time on this day. Yeah. You can check, folks, if you don't believe me, just Google how many faith traditions are there now being practiced. Four thousand two hundred and twenty three as of last count. So I, you know, I finally decided, you know what? This isn't working for me.

There's too much going on. I've got a life to live. I can't get so caught up in my mind with a constant worry about whether I'm pleasing God by joining the right religion, because, of course, all those religions have their own ideas about how you can dress. If you're a woman and you're a Muslim, you must wear a hijab the minute you walk out of the house. And you can't leave the house without a man, without a male relative at your side.

And if you don't wear a hijab, you're you incurred the wrath of God. You're not wearing the right. I thought, wait a minute, wait a minute. God's upset if you don't wear the right clothing. And then then I was in Judaism and Judaism taught you can't eat pork, you shouldn't eat, you can't even eat a fish if it doesn't have fins and scales. And I thought, wait a minute, we're talking about a higher power who's concerned about what you're wearing, what you're eating.

What you're saying. so I thought, no, this can't be the highest power in the universe. So frankly, I stepped away from God altogether.

And that that that that were that was fine. You know, I had a wonderful life career wise. I got into broadcasting when I was 19 years old and I made a living as an on air talent in broadcasting.

Lori: I did not know that.

Neale: Yeah, was a disc jockey on the radio for years. And then I had and then I wound up having my own talk show. I was a nationally syndicated radio talk show host.

Lori: I'm starting to see how things are lining up for you to get to where you are now.

Neale: Exactly, exactly. So here I am doing a talk show on TRN, the talk radio network, and I'm syndicated across the country. And then I finally got out of radio. I thought, you know, I was around 29 or so and I thought, I'm not sure I want to be a radio broadcaster for the rest of my life. And I got into newspaper work because I love to write. And our little local newspaper was not a major paper, but was a local community newspaper. They were looking for reporters and I applied for a job.

And, you know, I convinced the guy to give me a job and the interview, because he saw that I had a minimal level of intelligence. So he hired me and I I wound up covering, you know, women's club news and silly stuff for the first six or eight months. But then they put me on some important, you know, political beats. I covered the state legislature. I was in the state capital of Maryland, which is city Annapolis. And so I wound up.

And ultimately, I became the managing editor of a weekly newspaper in Annapolis. And so I decided I became so I my point being is I was in both print and electronic media. For the largest part of my life and made it, you know, I wasn't wealthy, but I made a good living and I did I did well and my life was going really well. And then.

I encountered a little problem. The lady that I was married to decided that we weren't getting along the way she would hope we had that we had planned. And so we decided amicably. It wasn't a bitter divorce. It was amicable separation. But we decided, you know, let's just not do this anymore. I said, fair enough. I'll get myself a little apartment. We had two children together. But I said, you know, we agreed on visitation rights and everything was really kind of smooth.

Although I felt terrible about the marriage ending and not being with my children every day because I only have visitation once a week. But you know, you know, but I thought, OK, I can do this. I can do this. But my dear Lori, five days after the end of my marriage, I was fired.

I lost my job, but the corporation was downsizing. Is it going through that whole period when lot of corporations were losing overhead and they had to downsize? And so my boss gave me a glowing record, a letter of recommendation. He said, I hate to lose you, but you were the most recent hire. So you're the first one we have to let go of. You have no seniority.

Lori: Right, last in, first out.

Neale: Exactly, precisely. So I'm out. I'm gone. This is all this is five days after my marriage ended. I'm losing my job. But now I'm still confident I'm driving to an interview because, I know I'm going to get the job because I've got this glowing letter of my former boss. And I'm on the way to the interviewer and the elderly gentleman makes a left turn in front of me on the street, city street and crashed into me and totaled my car. And he crashes into the driver's side door of my car. I suffered a broken neck. They rushed me to the hospital and I didn't have just a hairline fracture. I remember the wording on the report to this day. The report said that I had suffered a three quarter inch avulsion fracture of the cervical vertebrae posteriorly. In other words, a break in my neck large enough to put a pencil through.

And the doctor said when I came to the hospital, you shouldn't even be alive. You understand? He said, I've been in this business for a long time. 90 % of the people who have that kind of a severe break in their neck die on the spot because of spinal cord complications. And those who don't die, the few who don't die, wind up paralyzed from the neck down. He said, you escaped both. Then he leaned over the table that I was on and he said.

Lori: And you weren't.

