May/June 2003 Featured Stories
The Coach Of Humanity’s Team
An interview with Neale Donald Walsch, author of the "Conversations With God" books.

by Miriam Knight

Neale Donald Walsch

MK: Neale, just what is Humanity’s Team?

NDW: Humanity's Team is a new worldwide movement that seeks to bring people together around a central organizing principle: that the world does not have to be the way it is, and the individual people can change it using the power of spiritual citizenship.

 

MK: What do you mean by "spiritual citizenship"?

NDW: This is embracing the New Spirituality that says that God is not separate from anything—and neither are we. The New Spirituality brings God back to life, and offers a simple message: "There is another way." There is another way to do politics, another way to do economics, another way to do religion and education and social interactions of all kinds—a way that eliminates ruthless competition as a means of surviving, violence as a means of control, killing as a means of conflict resolution, and the empowerment of some through the disempowerment and oppression of others.

 

MK: You seem to be going beyond spiritual citizenship to spiritual activism.

NDW: Humanity has lost patience with itself. The human race is on the verge of determining--for the next thousand years--what it is to be human. And I don’t make that statement lightly. We are making decisions now, both positive and negative, that will affect humanity for the next thousand years. I knew that we had to find a way to answer the call and respond to the hunger of the human soul to now do more than meditate - although meditation is a wonderful practice; do more than simply pray - although praying is highly recommended; more than even being the armchair or "Internet Activist" signing electronic petitions – although that is also a good thing to do. I am not denigrating any of these activities, but I think people want to do more. They want to be as involved on our side of the ledger as the terrorist cells are on their side of the ledger. As I have said so often, the civil are not organized, and the organized are not civil.

 

MK: So is this instead of the current world religions?

NDW: The idea is not to create a new religion or another belief system, but to expand and enlarge upon our present religions and beliefs, retaining what is best in our traditional theologies, and releasing at last what is no longer working.
The key message of The New Spirituality is contained in the 15-word New Gospel first given us in Friendship with God: "We are all One. Ours is not a better way, ours is merely another way."
Life does not have to be this way. There is another way. Yet changing the way we experience ourselves and Life will take an enormous act of collective will.
It is the intention of Humanity’s Team to create that.

 

MK: Where did you get the idea for the Humanities Team Leadership gathering?

NDW: It was a natural outgrowth of the Humanities Team idea itself. Clearly if I was going to have a Humanities Team, I needed to have leaders. We’ve had a phenomenal response. It is very clear to me that the reason I was inspired to produce the gathering itself is that people all over the world are yearning, at a very deep soul level, to be able to do something and to really play our part in the collective co-creation of the on-the-ground reality.
And so the idea for the gathering came to me in a moment of great clarity a few months ago, and so I put together this event very quickly. I was certain that if I raised this flag that there would be thousands that would respond. People such as yourself responded with equal positive energy and said we want to be a part of this; we see that it serves not only our agenda, but that of all humanity. So it is turning into an extraordinary 3 days. We have a thousand people coming from 37 separate countries, all ages, an equal number of men and women.

 

MK: That’s very unusual in itself.

NDW: We’ve noticed in our CWG workshops and retreats, that they have almost an equal number of men and women, maybe 45% men to 55% women. That is because the messages of CWG and of the New Spirituality are speaking in language that men can understand and agree with. All seven of the CWG books speak in very clear street language, simple short sentences and very accessible terminologies. The result of which is that men, at last, have found something that they can be comfortable with. But there isn’t anything new in CWG. It is the same stuff that one can find in the Course in Miracles, in the esoteric writings of Rudolf Steiner, Mme Blavatsky or Edgar Cayce – at its core. Truth is truth, no matter what the source. What is different in the CWG material is its approach. Its content has been given to us time and time again, but never quite like this in terms of its linguistic approach or in terms of the literary convention of a dialogue between two voices.

 

MK: What you hope to emerge from the Humanities Team gathering?

NDW: 1000 people ready and on fire to take the message of the new spirituality and the mission of Humanity’s Team back to their communities, and not only to take that message back, but ready to do something with it on the ground, and willing and able to create outcomes that produce here and now results in the continuing effort to create the space of possibility for the New Spirituality to emerge on the earth.

 

MK: So what you are calling for is no less than a spiritual revolution?

NDW: That is correct. We are calling it the second Great Reformation. Martin Luther King did it for blacks, Gloria Steinem nominally did it for women, Gandhi did it for India, but no one has done it at this level for a long time, not since Martin Luther in 1517.
We are calling it "the civil Rights Movement for the Soul" to bring freedom at last from our teachings and our belief in an oppressive God of anger and violence who, we have taught ourselves, uses and condones the use of violence as a means of conflict resolution; and who punishes and lives in a space of vengeance and who has needs that have to be met, an ego bigger than you can imagine. The human race has been oppressed for long enough by this false image of God. So this is a Civil Rights Movement for the Soul and it will be rallying its forces against all teachers of such less than beneficial doctrines.

 

MK: There are so many people who have already spiritually left their religious foundations, and are seeking to fill a void; this may be an idea whose time has come.

NDW: I don’t have any question about it. Humanity has lost patience with itself. Look at what’s going on around the world…we can’t go on like this. It’s as simple as that. Frankly we’re lucky that we’ve gotten this far without some kind of global humanitarian disaster.

 

MK: Looks like we’re working on one at the moment.

NDW: We are! Having avoided one for so long, we are doing our best to create a global disaster – whether it is biochemical warfare or nuclear holocaust—it may yet take us to the Armageddon that we have so far avoided. I think that humanity recognizes this.

 

MK: Why do you think people haven’t arisen before?

NDW: I don’t think it has been for lack of desire; it has been a lack of leadership. Someone has to lead a worldwide movement, but who shall it be. You know the old Jewish saying: "If not now, when, and if not you—who?" I got it and realized that it was important for me to step into leadership.

 

MK: And so this gathering is to inspire other people to step into their own roles of leadership?

NDW: That’s exactly right—nurturing and inspiring and encouraging and honoring them at a very high level for their willingness to step to the line and make a decision to not just make a difference but to BE the difference that can change the world. We are giving away a thousand bumper stickers and lapel pins at that event saying: You and I are the hope of humanity.