A Conversation with God
by Neale Donald Walsch
 GOD, IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT TODAY'S SOCIETY, WHAT WOULD IT BE? -- Peter, 15 yrs old
I would change your beliefs about who you are, and who I am, and how life is.
I would cause you to notice that you and I are One, that you are likewise one with everything and everyone else, and that life is eternal, with no beginning and no end.
These simple ideas would alter the course of your experience forever, and change your whole world.
WHY DON'T YOU DO THAT, THEN? WHY DON'T YOU CAUSE US TO NOTICE THIS? WHY DON'T YOU CHANGE THIS ONE THING ABOUT OUR SOCIETY?
I do not do anything, Peter, on my own. If I did, I would be breaking the law of free will. I would be directly interfering in your life.
SO THIS ONE THING WILL NEVER BE CHANGED?
There is only one way that this can occur, and that is through you. I cannot do it TO you, I can only do it THROUGH you. This is because Who You Are is me -- God -- expressed as life, in, as, and through YOU.
That is what I have come here to tell you. That is what you have brought yourself here to be told. You, and everyone else who is holding this book in their hands.
HOW, THEN, CAN I CHANGE THE WORLD?
So far all the best efforts of your governments and your social systems and even your religions have not been able to change the most basic human behaviors. And so, after all this time, things are still pretty much the way they always have been among human beings -- squabbling, fighting, killing, and inability to openly share or openly love.
WHY?
Because all humans do is keep trying to change the conditions of life on your planet, rather than the beliefs that have created those conditions.
Humans keep trying to eliminate the condition of poverty, the condition of hunger, the condition of misery, the condition of oppression, the condition of prejudice and lack of equal opportunity, the condition of violence, the condition of war ... they keep trying to make these conditions go away.
They try religious persuasion; they try legislative mandate; they try royal decree; they try benevolent dictatorship; they try totalitarian government; they try popular uprising; they try everything they can think of, and still they cannot make these conditions go away.
With all humanity's supposed advancement, with all its fancy technology, with all of its newly created abundance and wealth, and with all its increased awareness, humans have not been able to eliminate the most basic problems of poverty, hunger, misery, oppression, prejudice and lack of equal opportunity, violence, and war.
And they cannot, because these conditions are reflections of beliefs that have not changed. If you want your world to change you have to work to change the world's beliefs.
Behaviors and conditions can only be changed temporarily. You may work on that now if you wish to provide temporary relief, but if you want long-term relief you must work on helping people change their beliefs.
Remember this always: Beliefs create behaviors and behaviors create conditions.
This is true in your individual life as well as in the collective reality that you are creating planet-wide.
HOW CAN WE CHANGE BELIEFS? HOW CAN WE DO THAT?
First you have to be aware of what beliefs you are trying to change. Most people do not know what it is that they do believe. They have not thought about it deeply. They are too busy living. They are too busy trying to solve the problems created by their beliefs to look into the matter of what beliefs are creating them.
WHAT ARE THE BELIEFS WE NEED TO CHANGE?
The human race believes in neediness. It believes not only that there are things that it needs, it believes that it has insufficient means to meet those needs. It believes in disunity. It believes in failure. It believes in superiority.
It believes, most of all, in the conditionality of love. It believes that love is conditional. That my love is conditional, and that all love is conditional, and that, therefore, there are requirements that must be met in order to receive the benefits of love, and judgments that must be made about who has and who has not met those requirements, and condemnations that must be meted out to those who have failed.
Because it deeply believes in such a system of separateness, scarcity, failure, judgment, condemnation, and superiority, it allows itself to behave in accordance with those beliefs -- and thus to create all of its own miseries.
Finally, the human race believes that it is not possible to disavow its basic beliefs, or to recreate them, because it does not, and cannot, know how. The human race believes in ignorance.
These are the Ten Illusions of Humans, and they are a very big part of earthly reality. Still, you can change this.
SO HOW DO WE DO IT?
The first thing you must do is really understand the problem, which you are doing here, and then look at solutions. The solutions are to change your most basic beliefs and to assist others in changing theirs.
