Letters to a Young Seeker: Departing Thoughts from an Elder – An Interview with Neale Donald Walsch

There are very few people in the world who have started a conversation that millions of others couldn’t stop talking about. 

Neale Donald Walsch is one of them. Best known for his Conversations with God series, one of the most widely read spiritual book series of the modern era, Neale joins us for a conversation that is honest, soulful, and full of the kind of insights that quietly shift the way you see the world. At 82, he is as sharp, curious, and open-hearted as ever.

This interview centers around Neale’s newest book, Letters to a Young Seeker: Departing Thoughts from an Elder, and the lifetime of wisdom packed inside it. Neale explores some of the most profound questions a person can ask…about the meaning of suffering, the nature of God’s love, and what it really means to live true to yourself. If you’ve ever felt like life was trying to teach you something, or like you were carrying a meaning someone else assigned to your story, this conversation is for you.

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I interview so many people for our magazine whose lives have been deeply impacted by Conversations with God, and I just want to say thank you for your incredible work. 

Neale Donald Walsch: That’s a wonderful thing for you to share with me, David. I only hope it’s true to the letter. What a nice thing to hear right off the bat. I’m humbly grateful for the opportunity to provide a little service to a few people. Thank you, David.

I am curious about how your life changed with the release of Conversations with God. Thinking back on your life — your relationships, your opportunities — how did life change for you?

Neale Donald Walsch: Gosh, what a huge question, because the answer is enormous.

First of all, it changed my priorities — what I was trying to accomplish in my life and what I thought was important. After my priorities shifted, my behaviors changed because they had been set by my former priorities. It changed my idea about why I’m alive, what the purpose of life is. And it changed my whole notion of who I really am.

I realized, very clearly, that I am not my body and I am not my mind. I’m a spiritual entity, and these are simply pieces of equipment — tools my soul is using to complete its agenda. So honestly, David, it’s an enormous question. It changed everything in my life, including what I thought I needed to do to move through life in a happy, joyful, fulfilling way.

And when the book started to get traction, and people began to be impacted by the conversations you had and the way you captured them, how did your life change as the book started to get legs, so to speak?

Neale Donald Walsch: Well, my gosh — and I don’t want this to sound like it may sound — but I’m going to answer you honestly.

I found that my life had been turned over to the world, to the public. It became impossible to go anywhere without being recognized. Let me give you an example.

My wife and I were having dinner at a restaurant in Italy — I think we were in Venice — and a gentleman approached our table and said, “Excuse me, Neale Donald Walsch?” I said, “Yes, that’s me. Thank you for coming by to say hello.” He replied, “Well, I didn’t come by to say hello. I came to ask you — are you drinking a glass of wine? I see a glass of wine on the table next to you. I thought your book says you’re not supposed to drink alcohol.”

I said, “The book doesn’t say you’re not supposed to drink alcohol. You may not be aware, but priests drink wine at every Mass they celebrate. What the book says is: all things in moderation. If you saw me here with four glasses of wine, that would be another story. But this is not my fourth glass of wine — it’s my sixth glass of wine, or I wouldn’t be talking to you like this.”

He said, “Oh, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” and he walked away.

I turned to my wife and said, “Our life is no longer our own.” A total stranger approached me at a restaurant in Italy to ask what I was eating or drinking.

I’m not making that wrong. You simply asked how my life has changed. And how it has changed is this: it is no longer a private affair.

How did your life change for the good — maybe in ways you were surprised by?

Neale Donald Walsch: It brought me a deep, deep sense of the wonder of life — of the extraordinary gifts that God has given to all of us. I wrap that up in a package called metaphysics, or thought, or prayer — whatever word feels acceptable to you or to most people. But it gave me a profound awareness that there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

This is not just a game of getting from birth to death with as little harm done to yourself and others as possible. There’s something far more expansive happening. On the good side, the change has been this: it altered my entire perception of who I am, where I am — in the physical realm — why I am here, and what I can do to make the best use of this gift called human life.

I’m curious about your new book, Letters to a Young Seeker: Departing Thoughts from an Elder. Why is this the time in your life to release this book?

