This is absolutely incredible. I've just finished it. In my opinion, without a doubt, Walsch is unquestionably conversing with the real deal.
In my own experience, there are many, many, many overlapping bits of understanding that were given to me and that I see present in this dialogue. A few examples:
Something I kept receiving that was made sense of here was, "Everything is permitted, not everything is beneficial."
The understanding that I agreed to be here, on Earth, in this form, at this time.
God's amazing sense of humor and delight in our honest responses to Him. Almost the way an owner delights in seeing their pets do something goofy or adorable out of a lack of broader understanding. The overwhelming affection of God for people.
I was continually surprised by how often God pointed out that I was more prudish than He is.
The idea that He created evil so we could know Good. So to speak. The idea that evil was a necessary part of this process.
The idea that God gains something, experientially through human creation and perspective (which perplexed me a bit, but here it is reaffirmed).
The fact that God comes in our own thoughts, but also in synchronicity, in dreams, in symbols. That all moments and experiences are inherently meaningful, and our perception is the key to unlocking it.
The idea that God created everything to have the ability to act, to be something in reference to something else. God alone has no meaning. God juxtaposed to Something is what makes God, God. If All that Is is All that Is, it can't truly know what it Is. It must know what it is in comparison to what it is not.
So much more. Most importantly, that if you focus with-out, you do not focus with-in. The importance of combing through your own behavior and actions and comparing them to your highest vision of yourself.
The idea that the soul knows all truth, and life is a process of discovering/remembering it organically, so that we can know it independently of simply being. But really, truly understanding what We Are, by experiencing and ruling out what we are not.
Beautiful book, and I recommend anybody interested in this sort of thing give it a read. I also recommend you follow the advice and search within for your own experience with God, rather than taking the word of the man in this book.
But this jives with the Being whom I met. It's not without a little cognitive dissonance, but that's the first step to realizing a truth is infringing on what you hold to be true.
I'll tell you this, whenever I have had experiences with God, I do not worry one iota about the salvation of others, or my own salvation. I am confident in the loving and secure relationship with my Creator in that moment, and have only recently been able to carry my own security in a pleasant afterlife into my "normal" life and state, after much reminding that I really shouldn't worry about it.
I have, for whatever reason, not been able to shake the fear that I am "lucky" and others could still be mislead to some sort of damnation. To me, the truth presented in this and in my own experience is finally clicking into place that we're all in fine standing with God, and there is no risk of eternal damnation.
My worry stems from going "Okay, so you've told me you're the God of the Bible. You've told me to seek the Bible's teachings for truth...does it not say here some people are going to an eternal hell? Should I not worry about these people?"
The biggest "a-ha!" for me in regards to this paradox, of experiencing a universally loving and non-judgmental God who endorses the Bible, and yet seeing the Bible saying something apparently different was in God's description of what He meant with the "10 Commandments."
That perspective flip helped me grasp it. We've assigned a prescriptive nature to a descriptive text. The people of God are told "thou shalt not kill," not as a commandment, but as a hallmark of whether or not they are walking with God. If you are truly walking with God, then you will not kill. But that is not the same as being in "trouble" for killing. And not being "in trouble" for killing is not the same as killing being pleasing to God.
Rather, we are able to gather the effects of killing, we are able to compare what it feels like to take life, created sacredly and lovingly by our same Creator, and we can measure that up against our "ideal self." Do we like being people who destroy other people? How we answer this question helps us monitor our progress. The ability to exist in a world where killing is possible allows us the opportunity to progress in the first place.
Braxton says nothing on re-incarnation. I have long suspected that I have lived many lives. I think it's possible what Braxton witnessed was the realm we return to and are permitted to stay in if we choose, after death. I think it's also possible that he was in the "waiting room," and not reminded of the truths contained in the book we're discussing, because he wasn't truly finished with his current life.
His experience of hell...well, in your linked book, God denies the existence of an eternal hell that he prescribes us to. But he does seem to admit that we choose our destiny by deciding what type of beings we are, and some people desire things very far from the joy and love God shaped us to experience. Perhaps there are some who take joy in the things of violence and power, and so they get trapped in a sort of echo-chamber of the antithesis of God.
God said so many times, "you are choosing to be poor! You have it within you to correct this. You are choosing to be sick! You can change this. You are choosing to be unhappy, to suffer. You just haven't admitted this to yourself."
He called out the man as he complained about his illnesses and said, "you love being sick. You feel validated by self-pity, and the sorrow others feel for you. The attention they give you." I certainly know in my experience people who seem to thrive on drama and suffering, yet claim to hate it.
Maybe some souls simply desire to be victims in one way or another? They desire the feeling of helplessness, because it is more appealing than admitted their circumstance is their own doing? That they, alone (but with God's help when asked), are capable of changing their status?
Perhaps that is what Braxton observed with hell, but unknowingly shifted it to his own framework.
Like all of us, Braxton must filter observation through his bias. As I have done myself.
But where the two accounts differ, I am inclined in this moment to place more stock in the link you provided than Braxton's story, for clarity and understanding of broader context. With Braxton, there were adjustments I was making as I was watching. With Neale, I felt more like it was expanding on what I've already been told.
Anyway, I can't thank you enough for sending this my way. It may in fact be life changing for me. On to book 2!