If you could ask God one question, and be certain you would get an answer, what would you say? For Neale Donald Walsch, the question came out as an angry letter, written at one of the lowest points of his life. What happened next became one of the best-selling spiritual books of the modern era. Conversations with Neale Donald Walsch is a series of heartfelt conversations with the man behind Conversations with God, and it is available on Next Level Soul. The trailer above gives you a first look.
This guide goes much further than a review. It tells his story, walks through the books and the ideas, looks at his movement and his critics, and offers a way to try the practice that started it all.
Who Is Neale Donald Walsch?
Neale Donald Walsch was born on September 10, 1943, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was raised Catholic in a family that encouraged his questions about God, and he spent much of his adult life reading and thinking about theology, without any formal religious training. His working life was in words and communication. He was a radio station program director, a newspaper managing editor, and he worked in marketing and public relations.
By his own description, he was a man who was always searching and often unsettled. He had a way with words and an impatience with easy answers, and those two qualities would shape everything that followed.
The Fall: Fire, Divorce and a Tent in Oregon
In the early 1990s, his life came apart in a series of blows. A fire destroyed his home and belongings. His marriage ended. A car accident broke his neck. By the time he recovered, he was alone, unemployed and, in his own telling, convinced that his life was over.
He ended up homeless in southern Oregon, living in a tent at Jackson Hot Springs near Ashland and gathering aluminum cans to recycle for food. It is a long way from a newspaper editor’s desk, and it is the part of his story he has told most often, because it matters. The book that changed his life did not come from a mountaintop. It came from the floor of a very low place.
Eventually he worked his way back. He found work in radio, hosting a talk show, and then began writing.
The Angry Letter
The story of how Conversations with God began is simple, and many seekers find that its simplicity is its power. During one of the darkest periods of his life, Walsch sat down and wrote an angry letter to God. He asked why his life was not working, what he had done to deserve it, and what it would take to make it better. Then, as he tells it, something unexpected happened. He found himself writing answers.
He has described that experience as a dialogue, with questions in his own voice and responses that came in a different one. The conversation continued over months, and the pages became the first book. He has said, consistently, that this was not channeling in the way people usually use the word. He describes it as inspiration, a process in which God spoke to him the way God speaks to anyone who asks and listens.
You do not have to accept that premise to appreciate what it models. Many of the great spiritual voices in history began in complaint. The psalmists, Job, and mystics from many traditions all wrote to God out of anger and grief before they wrote out of peace. The angry letter is an ancient form. It says, I am not going to pretend to be fine. I am going to ask my real question.
The Books: A Dialogue That Became a Library
Conversations with God was published in 1995 and became an international phenomenon. It spent 135 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and the dialogue grew into a series of 28 books, translated into 37 languages. Six other titles also reached the Times list.
The first three books of the original series form what readers call the trilogy: the first deals with personal life, the second with the larger world, and the third with the nature of the universe and the soul. Later titles extended the conversation in many directions. Among the books in what Walsch calls the CwG cosmology are:
- Re-Minder Cards: Conversations with God, Book 1 (1998)
- Applications for Living from Conversations with God (1999)
- Part of the Change: Your Role as a Spiritual Helper (2005)
- The Mother of Invention (2011)
- When God Steps In, Miracles Happen (2011)
- The Essential Path (2019)
- The God Solution (2020)
To read them, you can start where almost everyone does, with Conversations with God, Book 1, or with the one-volume edition, The Complete Conversations with God.
The Big Ideas, Simply Put
People often ask what the books actually teach. Here are the core ideas, in plain language. They are Walsch’s teachings, and we present them as such.
- You are one with God. God is not a distant authority. Walsch teaches that we are all one with God and with each other, and that separation is an illusion we agree to for a while.
- Life is a process of creation. We are not here to discover who we are in a fixed way. We are here to decide, and to create, who we want to be.
- Love and fear are the two great energies. Most choices, in his teaching, come from one or the other, and noticing which one is driving you is a good daily question.
- God does not punish. The books reject the picture of a judging deity who demands worship and sends people to eternal punishment. God, in this view, is more like a loving source that wants us to remember who we are.
- Authority lives within. The invitation of the books is to treat your own experience, and your own conversation with the Divine, as a legitimate source of wisdom.
That last idea is why the books resonate so deeply with people leaving rigid religion behind. They do not replace one authority with another. They hand the reader the pen.
Humanity’s Team and the New Spirituality
Walsch did not stop at writing. He founded Humanity’s Team, a global movement that promotes what he calls the New Spirituality. Its central belief is that humanity is one with God and with life itself, and that this oneness is experienced most fully when we help others. In 2008 he also founded the School of the New Spirituality, which began publishing study guidebooks for his teachings.
He has lived in southern Oregon with his wife, the poet Em Claire. He has nine children. He is also a sought-after lecturer and retreat leader, and the dialogue he began in a tent has become a life’s work.
On Screen: From Indigo to the Movie
Walsch has also made his way into film. In 2003 he co-wrote the film Indigo with James Twyman, directed by Stephen Simon, and played a grandfather in it. Conversations with God: The Movie, which tells the story of his years in homelessness and the book that followed, opened in United States theaters on October 27, 2006. He has appeared in a long list of spiritual documentaries, including Infinity: The Ultimate Trip (2009), 3 Magic Words (2010), Tapping the Source (2010), Living in Light (2012), Awake in the Dream (2012) and iGod (2015).