OKAY BUT I WANT TO MAKE SURE BEFORE I HEAR ABOUT SOLUTIONS THAT WE DO HAVE THE POWER TO PRODUCE THEM. I DON'T WANT TO BE LED DOWN THE GARDEN PATH HERE. I MEAN, WE CAN DO THIS, RIGHT? EVEN THOUGH NO ONE'S DONE IT BEFORE?
No one's had it explained to them before with this kind of clarity.
More and more people are seeing clearly now that the problems confronting the human race are real -- and could destroy their species and its home -- and more and more people are hearing with greater clarity how they can help in doing something about it.
That's what makes this a very important time. That's why this book "fell" into your hands when it did.
Yes, you have the power to recreate your reality on Earth in a new way. Absolutely. That's where your power to create -- your Original Power -- comes in. But that may be the first belief you have to change. You may have to change the belief that you do not have this power.
BECAUSE -- AND NOW WE'RE BACK TO WHERE WE WERE BEFORE -- WHAT WE BELIEVE, WE EXPERIENCE.
Exactly. And some things are harder to believe than others, so those things are harder to experience.
LIKE WHAT?
Well, it's easier to imagine that you're going to find a parking space right where you want it than it is to imagine that disunity or separation does not exist, or that condemnation does not exist, or that ignorance does not exist. So, many people are willing to try to produce what you would call "smaller results" by using Original Power, but they do not use that power to create what you would call larger results, because they do not believe they can.
In the same way, some people can experience small, negative life encounters as gifts (they call them "blessings in disguise"), while they experience other, larger, negative life encounters as struggles and dramas (they call them "misfortunes" or "tragedies"). They believe they can transform the smaller ones, but they don't believe they can transform the larger.
Masters are people who believe that they can use Original Power (or what some people call the power of God, or the power of prayer) to create anything -- and so, they produce what you would term "miracles."
SO IF I BELIEVE THAT MY LIFE DOESN'T HAVE TO BE THE WAY IT IS, AND THAT THE WHOLE WORLD, FOR THAT MATTER, CAN BE CHANGED, THEN IT CAN BE.
Yes. That is how the changes that have been made have come about. Somebody, somewhere, believed that it could happen. And it did. Usually because that particular person helped make it happen.
That's why I said earlier, do not give up hope, do not ever stop trying to change your life or change the world.
All of you have come here, to this book, to this moment, to begin the next part of your journey. It is a journey to hopefulness. A journey to wholeness. It is the journey home.
This is about waking up, getting what's going on. This is about living your life in a new way, with intention and purpose and clarity and more fun than you ever thought possible. Remember the Three Way Path?
- Have fun.
- Spread joy.
- Share love.
Man, are you going to have a chance to do that in the years ahead!
Are you ready?
Good! Start now.
Start now.
Today at home. Tomorrow at school.
Start now.
This is all it will take. That's why it can be said with such certainty that none of this is too big for you. None of this is too much. Fun, joy, and love is who you are. It is the natural you. Just give in to that.
Have fun doing whatever you're doing. Yes, even going to school. Just have fun with it. See it for what it is -- a stepping stone on the path to the greatest life you could ever hope to live.
Have fun with everything. It is possible. Just take the drama out of it, take the stress out of it. It's all good. Spread joy around you. You can do that with something as simple as a smile, a laugh, a word of encouragement to a fellow traveler, a favor for a friend, a helping hand for a parent. Share love with everyone, in the form that your soul tells you is most appropriate to the moment and to the kind of relationship that you have with each person -- and with yourself.
Go now and create your world as you would have it be. Go now and celebrate your life, and everything that makes you "you".
Go now and recreate yourself anew in the next grandest version of the greatest vision you ever had about who you are.
This is my invitation. This is your dream. This is our next grand adventure.
 This article is excerpted from Conversation with God for Teens, ?2001, by Neale Donald Walsch. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Hampton Roads Publishing. http://www.hrpub.com
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About the Author
Neale Donald Walsch is the author of numerous books, including Conversations with God, Books 1, 2, and 3; Friendship with God; and Communion with God; all of which have been New York Times bestsellers. Book 1 occupied that list for more than two and a half years. Walsch lives with his wife, Nancy, in Ashland, Oregon. Together they operate ReCreation, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to help people reclaim their true selves. His most recent work involves an outreach to the world's teen population, including specifically produced teen retreats and this book.
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