This is a short YouTube interview (Vishen Lakhiani with Neale Donald Walsch) in which Walsch argues that every human act is ultimately an act of love — even when distorted into fear, theft, tyranny, or violence. He explains these behaviors as expressions of loving something (power, belief, person, principle) taken to extremes, and suggests understanding the underlying love replaces the need for forgiveness and is necessary to stop cycles of harm. He cites Conversations with God (Book Four: Awaken the Species) as the source and frames awakening the species as the book's purpose.
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So every act is an act of love, even if it's a distorted act of love.
So Neil, in your books you speak about how everything is an act of love. And that seems like a really beautiful idea. But how, how can you reconcile that with what's happening in the world today? I mean, every day we read the news and there's more divisive politics, there's terrorism. How can everything be an act of love?
I was told in the Conversations with God book that every act is an act of love. And that's been true throughout human history. And what's clear and what's being made clear to us from that source of wisdom and clarity in the universe is that number one, love is all there is. There's nothing else but love. There's only one energy in the universe, love. And love expresses itself in many forms. Fear, for instance, is an expression of love. Fear is love demonstrated in a particular way. For instance, if you love nothing, you'd fear nothing. See, you only fear the loss of what you love or the not getting of what you love. But if you love nothing, you'd be afraid of nothing. You wouldn't even be afraid of dying if you didn't love living. The thief steals because he loves something so much that he wants to have it and doesn't think there's any other way to get it, so that's why he steals. The tyrant becomes a tyrant because he loves power so much and he doesn't know any other way to express it or to grab it, so he becomes a tyrant to claim it. So every act is an act of love, even if it's a distorted act of love. A distortion of love allows us to express our experience of love in a way that's not very loving to others. In other words, we do unto others what we would not want to have done unto us. And that's when you know that the act of love has been distorted. But even the terrorists in the world, if you ask them why are you doing this? They will tell you that they love something. Perhaps it's a religious point of view, perhaps it's a political point of view. Perhaps it's a mixture of both. Maybe they love a person, a leader who they're following, whatever it is. Maybe they just love a principle in life that they believe is so fundamental to who they are that they love it with all their might. And they love it so much that they're willing to do things that are not appropriate to the human experience by the measurement of others in order to get it. But Every act emerges as an act of love. So if we want to understand what's going on in the world, we simply say to people, wait a minute. What do you love so much that you're willing to hurt me in order to experience it? There's another way, by the way, to ask that similar question. What hurts you so much that you feel you have to hurt me in order to heal it? That's a powerful question. It's the same fundamental inquiry. But the reason that God doesn't have to forgive us for anything is because God understands that every act is an act of love emerging from our love of something and expressed in a distorted way as only a primitive, young, immature species could possibly do. So. God understands that we're very, very young as a species and we are trying desperately to express our love for something. And we haven't yet learned how to do that in a way that we would like to have love expressed to us. But it's all an expression of love. So it's like a children who won't share his toys or who takes his little sister's candy. You know, he takes the candy not because he's a mean person, he's three years old, but he loves the candy. So he acts in an unloving way out of his love for the candy. No one does anything inappropriate given their model of the world.
And so we don't seek to heal or end this by fighting, we seek to end it by understanding.
Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master. The master never has to forgive anything because the master understands why an action was undertaken and because she understands forgiveness is not required for the same reason that God does not need to forgive us. So remember this always. Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master. The example I like to use is, let's say you're having a birthday party for your granddaughter. She's three years old and all the children of the neighborhood have been invited in and she's all excited and the children are all around the table. The milk has been poured, the cake is being brought out. A big chocolate cake is being placed in the middle of the table and the three year old grandchild is so excited. Oh my, oh my chocolate cake, my favorite cake. And she reaches for it and knocks over all the milk. Her glass falls, the next glass falls, the next glass falls. Pretty soon the entire birthday table is a total mess. Now grandpa doesn't look at the 3 year old child and say, it's okay, I forgive you. You don't forgive me. Forgive a three year Old. You understand? Not only do you not forgive a three year old, you actually comfort her. You don't even think of punishing. You don't say to her, go to your room. You'll stay in your room for the rest of the week. I'll teach you not to knock over the milk. So we don't talk to our children. And the reason we don't is we actually comfort the child so the child can know. There, there. It'll be all right. I know that you were just reaching for the cake. You were so excited because it's something you love. Understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master. And so when you reach a level of spiritual mastery, you don't forgive the murderer, the rapist, the terrorist, the thief. You understand why they did what they did. You don't condone it. You're not approving of it, you're not agreeing with it, but you are understanding it. And understanding replaces forgiveness in the mind of the master. But also understanding helps you to bring an end to future demonstrations of that same behavior. Because you're perfectly right. You can't end anger with anger. You can't end violence with violence. You're not going to stop killing with more killing. You cannot solve a problem with the same energy that created it. Einstein made that very clear. It's a matter of simple physics. So all we have to do is grow up and get to a place where we totally understand we need to simply awaken. That's the point of the book. Conversations with God. Book four, Awaken the Species. The point of the book is shall we awaken? Is it time? Are we ready now?
Thank you, Neil. That's beautifully said. Hope you guys like that idea. Leave a comment if you, if you've read any of Neil's books, if you want to share the wisdom, the insights you got from the books with other people who are thinking about getting to the Conversations with God book series. Please leave a comment and let others know. Thank you for tuning in to mindvalley.