Conversations with Neale on Next Level Soul
The series on Next Level Soul brings that spirit to a more personal format. The description says it all: Neale engages in heartfelt conversations that explore life’s deepest questions, sharing insights on love, purpose and the nature of existence. The series runs for two seasons. Season two has thirteen episodes, each titled with a first name, among them Donna, Sharon, Anastasia, Julia, David and Orly. That tells you the shape of it: one person, one conversation, one question at a time.
What makes this format work is the pace. The conversations are unhurried, and Walsch listens as much as he speaks. You hear thinking in motion, with pauses and follow-ups, and the ideas feel easier to absorb than they might on the page. We found ourselves arguing along, which is a good sign. You do not need to agree with him to find the conversations alive.
If you want to hear him in a different setting, try the NLS podcast conversations Find Your Purpose When Depressed with Neale Donald Walsch and Our Role in Humanity’s Spiritual Evolution with Neale Donald Walsch.
Honest Questions and Criticisms
A fair look at Walsch includes the questions people raise. Some readers are uneasy with the claim of a dialogue with God, and say there is no way to verify it. Some traditional religious readers object to the books’ rejection of ideas such as divine punishment. Some find the writing repetitive, or the teaching too tidy. These are reasonable reactions, and the books invite them, since they say repeatedly that nobody should believe anything just because it is written down.
In 2008 Walsch also drew criticism when he posted a story on Beliefnet that was almost identical to one published about ten years earlier by another writer. He apologized, said he had absorbed the story over the years and believed it was his own, and withdrew from the site. We mention it because an honest portrait includes it.
As with any teacher, the best approach is the one Walsch himself recommends: take what rings true, and leave the rest.
A Mystic’s Reading: Why This Story Endures
There is an old idea in mystical traditions that prayer is not speaking at God but listening with God. The story of the angry letter fits that tradition surprisingly well. It begins with honesty. It continues with attention. And it ends with a sense of being answered, not by thunder, but by a quiet clarity that arrives on the page.
Whether you hear that clarity as God, as your higher self, or as the deepest part of your own mind, the practice is available to anyone. It asks for two things: a real question, and the willingness to wait for the answer. And it comes back to what we say at Next Level Soul: the power is within you.
A Practice: Write Your Own Letter
Try a version of the exercise that started it all. Give yourself twenty minutes in a quiet place with a notebook.
- Write a letter, to God, the universe or your higher self. Say exactly what is true, including anything you are angry or afraid about. Do not edit.
- Ask three real questions. Not rhetorical ones, and not questions you already know the answer to.
- Put the pen down. Take three slow breaths. Then pick it up again and write whatever comes, without judging it.
- Read what you wrote the next morning. Underline whatever feels true and ignore the rest.
Keep what helps, and return to it whenever you need to. Pair it with the practices in our guides to spiritual enlightenment and living with purpose.
How to Watch It Well
Take one conversation at a time. Pause afterward and write a few lines. What question in this conversation do you most want to answer for yourself? Where in your life do you act from love, and where from fear? If purpose were something you chose today, what would you choose? Return to your notes after a week. You will often find that the answer has changed, which is a sign of growth.
Who Will Connect with This Series
It suits readers of the Conversations with God books, seekers who prefer dialogue to instruction, anyone leaving rigid religion who is still hungry for God, and anyone ready to ask larger questions without needing certainty.
Keep Exploring
Keep exploring with spiritual enlightenment, living with purpose and Spiritual Cinema collection.
Watch Neale on the Next Level Soul Podcast
Neale sat down with Alex Ferrari on the Next Level Soul Podcast to talk about humanity’s spiritual evolution and the role each of us plays in it. It is the most recent of our conversations with him, and a warm way to hear his ideas in his own voice.
Want more? Hear the full episode, our earlier talk on finding your purpose when depressed, and Alex’s conversation with Stephen Simon, the director behind Conversations with God: The Movie.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Neale Donald Walsch?
Neale Donald Walsch is an American author and spiritual teacher, born in 1943 in Milwaukee. He is best known for the Conversations with God series, which began in 1995.
How did Conversations with God begin?
After a period of homelessness and personal crisis in the early 1990s, Walsch wrote an angry letter to God. He found himself writing answers, and the dialogue became the first book.
How many Conversations with God books are there?
The dialogue grew into 28 books, translated into 37 languages. The first three form the original trilogy.
Is Conversations with God channeled?
Walsch says the books are inspired by God rather than channeled, and describes a dialogue in which he asked questions and found himself writing the answers.
What is Humanity’s Team?
It is a spiritual movement founded by Walsch to share what he calls the New Spirituality, which holds that all people are one with God and with life.
What is the Conversations with Neale Donald Walsch series about?
It is a series of heartfelt conversations in which Walsch explores life’s deepest questions about love, purpose and the nature of existence. It runs for two seasons.
Where can I watch Conversations with Neale Donald Walsch?
The series is available on Next Level Soul. Watch Conversations with Neale Donald Walsch on Next Level Soul TV.
