I found this book in a dusty little corner of my local used bookstore (yes, they do still exist) and was intrigued by the title and premise. A few months later I have now read the entire trilogy and must say it really speaks directly to the soul, bypassing all the mental gatekeeping we humans come up with to deny ourselves direct contact with the source of our being. I’m not one of those folks who think that all religions are only in the business of building their own power by feeding gullible minds with fear and judgment — there are certainly very enlightened folks with open hearts and minds within organized religion. Yet, I’ve always been skeptical of the ones who try to tell you that their views are absolute and threaten you if you choose a different vehicle to find love and meaning in life. It’s just too obvious that anyone who tries to tell you that God is vengeful or would exclude some of us is just insecure in themselves. As Michael Franti says: “God is too big for just one nation, and God is too big for just one religion.” Yell Fire!
What tells me that Neale Donald Walsch has really tapped into the essence of God is that the books read as refreshingly and truthfully in 2009 as they must have when they first came out in the mid-90s. This phenomenon in itself is discussed in the book — the fact that God really is timeless and nameless. Too often we’re stuck in the dualistic mechanisms of our mind that tells us to divide everything — yesterday versus tomorrow, us versus them, believers vs non-believers. In that very same mindset we also like to look at “God” as a particular thing or person, something we can imagine or portray with our thoughts. And too often, religious texts create the same kind of hierarchy of spirit that we assign to our social structures on earth. For example, looking at God as “The Father” is a very common image conjured by a patriarchic mindset, as if there’s some sort of a guy sitting somewhere up there wagging his imaginary finger at
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