Conversations with God

Reading the first Conversations with God book was a life-changing experience for me. It triggered the definitive transformational period of my life, one that took me from being a somewhat confused yet dedicated Christian to someone firmly set on walking his own path.

Following the transformation, the whole book series – from Conversations to Home with God – has provided the backbone for how I see myself and relate to the world around me. As such, it occupies a special place in my heart.

I would like to take this opportunity to illustrate just how valuable these books can be as a source of guidance, but also the considerable challenges that they pose and pitfalls that one can expect to encounter when trying to put their advice into practice.

The reason for my reading the first book in the series could be termed accidental. The book was described as having been produced through automatic writing, and I wanted a sample of it for my own writing project that I was busy with at the time. I had no interest in the book beyond that. I’ve since discovered that many other people whose lives had been transformed by it didn’t seek it out, but were given it by a friend, mistook its content for traditionally religious, or simply forgot to put it down on their way out of a book store.

Perhaps the first question that should be addressed is that of authorship. Was it really God who spoke to Walsch? Is the material really of divine origin? I was so thoroughly moved by it – far more than by any other book I’ve read – that the feeling alone was all the proof I needed. And yet I find the question irrelevant. It comes from a mindset of dependence on external authority for guidance, whose value stems from its source rather than content. It is a mindset that runs directly counter to the core message of the book.

The book’s transformational capacity arises from its rare ability to engage the reader on multiple levels. It is ideally suited to people who are living within the confines of their religious upbringing, especially Christianity, but who are ready, without necessarily realising it, to venture beyond it. This is where I was when I first read the book, which is why it had such a powerful effect on me.

It first captivated me by poking holes at Christian doctrines that I had come to accept, but that didn’t sit all that well with me – the primacy of written word over personal experience, our fallen nature that required salvation through God’s grace, the whole notion of eternal damnation, the very idea that God resolves problems through violence. By engaging questions like these, it gave voice to the misgivings that I’ve had for years, but didn’t know how to articulate, or was afraid to.

Far from being content to criticise, it also offered an alternative. It painstakingly crafted a different worldview that liberally borrowed material from a wide range of religions and philosophies without being bogged down in their traditional dogma. It weaved this material together into an internally consistent and unified whole that revealed a God who seeks to experience itself through us, and in the process answer the only question it has ever had – Who am I?

This worldview is the perfect complement to its religious criticism, for it paints a picture of existence characterised by total freedom and total responsibility, whose obligations melt into opportunities and commandments become guidelines. Such existence cannot be bound by rules and punishment for failing to abide by them. The book is uncompromising in its resolve to rid the reader of any small thought about himself, of any shame, guilt or fear to live the grandest vision she can imagine.

This is hard work. I have spent the better part of the past ten years toiling away at the task. It is the polar opposite of the criticism so frequently levelled at books that promote spiritual freedom – that it is just licence to do whatever one wants. As one of the reviewers has said, it is hard being slapped in the face with undeniable truth, and harder knowing that you must now change your life in order to meet it. It doesn’t matter whether someone else is watching and keeping score. You are watching, and once you become engaged in this process, your own standard may be the most demanding one of them all.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is knowing when to stop. It describes the big picture, but is skimpy on the details. Subsequent books in the series continue in the same vein. While they extend the metaphysical scaffolding, they sometimes only touch on some important and difficult subjects, and often merely hint at how to put their advice into practice. A reader who is serious about living the book’s message has no choice but to consult other sources to fill in the blanks. This makes it very difficult to extol the book as having all the answers, no matter how valuable its content may be.

I have spent many years searching for life guidance, both within Christianity and outside of it. Now that I’ve read this series of books, the search is over. Or is it just beginning?

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