Neale: So what do you intend to do with the rest of your life? Because you have been given a miracle. You shouldn't even be here. So, okay. So, but they fit me what they call in the business of Philadelphia collar. It's a plastic collar that you wear. He said, you're not to take this off for any reason. don't care what you're doing. You're taking a shower, you keep it on. If you're sleeping, you keep it on. If you're making mad, passionate love, you keep it on. Do not take this collar off for any reason, because it's the only thing holding your head up right now.

And we want we want this this bone to fuse again, which it will. The body will fuse it, but it'll take a little while. I said, what's a little while? He said, it could be 12 to 18 months. So now here's the deal, Lori, no one would hire me. I'm going from one interview to the next. And finally, after seven interviews, even with a glowing letter of recommendation, I finally said to the seventh guy interviewing me, I said, I don't understand it. Am I saying something wrong? Am I not doing well in the interview process?

He said, Mr. Walsh, let me be honest with you. No one's gonna hire you while you're wearing that therapeutic device around your neck. One wrong move on the job and we're paying your medical bills for the next five years. Obviously you're handicapped right now. You come to us when you have a whole complete body, totally healed of whatever's going on with your neck and we'd hire you in 30 seconds.

So I couldn't get a job anywhere after about five or six months, I ran out of my savings. I wasn't a rich guy. didn't have like 200 grand in the bank, but I ran out of my savings and I was evicted from a apartment that I was renting when I left my marriage. And I had nowhere to go and I had no money. couldn't, even if I could find an apartment, I couldn't pay the first and last month's rent and a security deposit. I couldn't even get in.

And no one would hire me. I was out of work and out of a home. And so, Lori, I lived on the sidewalk. I became a street person and I lived on the sidewalk for one year of my life. At the beginning, I thought, I can do this for a couple of weeks or a couple of bad months. I can make this happen. But no, I was out there living on the street, sleeping on the ground for two weeks shy of one year.

Lori: Was this in Annapolis? Okay. And what, like, what was your ability to see your children?

Neale: Well, I had to go to her house to see them, which she didn't appreciate because she didn't want me. So it was like I had to go to the garage. The garage had no car in it, so we would hang out in the garage and play a few games and stuff, but she didn't want me in the house. The marriage was over, she didn't want me.

So I couldn't take them with me anywhere because I had nowhere to go. And, I couldn't take them to the to the street with me. Yeah. So, know, and so finally I did. Yeah. Finally, I did get a little a little get a little I got a little part time job somewhere. Still, I still had the collar on, but some guy hired me for a weekend fill in at a radio station. He needed he needed some talent on the weekend because he wanted to give his major talent, the weekend is off. So he hired me to do Saturday and Sunday to take this guy's shift. I didn't make a lot. Yeah, bingo, precisely. And I still had my radio voice. 115, 45 degrees outside KCMX like 102, you so I was doing it and I thought I can't believe, you know, they're going to give me a few dollars.

I just made just enough money to get into a little studio apartment on top of somebody's garage. he had turned the second story of this garage into a little apartment and I managed to get in there and I was there for, I don't know, maybe two or three weeks. And I woke up one morning at 423 in the morning and I thought, wait a minute. What? Come on. was my not that I'm bragging, I'm talking to myself here, but with my intelligence, with my talents, with my ability.

I was a newspaper managing editor for God's sake. I'm sitting here. Come on. And I became so angry and I became angry with God. I thought, come on, God, what does it take to make life work? And there was on the coffee table in front of me, there was a yellow legal pad that I was using just to make lists of things I wanted to do. And I start. So I sat down. It's four twenty three in the morning. I'm in the middle of the night waking up. And I thought, well, you know, what does it take?

So I started writing a very angry letter to God. I mean, I was just a way of getting my thoughts out. What does it take to make life work? What have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle? And I can remember saying in this letter, tell me the rules. I'll play this dumb game. Just tell me the rules. And then, Lori, I heard a voice.

I thought there was somebody in the room with me. turned around. Of course, there's nobody there. Now I'm thinking, great. On top of everything else, I'm losing my mind. But the voice said to me, Neale, do you really want answers to all of these questions? Or are you just venting? I can recall thinking, think you think I'm venting? Yeah. But if you've got answers, I'm sure as hell like to know what they are. I don't even know who I'm talking to, but I'm just…

And the voice comes back and says, you are sure as hell, Neale, about a lot of things, but wouldn't you rather be sure as heaven?

