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This blog is dedicated to overlaying the messages of Conversations with God on the events of our lives.

Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. With an early interest in religion and a deeply felt connection to spirituality, Neale spent the majority of his life thriving professionally, yet searching for spiritual meaning before experiencing his now famous conversation with God. His Conversations with God series of books has been translated into 37 languages, touching millions and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.

Neale’s work — which he says is to “change the world’s mind about God” and to “give people back to themselves” — has taken him from the steps of Macchu Picchu in Peru to the steps of the Shinto shrines of Japan, from Red Square in Moscow to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City to Tiananmen Square in China. He has often said that everywhere he has gone he has found a hunger among all people to create a way to live, finally, with sustaining inner peace and lasting outer harmony.

Neale’s first spiritual teacher was his mother, who taught him not to be afraid of God, as she believed in having a personal relationship with the Divine. She taught Neale to do the same. This view of God at an early age would later move Neale to not be afraid of exploring beyond the traditional views of mainstream religion.

By his late teens Neale’s explorations led him to begin dipping into a variety of spiritual texts in addition to the Bible, including the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and Divine revelation according to Sri Ramakrishna. He noticed that some people who were involved in organized religion seemed to exhibit behaviors of prejudice and separateness, anger and righteousness. He observed that humanity’s collective experience of theology was not as positive as it was meant to be. It seemed to him that there was something missing in standard theological teachings; that they might contain very good lessons, but that they might not be complete.

Restless by nature and always seeking to expand his opportunities for self-expression, Neale left college after 18 months without a degree. In the years that followed he became a radio station program director, a newspaper managing editor, public information officer for one of the nation’s largest public school systems, and, after moving to the West Coast, creator and owner of his own public relations and marketing firm. Moving from one career field to another, he could not seem to find occupational satisfaction, his relationship life was in constant turmoil, and his health was going rapidly downhill.

He had relocated to Oregon as part of a change-of-scene strategy to find his way, but fate was to provide more than that. A car driven by an elderly gentleman made a left turn directly into his own car, Neale emerging from the auto accident with a broken neck. He was lucky to escape with his life.

Over a year of rehab threw him out of work, a failed marriage had already removed him from his home, and soon he couldn’t keep even the small apartment he’d rented. Within months he found himself living on the street, homeless. It took him two weeks shy of a year to pull himself together and get back under shelter. He found a modest part-time job, once again in radio, then worked his way back into full time broadcasting, eventual landing a spot as a nationally syndicated talk show host. Still, once more Neale felt an emptiness inside that he could not define, and daily difficulties only seemed to mount.

In 1992, following a period of deep despair, Neale awoke in the middle of a February night and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take to make life work?” he angrily scratched across a yellow legal pad, “and what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?”

What followed has been well chronicled and widely discussed around the world. Neale says his questioning letter received a Divine answer. He professes to have heard a voice just over his right shoulder—soft and warm, kind and loving, as he describes it—that offered a reply. Awestruck and inspired, he quickly scribbled the response onto a yellow legal pad he’d found on a coffee table before him.

More questions came, and as fast as they occurred to him, answers were given in the same gentle voice, which now moved inside his head. He later described those replies as clearly beyond his normal thinking. As the night wore on, Neale found himself engaged in a two-way on-paper dialogue. He continued this first “conversation” until dawn — and had many more in the weeks that followed, always awakening in the middle of the night and being drawn back to his legal pad.

Neale’s handwritten notes would later become the best-selling Conversations with God books. He declares that he never intended his writings to be published, thinking of them at first as personal journaling, but that he was startled during his dialogue when he received the message: “This will one day become a book.”

He says he sent his journal to a publisher only to test the veracity of what he was receiving. The rest is publishing history: The first five Conversations with God books made the New York Times Bestseller List, with Conversations with God: Book 1 occupying that list for more than two-and-half years. Two additional titles had reached the Times list since. Neale says that the process of creating the dialogue was “exactly like taking dictation,” and that the transcript produced in this way was published without alteration or editing.

Walsch’s books have been read by as estimated fifteen million people worldwide and have been translated into 37 languages.

Persons wishing to interact with Neale may do so at www.CWGportal.com

Neale’s latest book, The Only Thing That Matters, was published in October, 2012. He lives in Ashland, Oregon and is married to the American poet Em Claire (www.emclairepoet.com).

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