What do you think is needed now in our world? Have any guesses? I do. I believe that what is needed now in our world is that we change our minds about God, about life, about each other, about why we’re here and about how life could best function.
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Sunday is Message Day on the blog. Monday through Friday we look at contemporary events and day-to-day occurrences at the intersection of Life and the New Spirituality…but on Sunday, we reserve this space for a specific teaching derived from the material in Conversations with God
Through the years I have given hundreds of talks and written scores of articles revolving around this material. Every seven days we will present in this space a transcript or reprint of one of those presentations. We invite you to Copy and Save each one of them, creating a personal collection of contemporary and uplifting spiritual thought which you may reference at any time. We hope you will find this a constant source of insight and inspiration.
This week’s offering: The final installment in a series of excerpts from a lengthy interview with Neale Donald Walsch first appearing in Spiritual Growth Monthly
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Matt: A lot of the beliefs we’ve grown up with teach us that God has a plan for our lives already, before we were born. Some people say that we came here, we chose who are parents were going to be, et cetera…
Neale: We did do that. That doesn’t mean we had a plan. Choosing the colors of your palette doesn’t mean you know what picture you want to paint. So we do choose the colors of our palette, very definitely. We choose the colors of our palette with each
entry into life. We still have the paintbrush and the canvas is blank. We have no idea of the picture we’re going to paint; we simply know the colors we’re going to use. And even then, we create new colors along the way by mixing some of the colors on our palette.
“Don’t mix yellow and blue—you’re going to get green!” I intend to get green, thank you very much; please step aside. So in fact, we do choose the colors of our palette, we do choose our parents, we do choose things, I’m told, like our place of birth or our racial composition or our nationality and those kinds of things, from life to life and from moment to moment, in the eternity of now. But that does not mean we have a plan in mind, nor does it mean that God has a plan in mind. God just says, “Here are the tools for your next lifetime,” and the palette is empty and the space is clear. What do you now choose to create? Interesting analogy, isn’t it?
Matt: So there is no plan, there is no map for us to follow. It’s all our choice in what we’re supposed to do?
Neale: Not even what we’re supposed to do, because supposing to do something would indicate that there’s some kind of plan. It is what we choose to do, what we wish to do.
Matt: Is it possible, do you think, to choose to do something which is wrong?
Neale: Right and wrong don’t exist. Right and wrong are relative terms. Relative to what? “Wrong” relative to what, in relationship to what? Is killing wrong? It all depends on why we’re doing it, doesn’t it? If you’re killing someone to rob a bank or because you’re jealous of your lover, that would be considered, by some people, wrong. If you’re killing someone to save your two-month-old baby from being stabbed in the chest by a maniac who has come into your house in the middle of the night, some people would call that right.
So right and wrong don’t exist. Those are relative terms – relative to what we’re trying to do. So of course it’s possible to do something wrong by someone’s definition. It’s also possible to do something right by someone’s definition, by doing the exact same thing.
Isn’t that interesting? What a conundrum. What an adventure this thing called life is.
Matt: It certainly is. It’s difficult to know, sometimes, what the best thing to do, or what…
Neale: It’s not difficult to know what the best thing to do is when you know what you’re trying to accomplish. So what we have to be clear on is: What are we trying to accomplish?
For instance, to use a simple example, are we trying to accomplish a thing called peace in the world? If we say we are, then perhaps we might want to reconsider whether we can do that by dropping bombs. That is, is it possible to solve a problem by using the same energy that created the problem? Einstein said no, and I think Einstein was right.
You don’t solve the problem of violence with violence. You don’t solve the problem of hatred with more hatred. It’s pretty simple when you think about it.
Matt: I suppose it’s difficult if people have been locked into a certain way of being, or there’s been a circle of violence or we’ve lived a certain way for so long that that’s all we’ve known, or it seems that’s all we’ve known.
Neale: Yes, that’s exactly right. It is difficult. I agree with you completely. It is difficult when that’s all we’ve known, which is why…

…what is needed now in the world is to know something new. That is, to change our minds about God, about life, about each other, about why we’re here and about how life could best function.
We need a new cultural story. We need to write a brand-new cultural story, and that is what is needed now on the planet. So what is needed is really a whole system of education that could provide such a cultural story, such a brand-new thought about the world and how it is, and could give us a different basis from which to proceed as we choose to create our lives in the future.
You’re right; if we have had no other experiences except the experiences that you mentioned, if we’re stuck in our story from yesterday, then it is going to be very difficult to create a new tomorrow. Yet, a new tomorrow can be created if we are willing to create a new story.
I would say that the future is very bright, but it is not going to be changed by going back to our yesterdays. The bright future of our tomorrow will not be found over our shoulder, but over the horizon.
Matt: Hopefully people like you and I can do something and help to change the consciousness of everything and bring about an improvement.
Neale: That is the great invitation that life sends to life itself, for regular people just like you and me to do exactly that, and we are able to do exactly that. It has only been people like you and me who have, in fact, done exactly that.
People who live exceptional lives are not necessarily exceptional people. They’re just
ordinary people like you and me. Martin Luther King Jr. was a regular person. Gandhi was just a regular person. He wasn’t born on another planet, he wasn’t anointed personally by God. He didn’t receive some sort of special gift from the universe. He was a regular person like you and me. Mother Teresa was a regular lady, like a whole bunch of other people on this planet, but ordinary people doing extraordinary things – that’s what now will change the world.
Matt: Neale Donald Walsch, thank you very much for getting on the phone with me today. It’s been interesting and enlightening. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
Neale: You’re very welcome.