by David A. Cronin

Most people, at some point in their lives, have talked to God. Few, however, go out on a limb and say that God has talked to them. Since his first book, Conversations With God (Putnam, 1996), Neale Donald Walsch (www.nealedonaldwalsch.com) has made it his mission to update our understanding of God and our relationship to Him (or Her--Walsch uses both pronouns interchangeably). No small feat, to be sure. But take one look at the steady stream of books, from Conversations With God Books 1, 2, and 3 to his latest, Happier Than God, and you see that Walsch is a man on a mission.
   Our concept of God is too limited, he says, too small, too incomplete. “I am going to change the world’s mind about God,” he said recently on the phone from his home in Ashland, Ore. Two-way communication with God is possible for anyone. The key is in strengthening our listening skills.
   In Happier Than God (Hampton Roads Publishing), Walsch does not dialogue with God directly as in many of his earlier works, but rather gives us a deeper understanding from his own experiences of how to be happy in life. He does not reinvent the wheel or offer vague spiritual platitudes. Instead, he picks up where the book and movie The Secret left off. And, before you start rolling your eyes,  know that Walsch is very aware of how many books are trying to capitalize on the commercial success of The Secret. Even so, Walsch felt strongly that some crucial information was missing from the current Law of Attraction material.
   Even after multiple bestsellers on The New York Times list, a major motion picture, the talk show circuit, and the wild success of The Secret (in which he appears), Walsch is as approachable as ever. He is quick to expose his more vulnerable side around his sometimes successful and sometimes not-so-successful journey of bringing into reality “the grandest version of the greatest vision of who he really is.”

David Cronin: You mention in Happier Than God that you almost chose not to write it.

Neale Donald Walsch: Yes, I almost didn’t. I knew that after the movie, The Secret, there would be tons of spin-off books, and frankly I didn’t want to fall into that category. Two things convinced me to move ahead with the project. One was an Oprah show about The Secret in which a woman asked, ‘Where is God in all this?” It’s a fair question and also an important one. 
   Secondly, I was convinced to move ahead when I saw a scathing review of The Secret on the internet written by a reader who felt it was not only incomplete but in some cases sickening in its implications--the implication being that people whose lives are not going well for whatever reason, from the massive oppression in Darfur to individual misfortunes such as rape, are at fault in the matter. He felt the implication that such misfortunes are the result of faulty personal thinking was sickening, and I agree with him. I also find it regretful that anyone would pull such a thought from The Secret.
   I realized it wasn’t the fault of those who put The Secret together, but that some of the more delicate and sophisticated complexities about the Law of Attraction were not explained clearly. I realized then that I needed to write this book. I think people will find it deeply beneficial and importantly expanding of the ideas in The Secret. It helps people understand what all this talk about the Law of Attraction and the power of manifestation is. 
   More importantly, it not only discusses how we can use the Law of Attraction to bring ourselves goodies in life, but also how to cause larger impacts around the planet that could bring about world healing and change. This was another topic that was not discussed in The Secret. If the Law of Attraction is so powerful, why are we not using it to change life on the earth? Why are we talking about using it simply to put a new car in our driveway?

Cronin: Neither the book nor movie approach God’s role in all of this or the many reasons why applying the Law of Attraction may not work, but it certainly has exposed the concept of manifestation to a lot of people who had never thought in those terms before.

Walsch: Exactly and bravo. I applaud the outcome and the artistry it took to produce The Secret. I am happy to be a part of the movie and book. However, I do think incomplete information can be harmful and disappointing in some ways. Neither the book nor movie approaches God’s role in all of this or the many reasons why applying the Law of Attraction may not work.  Without that kind of insight, people are left wandering in the wilderness, so to speak. I felt there was a legitimate need to produce a piece of writing that would go deeper, giving people a second look at all of this from a far more sophisticated angle. 
   My book is a manual on how life works because it describes the entire system within which manifestation occurs. If we don’t understand the whole system, I believe we are doing ourselves a disservice, and if we de-scribe it to others in partial terms, we do a disservice to others, as well.

Cronin: Let’s talk about conscious and unconscious choices. Sometimes we affirm one thing but we also have an unconscious belief system that tells the Universe something completely different.

Walsch: Yes. Or regardless whether we believe that what we are affirming is possible or not, we believe we don’t deserve it. We have thoughts of unworthiness.

Cronin: So let’s talk about this regarding store ownership. A lot of stores are struggling financially. How does the owner know if he has an unconscious belief that either he doesn’t deserve to be prosperous or it’s not spiritual to make money?