Neale Donald Walsch: On a practical level, I don’t know how much more time I have. I’m 82 years old. I could be gone tomorrow, honestly.

But beyond that, something began welling up inside me. I kept saying to myself, “I wish I had known — when I was 21, or 31, or even 41 — what I know now.” That thought stayed with me.

About eight or nine months ago, I said that out loud to my wife — my sweet darling, whom I’ve been with for 18 years — and she looked at me from across the living room and said, “Why don’t you put it all in a book? Write what you wish you had known at 21 for people who are 21, or 31, or 41, and looking at life from that perspective.”

I said, “You know, I never thought about that.”

So I sat down. It took me three or four days, and I scribbled out what I felt were some of the most important ideas and messages I received through my conversations with God. I put them into a series of short letters. Young people today are used to brevity — if you can’t say it in 120 words or fewer, it may not be read. So I kept it brief, short, to the point — but powerful.

Each letter is five or six, maybe seven paragraphs at most. Everyone contains a message I consider extraordinary, insightful, useful, and important. In the end, I wrapped it all up into 21 little letters for a young seeker.

Then I passed the manuscript to my wife, who, by the way, is my best editor ever. She’s not part of the literary community; she reads as an ordinary person in the world would read it. She said, “It’s logical. It’s powerful. You’ve written a nice little booklet. But I think it needs a softer touch.”

I told her I knew an award-winning poet who had published two books of poetry, and asked if she thought I could convince her to let me use some of her poems in the book. My wife — who happened to be that poet — said she would love to. She selected poems from her collection — she’s written maybe 150 or 200, I’ve lost count — choosing those that matched the messages in the letters.

That’s how Letters to a Young Seeker came together.

But the deeper reason I wrote it is this: I was filled with the awareness that if I had known then what I know now, my life might have unfolded very differently. So why not pass it on? Why keep it under wraps?

And I mean this literally, David — if only one young person picks up that book and says, “Wow, this is important. This has changed my outlook on life,” then it’s enough. One person would be enough.

Well, I’m very confident it will be more than one person. At 53, as I was reading it, I found myself on the verge of real emotion. I felt like you were right there with me, sharing this life wisdom. And you say in the beginning you can read one a day, one a week, one a month — or all at once — but you’re very sneaky because you tie them together. It’s impossible to read just one.

I want to move to the preface, where you talk about seeing life on Earth not as learning, but as something else. You wrote: “I am proposing here that it is about bringing forward the wisdom that already exists within each of us.” What’s the difference between learning and remembering? Why do you think Earth is not a school of learning — and why does that distinction even matter?

Neale Donald Walsch: I think it matters because if we believe we’re here to learn, we may worry about whether we’re getting it right — whether we’re learning what we’re supposed to be learning. But if we understand that we’re remembering wisdom that’s already been instilled within us, we’re less anxious about correctness and more open to recognition.

All through my younger years, I was told that life is a school. Life is a school. And when I had my conversations with God, I asked, “Why would you set it up that way?” And the response I received was, “I didn’t set it up that way. You’ve got me all wrong. I didn’t send you down there hoping you’d learn fast enough to make sense of it all — and if you didn’t, tough luck. I didn’t send you there without the equipment you need.”

The message was clear: you were sent here with all the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding required to make the most of your life. Why would a loving parent withhold what a child most needs to navigate the world? No good parent would do that. And neither would God.

So life is not a process of learning. It is a process of re-membering — becoming a member of the body of God once again. Recognizing that you are an individuation of divinity, as is every sentient being in the cosmos.

That’s my understanding. I could be wrong. But that’s what I was told.

And what is the result of that shift — from a human perspective? How does seeing life as remembering rather than learning change the experience of living?

Neale Donald Walsch: I can’t tell you how it would change your experience. I can only speak to how it changed mine.

It allowed me to stop worrying about whether the professor at the front of the classroom was explaining things clearly enough, whether I was absorbing all the information I was supposed to be learning. Instead, it allowed me to call forth what was already there.