And I'm like, okay, what's that supposed to mean? And then the voice said, take this down. Keep track of everything I'm telling you. And the voice answered all of those early questions that I had. And I was, I wrote everything down that I was hearing. It never even occurred to me in a million years that anyone would ever see this. It was a very sacred experience that I was having with me and my mind, if you will.

Lori: Right, this was your personal journal.

Neale: Yeah, at 423 in the morning. But this went on now. This was going on for day after day after day. I was being awakened around between 415 and 430. Most mornings I would wake up almost automatically. I never really understood why until years later when I applied for a passport because I was being invited to lecture around the world at that point. I never had a passport. But in order to get a passport, I had to get my birth certificate.

So had to write to my home county and get a birth certificate. And the birth certificate came indicating that I was born at 423 in the morning.

Lori: Wow, that's amazing. That's a coincidence, but like I don't really believe in coincidence.

Neale: No, no, no. So I'm thinking, oh, my God, no wonder I keep getting this connection at 423 in the morning. So I was being awakened most days for months and months at somewhere in that in that period of time between 415 and 430 in the morning. I'd wake up and I would continue my dialogue, asking every set. thought, well, since I've got this voice on the line, I thought it was God, because who else would be talking to me the way I was being talked to?

And I asked every question I ever had about God, questions about sex, relationships, right, livelihood, parenting, even questions about diet. I mean, I asked every question I could imagine, and I got unbelievable answers, answers that I wouldn't have thought about.

Lori: You said you kind of lost in the chaos maybe of the previous years, you kind of lost a connection to God. What made you so sure that this was God talking to you?

Neale: Well, because of the nature, I can answer that question quickly because of the nature of the answers I was being given. I was being told extraordinary things with such, frankly, insight, at least to my mind, it felt insightful and extraordinarily wisdom filled. And so I thought, you know, what's going on here? And then I realized, my gosh, I'm talking to God. And then God said to me, sweetheart, I talk to everybody all the time, not just you. I talk to everybody. The question is not to whom do I talk. The question is who listens.

Lori: Why do you think that most people don't listen?

Neale: Because I hear well because I can tell you why most people don't number number one Not everyone believes in God But even those who believe in God have been taught by their various religions And I don't care what religion we're talking about now not just Catholicism The Muslim faith the Jewish faith, you know, if you're into Islam, you know or the Hindu…

Most of the world's major faith traditions teach you that if you claim that God is talking directly to and through you, you're blaspheming. It's you're a heretic, you're an apostate, you're a blasphemer. You can't go around saying, yeah, I talked to God this morning and he told me that so and so and so people have learned to disavow any idea that comes to them.

No, of course, you know, God. OK, fair enough. Maybe God talks to the pope. Fair enough. Or the chief ulema or the head rabbi. But you got to have some kind of credential. God isn't going to be talking to the first baseman for the New York Yankees. I mean, come on, give me a break. So people have been had been educated and culturalized away from the idea that God would talk to all of us.

Lori: What then is intuition?

Neale: That's a very see into it. Well, you see, I'm not saying that that's not God. I'm saying people have been culturalized against claiming that it's God. So they call when they receive communications from the divine, they in fact call it women's intuition or an epiphany or I had a psychic hit or a brilliant idea, you know, so they have all kinds of.

Yeah, because no one's going to say, know, God said to me this morning. So they call it women's intuition or coincidence or serendipity or whatever words they can find to step away from the idea that to say nothing about announcing the idea that God is talking directly to them.

Were you then hesitant with that information in the back of your head to tell people that you are having a conversation with God?

It never even occurred to me to tell anyone. I didn't think that anyone would ever see my pages and pages and pages, actually several tablets at this point, several yellow legal pads full of handwritten dialogue. I wasn't just hesitant, but why did it ultimately then become a book?

Strange you should ask.

Lori: Well, I know a little bit of the story, but I don't think all of my listeners know.

Neale: Well, I was told in the dialogue itself, God said to me, you will make of this one day a book and it will be accessed by many people. And when I was given that message, it stunned me and I thought, because no, no, no, no, this isn't going to be a book that people will read, you know. And I thought, for one thing, I knew I was a grown man.

