Neale Donald Walsch - Conversations with God : an uncommon dialogue Book 3

This is an extraordinary book. I say that as someone who has had very little to do with writing it. All I did, really, was "show up," ask a few questions, then take dictation.

That is all I have done since 1992, when this conversation with God began. It was in that year that, deeply depressed, I called out in anguish: What does it take to make life work? And what have I done to deserve a life of such continuing struggle?

I wrote these questions out on a yellow legal pad, in an angry letter to God. To my shock and surprise, God answered. The reply came in the form of words whispered in my mind by a Voiceless Voice. I was fortunate enough to have written those words down.

I have done so now for over six years. And since I was told that this private dialogue would one day become a book, I sent the first batch of those words to a publisher late in 1994. They were on store shelves seven months later. At this writing that book has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 91 weeks.

The second installment in the dialogue became a bestseller as well, also making the Times list for multiple months. And now, here is the third and final portion of this extraordinary conversation.

This book took four years to write. It did not come easily. The gaps between the moments of inspiration were enormous, more than once stretching across half-a-year canyons. The words in the first book were dictated over the course of one year. The second book came through in just a little over that much time. But this final segment has had to be written with me in the public spotlight. Everywhere I've gone since 1996 all I've heard has been, "When's Book 3 coming out?", "Where's Book 3?", "When can we expect Book 3?"

You can imagine what this did to me, and what impact this had on the process of bringing it through. I might as well have been making love on the pitcher's mound in Yankee Stadium.

Actually, that act would have afforded me more privacy. In the writing of Book 3, every time I picked up a pen I felt I had five million people watching, waiting, hanging on every word.

All of this is not to congratulate myself on completing this work, but rather, to simply explain why it has taken so long. My moments of mental, spiritual, and physical solitude have been, over these most recent years, very few and far between.

I began this book in the spring of 1994, and all of the early narrative was written in that time period. It then leaps across many months, ultimately jumping forward a full year, and finally culminating with closing chapters written in the spring and summer of 1998.

On this much you can depend: this book was not forced out, by any means. The inspiration either came cleanly, or I simply put the pen down and refused to writein one case for well over 14 months. I was determined to produce no book at all, if it was to be a choice between that and a book I had to produce because I said I would. While this made my publisher a bit nervous, it went a long way toward giving me confidence in what was coming through, however long it was taking. I present it now, with confidence, to you. This book sums up the

If you've read the Foreword to either of the first two installments, you know that in each case I was a little bit apprehensive. Scared, actually, of what the response to those writings might be. I am not scared now. I have no fear whatsoever about Book 3. I know that it will touch many of those who read it with its insight and its truth, its warmth and its love.

I believe this to be sacred spiritual material. I see now that this is true of the entire trilogy, and that these books will be read and studied for decades, even for generations. Perhaps, for centuries. Because, taken together, the trilogy covers an amazing range of topics, from how to make relationships work to the nature of ultimate reality and the cosmology of the universe, and includes observations on life, death, romance, marriage, sex, parenting, health, education, economics, politics, spirituality and religion, life work and right livelihood, physics, time, social mores and customs, the process of creation, our relationship with God, ecology, crime and punishment, life in highly evolved societies of the cosmos, right and wrong, cultural myths and cultural ethics, the soul, soul partners, the nature of genuine love, and the way to glorious expression of the part of ourselves that knows Divinity as our natural heritage.

It is Easter Sunday, 1994, and I am here, pen in hand, as instructed. I am waiting for God. He's promised to show up, as She has the past two Easters, to begin another yearlong conversation. The third and lastfor now.

This processthis extraordinary communicationbegan in 1992. It will be complete on Easter, 1995. Three years, three books. The first dealt with largely personal matters romantic relationships, finding one's right work, dealing with the powerful energies of money, love, sex, and God; and how to integrate them into our daily lives. The second expanded on those themes, moving outward to major geopolitical considerationsthe nature of governments, creating a world without war, the basis for a unified, international society. This third and final part of the trilogy will focus, I am told, on the largest questions facing man. Concepts dealing with other realms, other dimensions, and how the whole intricate weave fits together.

The progression has been

Individual Truths Global Truths Universal Truths

As with the first two manuscripts, I have no idea where this is going. The process is simple. I put pen to paper, ask a questionand see what thoughts come to my mind. If nothing is there, if no words are given to me, I put everything away until another day. The whole process took about a year for the first book, over a year for the second. (That book is still in process as this is begun.)

I expect this will be the most important book of all.

For the first time since starting this process, I am feeling very self-conscious about it. Two months have passed since I wrote those first four or five paragraphs. Two months since Easter, and nothing has comenothing but self-consciousness.

I have spent weeks reviewing and correcting errors in the typeset manuscript of the first book in this trilogyand just this week received the final, corrected version of Book 1, only to have to send it back to typesetting again, with 43 separate errors to correct. The second book, meanwhile, still in handwritten form, was completed only last weektwo months behind "schedule." (It was supposed to be done by Easter '94.) This book, begun on Easter Sunday in spite of the fact that Book 2 was unfinished, has languished in its folder ever since and, now that Book 2 is completecries out for attention.

Yet for the first time since 1992, when this all began, I seem to be resisting this process, if not almost resenting it. I am feeling trapped by the assignment, and I've never liked to do anything I have to do. Further, having distributed to a few people uncorrected copies of the first manuscript and heard their reactions to it, I am now convinced that all three of these books will be widely read, thoroughly examined, analyzed for theological relevance, and passionately debated for dozens of years.

That has made it very difficult to come to this page; very difficult to consider this pen my friendfor while I know this material must be brought through, I know that I am opening myself up to the most scurrilous attacks, the ridicule, and perhaps even the hatred of many people for daring to put forth this informationmuch less for daring to announce that it is coming to me directly from God.