[ Excerpts from Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch -- Nature of Spirit ]

conversations with god.

neale donald walsch.

G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995

God said:

"The religionists would have you believe that I created you as less than Who I Am so that you could have the chance to become Who I Am, working against all odds--and, I might add, against every natural tendency I am supposed to have given you.

Among these so-called natural tendencies is the tendency to sin. You are taught that you were born in sin, that you will die in sin, and that sin is your nature.

One of your religions even teaches.....there is only one way to heaven (salvation) and that is through no undertaking of your own, but through the grace granted you by God through acceptance of His Son as your intermediary.

Once this is done you are "saved." Until it is done, nothing that you do--not the life you live, not the choices you make, not anything you undertake of your own will in effort to improve yourself or render you worthy--has any effect, bears any influence. You are incapable of rendering yourself worthy, because you are inherently unworthy. You were created that way.

Why? God only knows. Perhaps He made a mistake. Perhaps He didn't get it right. Maybe he wishes He could have it all to do over again. But there it is. What to do..."

Neale said:

"You're making mock of me."

God said:

"No. You are making mock of Me. You are saying that I, God, made inherently imperfect beings, then have demanded of them to be perfect or face damnation. You are saying then that, somewhere several thousand years into the world's experience, I relented, saying that from then on you didn't necessarily have to be good, you simply had to feel bad when you were not being good, and accept as your savior the One Being who could always be perfect, thus satisfying My hunger for perfection. You are saying that My Son--who you call the One Perfect One--has saved you from your own imperfection--the imperfection I gave you.

In other words, God's Son has saved you from what His Father did.

This is how you--many of you--say I've set it up.

Now who is mocking whom?

No one else will judge you ever, for why, and how, could God judge God's own creation and call it bad? If I wanted you to be and do everything perfectly, I would have left you in the state of total perfection whence you came. The whole point of the process was for you to discover yourself, create your Self, as you truly are--and as you truly wish to be. Yet you could not be that unless you also had a choice to be something else.

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

This is a question you must ask yourself before you would assign Me the role of a condemning God."

God said:

"Everything your heart experiences about God tells you that God is good. Everything your teachers teach you about God tells you God is bad. Your heart tells you God is to be loved without fear. Your teachers tell you God is to be feared, for He is a vengeful God. You are to live in fear of God's wrath, they say. You are to tremble in His presence. Your whole life through you are to fear the judgement of the Lord. For the lord is "just," you are told. And God knows, you will be in trouble when you confront the terrible justice of the Lord. You are, therefore, to be "obedient" to God's commands. Or else.

Above all, you are not to ask such logical questions as, "if God wanted strict obedience to His Laws, why did He create the possibility of those Laws being violated?" Ah, your teachers tell you--because God wanted you to have "free choice." Yet what kind of choice is free when to choose one thing over the other brings condemnation? How is "free will" free when it is not your will, but someone else's, which must be done? Those who teach you this would make a hypocrite of God.

You are told that God is forgiveness, and compassion--yet if you do not ask for this forgiveness in the "right way," if you do not "come to God" properly, your plea will not be heard, your cry will go unheeded. Even this would not be so bad if there were only one proper way, but there are as many "proper ways" being taught as there are teachers to teach them.

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

These behaviors are the behaviors historically demanded of their subjects by monarchs--usually ego-maniacal, insecure, tyrannical monarchs at that. They're not Godly demands in any sense--and it seems remarkable that the world hasn't by now concluded that the demands are counterfeit, having nothing to do with the needs or desires of Deity.

Deity has no needs. All That is exactly that: all that is. It therefore wants, or lacks, nothing--by definition.

If you choose to believe in a God who somehow needs something--and has such hurt feelings if He doesn't get it that He punishes those from whom He expected to receive it--then you choose to believe in a God much smaller than I. You truly are Children of a Lesser God."

Why would [anyone] want do deny You?

God said:

"Because you are afraid. And because My promises are too good to be true. Because you cannot accept the grandest Truth. And so you must reduce yourself to a spirituality which teaches fear and dependence and intolerance, rather than love and power and acceptance.

You are filled with fear--and your biggest fear is that My biggest promise might be life's biggest lie. And so you create the biggest fantasy you can to defend yourself against this: You claim that any promise which gives you the power, and guarantees you the love, of God must be the false promise of the devil. God would never make such a promise, you tell yourself, only the devil would--to tempt you into denying God's true identity as the fearsome, judgemental, jealous, vengeful and punishing entity of entities.

Even though this description better fits the definition of a devil (if there were one), you have assigned devilish characteristics to God in order to convince yourself not to accept the God-like promises of your Creator, or the God-like qualities of Self.

Such is the power of fear."

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