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Interview with Neale Donald Walsch by Dennis Hughes, Share Guide
Publisher
Share Guide: I'd like to start off by asking, what do you mean by the new spirituality? And how do you think that it applies to the times in which we live? Neale Donald Walsch: I
think the new spirituality will be a spirituality that's not based on a
particular dogma. And that steps away from the old spiritual paradigm
that we have created on this planet, which comes from a thought that
there is such a thing as being better. The sad part about our past is
that religions, ironically enough, are responsible for creating the most
destructive idea that has ever been visited upon the human race: the
idea that there is such a thing as "better." I question that the word
better has any real value as it's used by many religions—and
then subsequently by other institutions in our society. Neale Donald Walsch: And so one either has to believe in a God who's
terribly prejudiced, or disbelieve the teachings of such exclusionary
theologies. Religions have taught us that "we are better than they." And
because we are, somehow, better than they, we get to go to heaven and
they don't. Christians will tell you outright that they believe that.
They may not use the word better. But they certainly believe that
they'll go to heaven and Jews will not. Neale Donald Walsch:
Yes. And this thought of betterness has crept into
every area of society, where in fact, it becomes insidious. It begins
with our children when they are very young. And indeed as you just
mentioned they find themselves on teams. Neale Donald Walsch: Yes. It becomes "our neighborhood is better than
your neighborhood." It becomes "our family is better than your family."
It graduates to "our state is better than your state," and "our nation
is better than your nation." And it circles all the way around to where
it started: "Our God is better than your God." And because we believe
that our ethnic group, our society, our political party, our God, is
better than your God, we kill each other. The new spirituality will
bring about what I'm calling the "end of better." And that is in fact
what is called for in the next of the series of books that I've been
writing. I'm calling my book series the "with God series." And this next
"with God" book is Friendship with God, which comes out in November.
This books challenges us to bring about the end of "better" on this
planet. Neale Donald Walsch: Yes. And so that'll be the first characteristic of
the new spirituality. The second characteristic of the new spirituality
is that it will produce an experience in human encounters in which we
become a living demonstration of the basic spiritual teaching "We are
all one." And everything that violates or mitigates against that
teaching will not be part of the new spirituality. The new spirituality
will also base itself on a third very large spiritual understanding,
which is that life is eternal. Most religious people claim to believe
that, but very few people actually live as if that were true. In fact we
make most of our decisions and most of our choices as if we're not all
one, and life is not eternal. As told in Friendship with God, if we
simply decided to believe and act as if first, we're all one, and
second, life is eternal, it would render virtually everything we've done
all our lives pointless. Because our choices are largely based on
survival. But if life is eternal, life is not a question. And if we're
all one, we need to stop our competition with each other. Most of the
decisions we make are about survival and winning. If we win, someone
else loses. But if someone else loses, we lose. Which is a point we're
not getting. The new spirituality will make this just painfully obvious.
It'll become obvious that we've really been working against ourselves.
As the new spirituality begins to become the pervasive spirituality of
the planet, we'll find that we have abandoned our philosophy of
contradictions in which we say we're all one but continue to try to win.
And in which we say that life is eternal but continue to struggle to
survive. Neale Donald Walsch: Well, I think that things happen individually
first, and then collectively. It's not the other way around. And I think
that individually we're moving very rapidly toward these understandings.
You'll find individuals agreeing on this, but when they get into
collective societies and larger groups they find it difficult to achieve
group agreement. Neale Donald Walsch: As we move into the 21st century, there's what the
Bible calls a "quickening of the spirit." And I think in metaphysical
terms, I would call that increasing the speed of the vibration of life.
And we're seeing a higher level of consciousness and many more
opportunities for people to challenge their present ways of thinking and
move into a grander and larger experience of who they really are. And I
think that's a result of just a general increase in speed of the
vibration of life itself.
Neale Donald Walsch: Yes. We've seen in the last half century an
incredible shift. This is just an extraordinary time to be alive. A
great many people experience the movement from one century to the next,
but a minuscule number of people experience the movement from one
millennium to the next. It's a very small and select slice of all the
people who have ever been born. I believe we've come back during this
time, those of us who are here now, specifically to experience it. And
to cause a "quickening of the spirit." |
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