And I was part of the media. was in the media for years. I thought there's no there's no publishing company in the world that's going to publish a book because a guy claims to be talking to God. It's not going to happen. So I thought, you know what? This is a way that I can prove whether or not the experience I'm having is what I think that it is. Because God's just given me a device, a way I can prove it, because God said to me…

You will make of this one day a book and it will be accessed by many people. So I did, in fact, Xerox my handwritten notes and sent it to not bunches, but I think it was two or three individual publishers. I didn't send it to any major publisher like Random House or Putnam, but I did send it to a couple of independent publishing houses just to see what would happen.

Lori, two and a half weeks later, I get a call from a small publishing house at that time, a small publishing house called Hampton Roads. And the man called me and he said, we really like what you sent us. We're going to publish this. I said, are you kidding me? You're going to make a book out of this? He said, Neil, it's a great work of fiction. I said, hold, hold, hold, hold, hold. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You're not publishing it as a work of fiction.

And this publisher said, Mr. Walsh, are you trying to tell me you think this actually happened to you? We thought you just wrote a novel about a guy who's having an ongoing argument with God. Great stuff. But we thought it was fictional. I said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yes, of course it actually happened to me, including the part where God said it would become a book. And so the guy said, well, OK, we can publish it as a nonfiction book. We like the material enough just to put it out there. But I can tell you right now.

It's not going to reach 500 readers because people are not going to buy a book because some guy up in Oregon claims to be talking to God. It's not going happen.

But we'll put it out as a nonfiction book if you insist. I said, OK. And you know what? That publisher was right. It didn't find 500 readers. It found five million.

Lori: Ha ha ha ha!

Neale: I'm not bragging. I'm not bragging. I'm just saying that's just what happened. Five million plus. Ultimately, now through the years, that's 30 years ago. Now it's 15 million people have read the translated into 37 languages sold around the world, including in Russia and China.

Lori: I have so many questions, but I think I was one of the first 500 actually. I don't recall at all how it came into my awareness.

Neale: You read the book when you were like 17 years old?

Lori: I'm not. Thank you. I am not that young, but I did read it shortly after it was published. And I remember just being like, wow, this is so to me. It was truth. Like you, your soul recognizes truth, right?

Neale: I think so, yes.

Lori: And that's what it was. So you're putting out this information and channeling, you will, these conversations. I don't even know how to phrase this question. wrote it down, but you've put out more content, I would imagine, than Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha and reached more people in a shorter amount of time just because of the distribution channels that we have now that they didn't have back when they were messengers. Why were they, why do you think they were turned into religions? Like, I don't think, that they were preaching to start a new religion necessarily. They were preaching what they believed was the truth from God. And then people around them turned it into a religion. At least this is what I envision had happened.

Neale: I think that's pretty close to pretty close to what actually occurred. Neither one of us were there at the time. But I think that's I think that's pretty close to what occurred. And the why it was turned into a religion is because what they were sharing. The information they were they were sharing with with their close ones. Seems so powerful, seems so exciting, seems so enlarging, enlightening to people that they told other people who told other people who told other people. And pretty soon, pretty soon a belief system arose out of it. And and that became known as religion.

Lori: Yeah, so that's not happening with your stuff. Want it to, right? No.

Neale: No, because I refuse to allow it. And anyone, even even those who tried to start a group or I've said, no, we're not going there. We're not. But the last thing the world needs is yet one more religion. and we're not going to you're not going to turn me into the head of that religion, because anyone who knows me personally will tell you that I am not a walking model of the information in those books.

I did a process that I call taking dictation. All I did was take dictation. I would ask a question and take down the answers. But I'm sorry to say that I'm not a living, breathing, walking model that is I don't walk my talk. I'm better now than I was 30 years ago, but I'm nowhere near a living example of the messages that I was given to share.

Lori: I mean, we're all human. All of those messengers were human. And so it's just interesting that that how it evolved from their messages, I feel like they were doing the same thing, taking dictation and sharing these messages that they were channeling from God. And yet, somehow they got turned into a religion.

Well, I'm going to propose that many of them were far, way, way, way more advanced even in their behaviors than I have even come close to. I wouldn't even compare my day-to-day behavior with that of the Buddha or Jesus or Muhammad, bless his holy name. I was not, you know...

I was not the Moses, you know, of the world. So I think I think we're talking about people and not just men, but women as well. Catherine of Genoa and Julian of Norwich and Mother Teresa and, you know, H.P. Blavatsky, Elizabeth of Hungary, the men and women throughout the years that have achieved a high level of demonstration. I haven't come even close to anything like that. But I can understand those who walked with Jesus.