Let me give you a simple example. My wife and I sometimes sit down with family and play a friendly game of poker — Penny Annie poker, just for fun. When I pick up my cards, I don’t need someone to reteach me the order of winning hands. I know intuitively what I’m holding. Now, I know because I’ve been playing for 45 years. But no one has to instruct me every time the cards are dealt.

Imagine if every new hand required starting from ground zero — relearning the rules again and again. That’s what life would feel like if it were only about learning.

But as I understand it, God didn’t send us here without the rules. We already have what we need — not just to win at poker, but to “win” at life. To live it as it was intended to be lived: as a wonderful expression of our divine self.

I could be wrong. But I don’t think so.

In the book, you share a dream in which you realized that nothing matters — and that ultimately led to this awareness: “Nothing has any meaning save the meaning you give it.” I’m very curious about this because so many of us don’t realize the meaning we’re assigning to events in our lives. We just assume, “This is what it means.” How is that statement empowering rather than depressing? Because it could feel very depressing. What do you mean, nothing has meaning? Isn’t there inherent meaning in our experience? Help me understand this.

Neale Donald Walsch: There is meaning — but it’s the meaning we give it.

The mistake most people make — and certainly the mistake I made — is thinking that life has the meaning other people say it has. That certain events are supposed to mean a particular thing, and therefore, we must feel about them in a prescribed way.

About 40 or 45 years ago, somewhere in the middle of my life, my marriage ended. It was with a lovely woman — we’re still friends to this day — but we realized the marriage wasn’t working. When it happened, I felt devastated. I thought it was a tragedy. I couldn’t believe my marriage was ending.

A couple of weeks later, I was talking to a man who lived down the block. He told me he had just gone through a divorce as well. I immediately said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” I assumed it had the same meaning for him that it had for me.

He said, “Oh no, don’t be sorry. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

That’s when I realized something profound. Two people can have the exact same experience and assign completely different meanings to it.

From that moment on, I understood that we have to be true to ourselves. We cannot betray our own inner knowing by following someone else’s telling us what we should feel. Betrayal of the self — in order not to betray someone else’s expectations — is still betrayal. And betrayal of the self is the highest betrayal.

So I made a decision: I would not give anything any meaning except the meaning I consciously chose to give it, if others agreed with that meaning, fair enough. If they didn’t, that was fair enough too.

So in that situation — when you felt it was a tragedy — did you want to shift the meaning? Or did you feel, “No, this is true to me. This is what I’m feeling in this moment.” How did you navigate that?

Neale Donald Walsch: I simply went with my innermost feeling. It was as simple as that. I decided to be true to myself.

As Shakespeare put it so perfectly: To thine own self be true, and it follows as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. That says it all.

Let’s say someone is going through a very challenging circumstance — a health crisis, the loss of a child, or the loss of a job. What encouragement would you give them about choosing the meaning they’re making of it?

Neale Donald Walsch: I would encourage them to search deeply inside themselves and ask what the deepest meaning this experience holds for them might be. And I would encourage them not to automatically eliminate the possibility that there could be something of value in it — not to assume it can only mean something tragic or destructive.

For over 30 years, I’ve asked audiences the same question: “How many of you have experienced what you felt at the time was the worst thing that could ever happen to you — and later realized it was one of the best things that ever happened?” Ninety-five percent of the hands go up.

That has convinced me that this is a common human experience. So when someone is going through a terrible moment, I would gently remind them: there may come a day when you see this differently. It might take two weeks, two months, or two years. But perspective can change.

You make a distinction in the book between pain and suffering, saying that suffering happens when we decide that what is happening should not be happening. For someone in deep pain — thinking, “This should not be happening” — how do they shift from suffering back to just pain?

Neale Donald Walsch: I’m not a psychiatrist or psychologist, so I don’t approach it clinically. But spiritually, I would invite them to consider the possibility that — as tragic as the event feels — their life may yet unfold in a way that brings benefit to them and to others whose lives have been touched.

Now, losing a job is one thing. We’ve all lost jobs or property. But when we’re speaking of something like the loss of a child, that’s a different level of pain.

