Neale Donald Walsch

Neale Donald Walsch

Neale Donald Walsch in 2007
Born (1943-09-10) September 10, 1943
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Nationality American
Ethnicity Ukrainian American
Spouse Em Claire
Website
www.nealedonaldwalsch.com

Neale Donald Walsch (born September 10, 1943) is an American author of the series Conversations with God. The nine books in the complete series are Conversations With God (books 1–3), Friendship with God, Communion with God, The New Revelations, Conversations with God for Teens, Tomorrow's God, and Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends. He is also an actor, screenwriter, and speaker.

Biography

Walsch was born into an Ukrainian American family, and brought up as a Roman Catholic by a family who encouraged his quest for spiritual truth. He informally studied comparative theology for many years. He says his books are not channelled - although Walsch insists that he could hear God talking to him, as if God stood right beside Walsch - but rather that they are inspired by God and that they can help a person relate to God from a modern perspective. The God in his books, for example, says that "there is nothing you have to do." Walsch believes in a panentheistic God, who tries to communicate itself as being "unselfish". Walsch's vision is an expansion and unification of all present theologies to render them more relevant to our present day and time. He created Humanity's Team as a spiritual movement whose purpose is to communicate and implement his New Spirituality beliefs, particularly that we are all one with God and one with life, in a shared global state of being.[1] This state can be achieved, Walsch argues, by the act of helping other people: "The fastest way to apply anything in your life is to help others to apply it ... The fastest way to use any wisdom that resides in your soul is to help someone else ... Because we are all one.".[2] Walsch has nine children. Neale has a home in southern Oregon where he lives with his wife, Em Claire, who is a working poet.

Career

Before writing the Conversations With God series, Walsch worked variously as a radio station program director, newspaper managing editor, and in marketing and public relations. In the early 1990s he suffered a series of crushing blows—a fire that destroyed all of his belongings, the break-up of his marriage, and a car accident that left him with a broken neck. Once recovered, but alone and unemployed, he was forced to live in a tent in Jackson Hot Springs, just outside Ashland, Oregon, collecting and recycling aluminium cans in order to eat. At the time, he thought his life had come to an end. Despondent, he began his writings after working his way out of homelessness and following a stint as a radio talk show host.[3]

His first book, Conversations with God, was published in 1995 and became an international bestseller. It remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 135 weeks. Six of his other books have made the Times list in the years since. He has published 28 books and his works have been translated into 37 languages.

Media appearances

In 2003, the film Indigo, written by Walsch and James Twyman and directed by Stephen Simon was released. It chronicled the fictional story of the redemption of a grandfather, played by Walsch, through his granddaughter, who is an indigo child.

Conversations With God: The Movie opened in U.S. theaters in 2006 on October 27 and in Canada on November 10. The film was released on DVD in February 2007.[4] Clips of the film can be found on YouTube.[5]

Other documentaries and TV appearances include:

Neale Donald Walsch can also be found as a prominent contributor at TheGlobalConversation.com[6] as well as on YouTube at YouTube.com/NealeDonaldWalsch.[7]

Criticism

Walsch was accused of plagiarism for a six-paragraph entry in one of the daily postings on his blog during 2008, this one during the Christmas season, when he published an item titled "Upside down, or right side up?" on Beliefnet.com.[8][9] Walsch's entry purported to tell the tale of a miraculous appearance of the words "Christ Was Love" during the rehearsal of his son's school Christmas pageant; but his article was almost identical to an article published 10 years previously by Candy Chand in the spiritual magazine Clarity and spread over the internet in places such as the Heartwarmers website, down to the name of the son mentioned in both articles, Nicholas – as both authors have a son named Nicholas.[8][10] Walsch publicly apologized, saying that he must have erroneously internalized the story as his own over the years, a claim the original author said she does not believe.[8] The article was subsequently pulled from Beliefnet.com and Walsch voluntarily withdrew from the roster of authors because of his error.[8] Walsch explained that he found the anecdote in old computer files from years earlier, saw his son's name in the copy, and was fully convinced that the history had really happened to him and that he had just forgotten it, but "remembered" when he saw the anecdote in his file. He cited it as a classic case of false memory and said that he had been repeating the anecdote as his own in many speeches over the years, adding that he was "chagrined and astonished that my mind could play such a trick on me".[8]

Writings

Conversations with God series

The following are the nine books in the Conversations With God series. Each of these books is a claimed transcript of dialogue between two beings, Neale Donald Walsch and "God", with the exception of "Communion with God", which is written only by "God".

  1. Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 1) (1995) ISBN 978-0-399-14278-9
  2. Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 2) (1997) ISBN 978-1-57174-056-4
  3. Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (Book 3) (1998) ISBN 978-1-57174-103-5
  4. Friendship with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (1999) ISBN 978-0-399-14541-4
  5. Communion With God: An Uncommon Dialogue (2000) ISBN 978-0-399-14670-1
  6. The New Revelations: A Conversation with God (2002) ISBN 978-0-7434-6303-4
  7. Tomorrow's God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge (2004) ISBN 978-0-7434-6304-1
  8. What God Wants: A Compelling Answer to Humanity's Biggest Question (March 21, 2005) ISBN 978-0-7432-6714-4
  9. Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends (2006) ISBN 978-0-7432-6716-8


The first three books in the series are often called the CwG trilogy. In 2005, the trilogy was re-released as one combined 'Gift Edition' book. This edition contains the entire text of the first three books with 'God's words in blue ink and Neale's in black ink, and features a combined 3-in-1 index at the back.

Home With God, we are told, is the final book in this series of two-way written communication {see HwG page 308, "Our final conversation in public."}.

Supplemental material

In addition to the books of the CwG series, there are also a number of guidebooks, meditation books, and other books adapted from the CwG series and referring to the CwG message. The following books do not have any new information from the voice of "God", but were written by Neale Donald Walsch, to assist with understanding and applying the messages. Starting in 2008, The School of the New Spirituality, Inc. (SNS), founded by Walsch, starting publishing new guidebooks for the series.

Other writings

Walsch has written a number of other books which he describes as "in the CwG cosmology", none of which are dialogues with God, but provide the reader with Walsch's insights:

See also

References

  1. ↑ John Style, “What Happens When God Describes Utopia?: Neale Donald Walsch's Utopian Vision”, Spaces of Utopia: An Electronic Journal, nr. 1, Spring 2006, pp. 135–147 <http://ler.letras.up.pt > ISSN 1646-4729
  2. ↑ Being at One: Neale Donald Walsch Interview with Gil Dekel (Part 3 of 3, paragraphs 18–19)
  3. ↑ Edgar John Burns, Foundations of a Global Spiritual Awakening, AuthorHouse, 2003, ISBN 1-4107-5865-6, ISBN 978-1-4107-5865-1, pp. 120–123
  4. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489682/dvd
  5. ↑ CWGFavoriteMoments on YouTube.
  6. ↑ TheGlobalConversation.com
  7. ↑ YouTube.com/NealeDonaldWalsch
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 "Christmas Essay Was Not His, Author Admits", New York Times, Motoko Rich, 2009-01-06
  9. ↑ Conversations with God, Belief.net
  10. ↑ a heartwarmer: Christmas Love, email in Heartwarmers.com mailing list, posted by moderator, history signed by Candy Chand, 2000-12-10

Interviews

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