Those who had the privilege of moving through life with Siddhartha Gautama, who later became known as the Buddha. I mean, we're talking about extraordinary human beings who lived, breathed and behaved what they spoke. No one who knows me would say that I do that. If you don't believe me, ask my wife.

Lori: Well, we have a conversation with her coming up later. No, I think that somewhat makes your message even more powerful because people can relate to you.

Neale: You know, that was actually said to me. I asked God in my dialogue, which went on for years, and I asked God, you why somebody who's such a poor example. You know, who so I have so many weaknesses and truly, you know, sarcasm is one of my failures. I have a failure. I have no patience. I'm very impatient person and many other challenges that I face in my personal, you know, my personality. But I ask God, you know, why would you choose someone with so many weaknesses?

God said, precisely because you are more like the average human being. And so people can relate to what you have to say. And they won't turn it into a religion because they see you're clearly not the next Messiah. You're just a guy who had an extraordinary experience, but they will pay attention to what you have been given to share. And that's precisely what happened.

Look, again, I'm not bragging, but the book has been translated into 37 languages. You know, I mean, it's sold all over Russia. I was invited to go to China, invited, by the way, by the Chinese government to come to China and to speak about the book, Conversations with God.

Lori: That's surprising. Did you go?

Neale: Of course, I went to three cities. They sent me to three cities and they had huge crowds. I mean, I was speaking to 1200 people in these locations that they had me speak. And I think I understand, you know, later on, I looked at it. I wonder why they would do that, because but they recognize that I was talking about a higher power that was not what Orthodox organized religion was saying. And so they could they could agree that theoretically there's more going on here than meets the eye.

Lori: What's been the most surprising thing you've learned on this journey since writing that first, those first writing?

Neale:

There's no such thing as right and wrong. God said, no, no, you're making it all up. What you called wrong 50 years ago, you call right today. And what you called right 50 years ago, you call wrong today. So what you need to know is that you're making it all up. But what you decide in the present moment is what you would call right and wrong in your own judgmental process.

It determines who you are and how well you are serving the agenda of your soul. The second most important thing that I was told is that you are an individuation of divinity, as is every sentient being in the cosmos. You are an individuation of divinity and your purpose in life has nothing to do with your body or your mind.

You didn't come here to this physical realm to be concerned about your career or your livelihood or your income or how good of a parent you are. Be nice if you were a nice parent, but that's not why you came. So I said to God, OK, then why? Why? If I'm an individual expression of divinity, why did I come to this crazy place? God said because..

Lori: A question a lot of people are probably asking themselves today.

Neale: Yes, I promise you, I get I get that question a lot from people. You know, why am I here?

And I tell them, well, I don't know. I can't give you your answer, but I can tell you the answer that I got. Because I refuse to pretend that my answers are your answers or anybody else's answers. We're not going to turn it into a religion, but I can tell you the answer that I got. The answer that I got was, Neale, you have come here to complete the agenda of your soul and the agenda of your soul is to announce and declare, express and fulfill, demonstrate and become who you really are.

That is, you are using the contextual field of the realm of the physical in order to experience not just know conceptually, but you came here to experience your true identity as has every sentient being in the cosmos. Your purpose is to demonstrate and thus to fulfill and to experience your true identity. And you can only do that in a contextual field, which you call the realm of the physical, because in the absence of what you are not, what you are is not.

Lori: Wow. Okay. Say that again.

Neale: That again.

Lori: Okay, I know what you meant.

Neale; What you are is not. Let me give you, when I was told that by God, said, okay, explain that to me. God said, okay, Neil, how tall are you? I'm six feet tall. God said, great. If you know you're six feet tall, you can conceive you have a concept, I'm six feet tall. But if you want to experience six foot tallness, you couldn't be in a world where every blade of grass, every tree, every house, every person was exactly six feet tall because you couldn't then know what it was like to be six feet tall, because everything else would be precisely six feet tall. Therefore, you would put yourself into a place where there was something that was not six feet tall, because if you're six feet tall, in the absence of what you are not, what you are is not.

So for instance, and then God said, let's use a different example that you might relate to metaphorically, God said, as a metaphor, let's say that you think that you are the light.

If you're the light, but you're the candle in the sun, you can't experience yourself as the light because you're surrounded by six billion other candles that we call the sun. So in fact, you will call forth the darkness or place yourself into a place where there is darkness so that you can then experience yourself as the light.

