Childhood & Early Life
Neale Donald Walsch was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, into a Roman Catholic family who were always encouraging of his spiritual and religious escapades since Walch was a very curious child.
He attended a Catholic grade school and expressed more than usual interest in the questions of life and religion, which constantly drove his family and teachers into wondering from where he was learning all that wisdom.
The parish priest made sure that Walsch’s religious curiosity, which was more than usual for his tender age, is catered to. He met with him once a week and slowly the priest encouraged Walsch to ask his questions more confidently.
By the age of 15 he was fully immersed in the process of gaining more all-round knowledge about different religions and spiritual texts. He started reading the Bible, the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, etc.
Walsch enrolled at the University of Wisconsin for higher studies but his heart was not in academics, which is why he dropped out of college to join the radio broadcasting industry. It led to a job role at 19.
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Life & Career
Walsch had a versatile career and held various kinds of jobs like radio station program director, a newspaper reporter, managing editor and public information officer for the local school systems. He ultimately founded his own public relations and marketing firm.
He did not just hop from one job to another; the existential saturation entered his personal life too. He was married many times by his mid-age but each of these relationships was a source of agony for him than love.
He relocated to Oregon to give his life a new turn in the early 1990s as he had suffered enough of trauma, but unfortunately he suffered another blow with a car accident that left him with a broken neck.
Now Walsch was out of job and had to start from scratch to build his life up, find a place to live in and money to pay off the bills. He was collecting aluminum cans and bottles to sell off to buy food.
In 1992, in a moment of despair, Walsch woke up in the middle of the night and wrote an angry letter to god asking “What does it take to make life work?”
His question received the divine reply, which according to Walsch was an answer in a soft and kind voice. The voice, which later set itself in his head, dictated him answers to his questions that he scribbled on the paper.
These ‘conversations’ continued for weeks and Walsch always woke up in the middle of the night to put up questions and pen down the answers. These handwritten notes later became the best-selling ‘Conversations with God’ books.
In 1995, Walsch’s first book ‘Conversation with God’ was published and it became an instant international bestseller that redefined God and shifted spiritual paradigms around the globe.
The book remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 135 weeks. Six of his other books made it to the Times list in the following years. He has published 28 books and his works have been translated into 37 languages.
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He founded a non-profit organization in 1995 to attend to the responses from people around the world and to spread the message of the ‘Conversations with God’ book series, called the ‘ReCreation Foundation, Inc’.
Walsch founded ‘Humanity’s Team’ in 2003; it works with Children worldwide (Australia, China, South Africa, Romania, etc) by collecting and donating clothing, food, diapers, furniture, small appliances and assisting terminally ill children.
He wrote the script of a film called ‘Indigo’ in 2003 with James Twyman, which tells a story of the deliverance of a grandfather through his granddaughter. He also acted in the movie.
The ‘Changing Change Network’ was founded in 2009 by poet/wife Em Claire and Walsch as an extension of the communication contained in the 2009 book, ‘When Everything Changes, Change Everything’. It is a self-governing and self-regulating network.
After the release of his book ‘The Storm Before the Calm’, he launched ‘The Global Conversation’ website in 2011. It contains blogs and comments from user input, as well as featured writers like, Gary Zukav, Barbara Marx Hubbard, etc.
Walch’s many writings include: ‘Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue (1995)’, ‘Conversations With God for Teens (2001)’, ‘Meditations from Conversations With God (2005)’, ‘Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends (2006)’, ‘What God Said (2013)’, etc.
Trivia
‘Conversations With God: The Movie’ was released in the US in 2006.
Some of the other documentaries and movies that Walsch has been a part of are: ‘3 Magic Words’, ‘The Secret’, ‘Tapping the Source’, ‘Living in Light;, etc.
He is a contributor at ‘TheGlobalConversation.com’ as well as on YouTube at ‘YouTube.com/NealeDonaldWalsch’.
