finally someone writes a easy to read, personal experience book that tells all of us that we CAN have a conversation directly with God - no middleman - no hoops to jump. wonderful 

Eventhough this book deserves credit for jumstarting me into the world of spirituality(lack of a better word) 10 years later I have to disagree than forgive its promotion/importance of the illusion we live in. It still will be a important book/step to where I am now.

I think nearly every sensitive individual wandering through the insanity of modern society has, at some point or another, experienced an inner confrontation with the grotesquery of what appears to be the human condition. This confrontation is often called, “The dark night of the soul.” Perhaps the loss of a loved one might precipitate this confrontation.

Whatever the crisis that brings a sensitive individual to this confrontation with the dark shadow of the light of life, it seems so many of us wake up the following morning trying to ignore what we just experienced and simply pray that we never experience that ugliness ever again. But more often than not, that ugly moment will arise again, perhaps within a week, or a month, or a decade.

Perhaps some of us so forcefully bury this confrontation that we develop defense mechanisms in hope of hiding from this very painful and ugly confrontation with the dark nature of the insanity of life. Perhaps depressions and anxieties and panics ensue. So we take our zoloft and walk through life numbed out and resist by every means in our disposal facing this dark insanity that keeps resurfacing over and over, in our lifetimes.

I believe this scenario is more common than any of us would willingly admit.

Neale Donald Walsch had such a moment in the spring of 1994. He seized this moment, and wrote an angry diatribe at what he felt was the source of the ugliness of his life: God.

According to Walsch, something astonishingly special happened as he was about to put down the pen of his angrily-sprawled-out bitch-fest at God.

God responded.

“Do you want a response to those questions, or are you just venting?”

Walsch then spent the remainder of that night–and by extension the next three years–writing out a dialogue between him and God.

Walsch then made an ultimately courageous choice… he sent a copy of this dialogue to a publisher. What happened next is inexplainable; he published a book that has become a phenomenon in throughout the world, and Conversations With God was born.

Evidently many millions of individuals also are experiencing this inner confrontation with the insane grotesquery of our human condition, for millions of readers identify intimately with the dialogue Walsch recorded.

For me, Conversations With God, was the first time I ever read a book that felt I had written it myself. This is a common observation among many who finally come to encounter this recorded dialogue with God.

I've come to see Conversations With God as a superb tool for those seeking refuge and recovery from the belief in a God that metes out punishments on those of his “children” who don't meet up to “his” standards. If you've spent any so-called quality time in one of the many chapels of shame-mongering throughout the world that preach of a fiery God, who throws non-believers and infidels into the pits of hell to rot and burn for eternity, then you will find, finally, a rest for your weary soul within the pages of this recorded conversation with a God of love and acceptance and peace.

I believe the central message of the overall dialogue can be articulated from two of the catchy phrases from Conversations With God:

Love is All There Is.
We are all One.

So why not quit hiding from the dark nights of your soul? Join the many millions of the world who are now consciously engaged in the project of creating the next greatest version of the greatest vision they've ever had about Who I Really Am. Be ready to hear the voice of the Divine describe in simple and loving terms just why that Grand Daddy In The Sky is a figment of our collective imagination.

Thank you, Neale. You truly are a gift.

this book almost kept imploring me to be picked up…since as a buddhist I never grew up with a concept or belief in god. But to my great surprise I got hooked, because it shatters so much misconception and lies about the idea of god.

I've been a Christian for most of this life and probably others. Neale reveals the God I've always known but others have tried to hide behind religious dogma and fear, intolerance and a range of other nasty human qualities. God is love and all scripture should be read with that in mind.

If you read the Bible and find a vengeful, cruel and jealous God, you've read it wrong. That's just the experience of other believers who are struggling to understand God down through the ages, or of others trying to rewrite the experiences of past believers to suit their own beliefs. 

Thanks to Neale for taking the time to sit down and let God talk to him one to one, and for sharing that with the world.