Therefore, I was told, therefore, kneel.

Raise not your fist to heaven, and curse the darkness not, but be a light unto the darkness, that you might know who you really are, and that all those whose lives you touch might know who they really are as well.

And when I heard that, I realized this is the process by which evolution occurs. As I said earlier, I'm nowhere near the person I would like to be. But am I closer now than I was 30 years ago? Uh-huh.

Lori: Yeah, yeah, constant growth, right? That's what that's what we're here for.

Neale: Not only constant growth, but an awareness of what I'm choosing to grow into more than just a normal, slow process of maturing, but a process that has been sped up and increased in its rapidity, just moving more rapidly, because I now know what I'm doing here. My life is not about, you know, my income, as I said earlier, or any any any of that stuff that I thought it was about.

You know, when I was a young man, again, going back to when I was 15, 16, 17 years old, I thought, oh, I know what the formula is now. I get what life is about. Get the girl, get the car. Not necessarily in that order. Get the car, get the girl, get the job. You know, then ultimately get the house, maybe get the wife, get the children, get the better car, get a better job, get a better wife, get a better wife, get a better wife.

And then ultimately get the office in the corner with your name on the door. And then which I had or then maybe get the building on the corner with your name on the building, which I haven't gotten to that point yet. But I know a couple of people who have. And and, you know, and then get the gray hair. Get the retirement watch, get the cruise tickets. Get the illness and get the hell out.

And that was the formula that I saw people living their life by. so I stepped into it. Absolutely. And I was living my life by that exact formula. Get the car, get the girl, get the job, get the house…

Lori: Did you know anything else, or you didn't know any other options

Neale: No, that's what was my culture taught me. This is what my culture taught me. And I was learning it by observation.

Lori: How you mentioned the agenda of your soul. How does one learn what the agenda of their soul is?

Neale: One doesn't learn it, one decides it. I was told in conversations with God, Neil, life is not a process of discovery. It's a process of creation. You get to create what you choose to be the agenda of your soul. But in the largest sense, using the most generalized term, all sentient beings have the same agenda, evolution to become the next grandest version of who they really are.

And the challenge for most people is that most people have lost touch with or not remembered their true identity. Most people think that this is who they are. I'm my body or maybe I'm my body and my mind. But in fact, God said to me, Neale, you're not your body or your mind. These are simply pieces of equipment. These are simply tools used by who you really are, who you really are is a spiritual entity.

You are a soul. You are a spiritual entity, and you simply come into the physical realm to experience your true identity. That's what I was told. That may not be the truth. But I mean, I'm not again, I'm not claiming this is what everyone should embrace. But it's what I embraced when I was told that. And I began moving into an entirely different way of living.

I said, well, how do I do that? And God said to me, Neale, let me give you some advice. Your life is not about you. Neale, your life has nothing to do with you. Your life is about everyone whose life you touch and the way in which you touch it. But when you experience your life in that way, you discover that in the universal sense, your life is about you, for an elegant reason. There's only one of us in the room.

Lori: How do we, I love this and I, it resonates with me and I'm thinking of the people who are listening to this conversation now, the recording, and they're thinking, okay, that sounds grand. I have to pay my mortgage. I need to pick up the kids from camp and I need to figure out how I'm going to pay all these bills. How do we bring those things together?

Neale; In my life, when I learned that my life was about everyone else whose life I touch and the way in which I touch it, all those other wonderful things, the ability to pay my bills, the wherewithal to pick up my kids at camp, to make life work, in other words, all those abilities, all those skills, all those opportunities, all those tools that I needed to do that, all of that fell in on me automatically.

You know, was a guy who made this very clear about 2000 years ago. He put it very simply. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all these things will be added unto. He said it directly.

Lori: Yeah. And so it's about going internally before focusing on the external or focusing. Yeah, that the internal focus is the thing versus what we've been conditioned to believe which is

Neale: Neo, Neo, your life is not about you. It's about everyone whose life you touch and the way in which you touch it. But when you touch people's lives in a way that their life becomes enlarged, expanded, joyful, fulfilling, happy.

They will never forget you. And they will do whatever it takes to keep you doing what you're doing. So, in fact, everything you do for another, ultimately you do for yourself, because there's only one of us, Neo. All of us are one. There's only one thing and all things are part of the one thing there is. I'm talking to myself right now.

