Talk:Neale Donald Walsch

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[edit] Indigo

I have lost respect for NDW, he's jumped on the patently nonsense and dangerous Indigo phenomena. Although I do find NDW has written some very coherant beliefs which are similiar to mine, I just cannot believe certain claims which defy the most basic rules of critical thinking. Is he writing with false positives in mind? (writing in a way to appear to everyone's sense of underlying faculty of conciousness). --86.18.156.77 07:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] note

Maybe there should be a note at some point, perhaps before the article, that the only objective thing you can say about the "God" in the books is that it is a literary device, and that this article discusses it with this in mind, and also when not discussing the book that the implication is that the God being discussed is the real-life idea, whatever that is for some people. Right now it kinda sound interchanged, like it's being assumed most people are taking this as an actual conversation (whether or not it was, the Wikipedia doesn't take sides, right?)...

Part of it like the "met with criticism" sentence are chunky and floaty. If it's not a big deal, it shouldn't be there, if it's a big schtick part of what people know about him when they think of the name, it needs better priority in the article. 70.118.235.203 21:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

His recent blog on his site (April 7, "Signs are everywhere") makes me sick...the one above An Inconvenient Truth. It was clever enough to ask people to buy the book to get it better exposure, knowing he has a cult following, but asking people who already bought it to join a "God's Sales Force?" Zealot a bit? He's a respectable writer but it ends there because after 800 years of being alive he doesn't know how to quit when he's ahead.

[edit] Is Neale a modern day prophet?

We may not realize it now but we may be having a prophet living in our midst in modern day America. In Neale's books, God tells him that he is a messenger for the masses. Does that qualify him as a prophet? Of course, Neale Donald Walsch is no Master yet but God seems to have chosen him to carry out some new messages about truth and life. Any comments? --Siva1979Talk to me 14:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I find Neale's claims to be very hard to swallow. In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll point out that I am notably biased in favor of reality. All we have here, really, is Neale's word that God has spoken to him (whether or not "God" is something that actually exists is for a different Talk page :p). It's obviously hard to collect evidence on the communications of a purportedly non-corporeal, divine being; and so until Neale can prove otherwise, his word is all he really has to back up the existence of these "conversations".
The way I see it, Neale expects us to take his word that he's talking with God. Consequently, we're supposed to take Neale's word for everything that "God" supposedly said, which if you're into the Bible, differs noticably from what God has supposedly said in the past. Pulling dialogue out of his posterior doesn't make him a prophet. Personally, I think that Neale is an hell of a salesman, and that God hasn't spoken to him any more than God had spoken to Jim Jones or to Pat Robertson or to the American President. Nortelrye 15:40, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
Hardly. I'll be honest, he was doing well for the first couple of books, but then he started talking like every other incredibly tedious 'new age' person, all fake plastic "love " and reliance on paraphrased Buddhist and Hindu ideas, and watered down Christianity. If he's a prophet then I'm the pope. --Stevefarrell 23:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, God has also revealed to him that he had about 600 human past lives and he has only a few more lives to go before realizing Him/Her or reaching the pinnicle of spiritual evolution. He also states that Neale is a messenger of truth in his present incarnation. Neale may (or may not) have changed to a more materialistic person but we have no right to judge his spiritual evolution. Even God does not judge him and He loves Neale a lot. (He also loves ALL of us including Hitler!) Personally, I feel that Neale's time on our planet is about to end. He just released his last "Conversation with God" book and he has given a lot of hope to the people on planet Earth. Let us give him credit for being brave to publish these books. A lot of people view Neale as a heretic because of the books he had published but Neale is very sincere about his work. --Siva1979Talk to me 15:47, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't see him as a heretic, as his idea of God matches closely my own (though I'm not so much a pantheist), as does his idea of how humanity should behave; and on the whole it's not incompatible with my religion. But as the comment above says, he's starting to sport these 'new age capitalist' tendencies, the kind of 'give me money and be fulfilled' approach to God. Plus, there's little proof that God actually is talking to him. The Lord may no more be talking to Walsch than He is talking to, say, George W Bush or the suicide bomber who says they're doing it in the name of Allah. All I'm saying is that, any idiot can claim prophethood, and they frequently do; some even claim godhood (see Yahweh ben Yahweh) or messiah-hood (David Koresh). However, I do subscribe to a lot of Walsch's ideas and beliefs, but I find new age 'brotherly love' to be somewhat pseudo. I don't know why. --Stevefarrell 16:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I feel that you might perhaps be mistaken. Nobody but Neale knows if God revealed anything to him. All we know is that Neale claims that God revealed things to him. We know that these things have been "revealed" to him because Neale says they have. That's all we have to go on -- just some guy's word...and it's really easy to make claims when there's no way they can be disproved. Personally, I think that Neale is full of it, but a good enough writer to make it marketable.
And I do claim the right to judge this so-called spiritual evolution! Look at what he's doing -- he's making lots of money off what appears to be a load of new-age babble mixed in with some "prophecies" all wrapped in a series of books! Neale may be a very smart guy for coming up with something so saleable, but that does not by any means make him a prophet or a particullarly brave man. While I do not begrudge a man the profit of his labors, I can certainly question his motives. I give Neale credit for being a skilled enough author and salesman to make the amount of money he has from something so ridiculous. Nortelrye 16:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I personally have read all of NDW’s books and find them all to be wonderful, even though the last few have been really “more of the same” and not quite as “inspired” as the original trilogy… then again, none of NDW’s books claim to bring a stunningly new, original and unheard message. They all openly say: “you’ve heard all this before” and it’s been called Perennial Philosophy, among many names. Also, criticism is leveled against NDW for his alleged desire to make money for his organizations, which some interpret as him “trying to cash in on the word of God” or some other supposedly-unworthy motivation. I understand that NDW’s organizations are non-profit, so he can’t be profiting from them… and he has openly acknowledged that he has profited quite well from the CwG books, but then again, if you had read them, you may not have a problem with this issue, as it too is addressed therein. The point of his writings is not “I’m God’s Messenger; you better pay attention to me”. It’s “we’re ALL God’s messengers and we better think about the message we’re sending out…” I was raised Catholic so I have my own insights into religion, but one thing I’ve never been able to understand is why some Christians can be so intolerant. I thought Jesus preached brotherly love!! And He embraced the leper, the whore, the taxman and the thief, something a lot of so-called “Christians” cannot do even today. Ah, but they point to the Bible, “the infallible word of God” as their justification. The truth is that the Bible is riddled with contradictions, was written over two millennia ago and has been edited and reformatted many, many times – by PEOPLE. Even though you may not like it, the Bible is JUST A BOOK has no more authority as a source of God’s wisdom that NDW’s books. Any intelligent being that comes to this conclusion also realizes that the only authority is oneself, and so the issue becomes not “how can we know for sure that Neale really talked to God or not?”, but “which of all the things said about God (by NDW, the Bible or anyone) makes more sense to me and sounds like the God I really, truly believe in?” If I was a sheep and someone told me, “you must believe and worship in my God or you will burn in hell for all eternity”, I could go along with that… but I am no sheep. -Daniel Villalobos 16:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