Walsch: It doesn’t matter. The question “why” is usually academic, and irrelevant. The only relevant question is, “What do you now choose?” What do you want your store to do? Be a success? Great, now let’s go from there. What would it take to make an independent, spiritual bookstore successful? In this day and age when people can buy books online, why would they want to come into your store and buy from you? You have to give people a reason to walk into your store that goes beyond the books on your shelf. 
   If the owner can really understand that he or she is not selling books but instead an experience—something happens in their store that doesn’t happen online or anywhere else—then they will not have enough floor space to hold all the people that will come in
   So, the first question I would ask a bookstore owner is, “What are you doing in your bookstore?” If you think you are there to sell books, you are in deep trouble because Amazon.com does a hell of a better job selling books than you will ever do.

Cronin: So if there is an unconscious belief system, you are saying don’t even go in that direction. Just focus on what you want to create?

Walsch: And after you focus on what you want to create, see what, if any, opposition comes up inside of you with regard to that. Then watch your mind work rather than trying to figure it the other way around. I guarantee you that if I owned a book store, I’d have more customers than I would know what to do with. As soon as customers walked in they would say, “Whoa, what is going on here?” It would smell a certain way, the employees would interact with them in a certain way, the space would speak to them in a certain way, and the whole thing would be experiential. For example, stores can block off space for meetings so people car meet and share and discuss ideas.

Cronin: You mention in the book that gratitude is extraordinarily powerful in shifting one’s energy when one is stuck or focusing on negativity.

Walsch: Yes, gratitude creates a shift of perspective. Moving into gratitude is like moving from the valley to the mountaintop where you are not limited in your view. Gratitude creates a feeling that shifts the emotional perspective of the mind and literally changes the vibrations emanating from a person. This impacts and changes the vibration of all physicality around them. 
   It’s almost impossible to live in gratitude and still be negative about anything. It erases negativity at the feeling level, not the intellectual level. Gratitude is a discipline. It causes you to look at life from a particular perspective. My perception creates my beliefs. My beliefs create my behavior. My behavior creates my experience, and my experience creates my reality. It’s a circle. When we understand that, we see how truly important perspective can be.

Cronin: You also talk about how sadness and unhappiness are not the same thing and not mutually exclusive. Why is that understanding so important?

Walsch: The understanding is important so that we don’t abandon our happiness simply because we are sad. Because of how life moves along I think it is important to know how to manage sadness and not give up our happiness in the process. Sadness is a wonderful gift, as it announces something to the self that is terribly important: It brings us back in touch with our own humanity, compassion, and true self. Sadness should be celebrated and never repressed, because to do so creates a distorted version of sadness.

Cronin: You have always said that our journey is to bring into reality the next grandest version of the greatest vision ever held of who we are. What is the next vision for you?

Walsch: I am going to change the world’s mind about God. I am going to change the world’s mind about life and each other and what our right relationship is to all of that: “Right” not in the sense of right or wrong but in the sense of most functional. That is it on a global level. On a private level I am going to demonstrate in each moment of now what I feel and think and hold to be true in my interior reality. 
   For example, my wife and I may be sitting on the couch together and I will say to her, “Honey, look into my eyes and tell me what you see there.” She will say something like, “I sure get that you love me.” And I will say, “Do I show you that as much as you see it?” She will say, “Well, a lot of times yes, but sometimes you don’t.” My response is, “My goal is to show you outwardly as much as I feel internally.”
   So my personal vision is to demonstrate in physicality what I hold as my reality inside about all the people and things in my life. That is an enormous challenge I face every hour of every day. I am very clear what I am up to and what I am attempting to do. I encourage people to get equally clear.

Cronin: One can even say that to live the answer to that question would make you happier than God.

Walsch: Yep.

Cronin: One final question: What do you hold sacred in your life?

Walsch: Life itself, but to get more specific, intimacy—intimacy with another, myself, and my own conception of God. Intimacy is sacred and I yearn for it; I work for it, and I experience it with all people whose lives I touch in whatever way is appropriate in the moment. I am experiencing it now with you during this question-and-answer session, having answered your questions on a far deeper level than I would have 10 years ago.

David A. Cronin is owner of Changing Times Books and Gifts in West Palm Beach, Fla. His website, www.changingtimesgifts.com, includes an archive of Cronin’s writings under “Inspirations.”

Read more inspiring interviews in New Age Retailer magazine. To subscribe, click here.