In that case, I often refer people to my book Home with God in a Life That Never Ends. In that dialogue, I share the understanding that no soul leaves the body at a time or in a way that is not consistent with its own choice at the soul level. Once a parent can begin to consider that possibility, something shifts.

They may still feel the pain of the loss — and I’m not denying that pain — but they no longer need to feel pain for the one who has passed. Because from that spiritual perspective, the soul cannot be victimized. The body can be victimized. The mind can be victimized. But the soul cannot.

That is my understanding, based on my conversations with God. And that is what I would gently share with someone experiencing profound loss.

You’ve been very soothing to those who’ve walked through religious trauma. In Letters to a Young Seeker, you suggest a simple linguistic shift — from calling God “God” to calling God “goodness.” How might that shift help those of us who’ve had painful religious experiences?

Neale Donald Walsch: Precisely because many people have gone through religious trauma, that shift can be powerful.

At this moment in human history, over 4,000 faith traditions are being practiced on the Earth — more than 4,200, in fact. And sadly, most of them describe a supreme being who is judgmental, condemning, and punishing. We’re taught that we should fear God. That it’s good to be a God-fearing person.

But I don’t want to be a God-fearing man. I want to be a God-loving man.

So for me, changing the word from “God” to “goodness” softened everything. When I think of the divine as goodness, I find myself saying, “Thank you, my goodness, for all the gifts I’ve received — and for those I have yet to receive.” I trust that I will not leave this life until my soul is ready, and that I may return if I choose.

Now, I can’t tell anyone else how that shift will affect them. I can only speak for myself. But I’ve come to understand the supreme being as pure love.

And pure love is an energetic expression that expects nothing in return. It demands nothing. It requires nothing.

Most human beings can’t even love the person on the pillow next to them that way. We often imagine that God’s love is transactional — “You give Me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want.” Like a trade agreement between nations. If you don’t comply, you don’t receive.

But that’s not love.

I’ve learned to say even to my own wife, “Sweetheart, I love you no matter what. I don’t love you because of what I get from you.” If I loved her only for what I receive, I wouldn’t be loving her at all — I’d be loving myself, using her as a means to feel fulfilled.

To love someone simply because of who they are — regardless of what comes back — that is love.

And that, as I understand it, is how the divine loves us.

The real question is this: Dare we believe in a God who is not judgmental, condemning, or punishing? Dare we believe in goodness itself?

If I’m wrong about all this, I suppose I’m headed straight to hell. But as George Bernard Shaw once quipped, all the interesting people are already there.

For those who come from a background that says, “If God loves me no matter what, what about people who are doing evil? What about the things I do that aren’t loving?” How does God see those experiences?

Neale Donald Walsch: Let me ask you this: how do you respond when you see your two-year-old grandchild do something inappropriate — maybe even hit another child or say something unkind?

Do you react with condemnation? Do you tell your grandchild, “It’s okay, sweetheart, Grandpa forgives you”? No. Forgiveness isn’t even part of the process. What replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master is understanding. That’s one of the messages in Letters to a Young Seeker.

When we truly understand how a person could behave the way they behaved, it doesn’t mean we condone it. It doesn’t mean we approve of it or want it to continue. But it does mean we comprehend how someone arrived at that action.

Understanding replaces forgiveness.

God doesn’t need to forgive us for anything because God fully understands us. From that perspective, we’re all acting like two-year-olds on this planet. And those who may have grown beyond that stage don’t need to forgive others — only to understand them, and to respond with love.

Then, as Mr. Gandhi suggested, be the change you wish to see in the world. Move through life in a way that models the behavior you hope others will embrace. Disagree agreeably. Demonstrate another way of being.

Just some thoughts. Thank you for asking.

Neale, thank you so much for joining us today. I appreciate your wisdom and your willingness to share the backstory of the book, your heart, and the journey behind it. So many people have been impacted by your life and your words. We’re grateful for this new book, Letters to a Young Seeker. If you’re watching or listening, you can find it at NealeDonaldWalsch.com or on Amazon. We’ll link to everything in the show notes. Thanks for being with us.