From the article: Walsch "is generally in harmony with the underlying themes of mainstream western spiritual culture"

Really? He claims (for example) that God told him that we have no obligations. I can't think of any mainstream religious traditions that would be in agreement with that at all.

[edit] Pantheistic or panentheistic?

Walsch believes in a pantheistic God.

I think the above is not true. Already in the first chapter he says that God has a visible and invisible part. Therefore, God is everything created and also extends beyond the created (transcendent and immanent). This view is properly called panentheism not pantheism. NikNovi 01:15, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Differing Views on Spiritual Paths

There are over 6½ billion people on earth. * The combinations of culture, genetics, individual intelligence, personality and experience of people are infinite in number. These factors and perhaps others produce personal perspectives that underlie an individual’s beliefs. These beliefs in turn determine what the individual perceives as true and false, good and bad in it’s worldly experience. * For these reasons, every individual thinks that they are “right”. They must, for to think otherwise would violate all their intellectual and emotional underpinnings. * If there is a God, if that God is loving, if that loving God created our immortal souls, then by His very nature He must afford each individual a path by which he or she can eventually abide with Him in Heaven. That path must speak to the individual in terms that the individual can accept. Therefore, the message to one person can vary greatly from that given to another. But due to the nature of the God of which we speak, it must be grounded in pure love — a concept with which we humans for some reason have, at least at times, great difficulty in accepting. * If an individual’s message contains negative judgments of any kind, then those parts of the message cannot have come from the loving God, but must reflect some residual resistance to love. * For all these reasons, I do not see the profit in judging the spiritual positions that various groups and individuals are attracted to. * One might, if so inclined, enjoy identifying unloving aspects of others’ beliefs, but as yet I have not seen anything unloving in Walsch’s expressions such as would earn any criticism of the man. beerscheersBeerscheers (talk) 19:47, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

What's the point of the above paragraph? Is there some part of the article to which you object? Dmitry Brant (talk) 20:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)