I know that you look like Lori and there are some differences between your body and mine. As the French would say, Viva la Différence. But we are all one. So it doesn't surprise me when I talk this way in front of audiences that many, many people instantly in the moment come to a place of agreeing with me.

Even if I say some of the things they never thought of before, they agree because truth is truth, no matter what the source.

Lori: Yes. Yes. And I think I mentioned earlier, the soul knows that the soul recognizes that.

Neale: Yes, to re-cog-nize, to know again.

Lori: Wow, this has been such an incredible conversation. Thank you for taking time to have it with me. And I have a last question. I have two last questions for you. Three, maybe. Well, one, the first one, it's a question I ask all of my guests and I did not prepare you for this ahead of time. So hopefully you will have an answer off the top of your head. And the fact that you worked in radio may help prepare you.

What is the song you listen to and you need an extra boost of energy?

Neale: I don't have a particular favorite song that I listen to, and I need an extra boost of energy. I can't name a particular song.

Lori: Okay.

Neale; When I need an extra boost of energy, I simply provide an extra boost of energy for someone who's near me or someone around me. The advice that I was given by God was, Neale, whatever you want to experience in your life, whatever it might be, more patience, more understanding, more humor, more wisdom, more sex, whatever you want more of in your life, be the source of it in the life of another.

Lori: Okay.

Neale: When I want an extra boost of energy, I find someone else who needs an extra boost of energy. Let me give you an example. I'm in the grocery store in the checkout line at the grocery store and there's a little old lady, she's about 75 or 80 years old and she's bought a few things and she's reaching into her handbag and it's pretty clear she's pulling out a few coins and a couple of pieces of folding money. It's really obvious that she's using maybe the last of what she has that week to get. Now, I'm not bragging. I don't want you to think I'm boasting, but this is just an example because I did this once. Just my heart wide open. I said, ma’am, would you do me a favor? She looked at me. She said, what could I do for you? I said, allow me to pick up the tab for your groceries today.

I couldn't ask you to do that. I said, no, you're not asking me to do it. I'm asking you to let me do it. I said, ma’am, let me be honest with you. I've made a good deal of money in my life. And it makes me feel good to share it with somebody at times like this. Will you please let me buy your groceries? She said, well, if you insist, I said, I insist. She did. She gave me the tab.

I got whatever was thirty six dollars or forty two dollars. It wasn't like one hundred and eighty bucks. you know, of course, of course, I said thank you for it. And she she put the things in the bag and the checkout guy couldn't believe what was going on. He said, I've been here at this store for 12 years. I've never seen anything like this. I'm not again, I'm not bragging. I'm just saying.

Lori: It was a very gracious way that you did it.

Neale: Yeah, but did that bring me a rush of energy flowing through me?

So, you know, I know others around might have thought that I did it for her. What a generous thing to do for somebody. They might have been thinking. But what I was real clear about was no, no, no, no, no. It's impossible for me to do anything for anybody that I am not ultimately doing for myself. Or as this guy said a couple of thousand years ago. Do unto others. As you would have it done unto you.

Lori: That gives it a completely different perspective.

Neale: Because it is being done unto you for a very simple reason. There's nobody else here. You and the lady in front of you in the checkout line are the same entity, simply looking a bit different. We are all one. And if the world embraced such a simple understanding, everything would change overnight.

Lori: Absolutely. You have what 40 books. OK, not counting 41 books. And also, while I was out on my walk this morning, I'm a member of Mindvalley and I did not realize before this morning that you have a program on there. So I, of course, started listening to it. Where would you advise someone to go to get more of you? Is it that program on Mindvalley? Is it the first conversation, the series, Conversations With God series?

Neale: Yes, I would invite people if they really want to hear more, learn more about what this is all about, to just pick up any one of the nine Conversations With God books. There are nine books in the Dialogue Series. They may also want to go to my website, which is CWG, which stands, of course, for Conversations with God. And so the website is CWGconnect.com.

And I'm there and every day I answer questions directly with people. They write me questions. They may be having a challenge that they're facing in their life or they have just a curiosity about what the dialogue has to offer on a particular topic. I respond every day. I spend hours every day responding to the people who send me questions there or on my Facebook page.

Lori: Wow. Okay, I will put a link to that in the show notes to make it easy for people to find that website and reach out to you.

Neale: Wonderful. That's a very sweet thing for you to do, our kind. Thank you.

Lori: Neale, thank you so much for joining me today on Fine is a 4-Letter Word.