The following dialogue is excerpted with permission of the publisher, Rainbow Ridge Books, from Conversations with God, book 4, Awaken the Species, ©2017, by Neale Donald Walsch.

Neale Donald Walsch (NDW): I’m very clear now that all of us are totally capable of accessing the highest source of wisdom within us—which I call God—when we need to or wish to.

We’ve all been doing it for years. Since we were born! Everybody is having a conversation with God all the time. Many just don’t know it. Or they’re calling it something else. That is, at least, in my understanding, my observation, my experience. I’m so very happy to have been stimulated to enter into this present conversation. I like to think that I’ve added to the global effort. Many people have, just by the way they interact with others.

Yes, many of you have, but most of you have not done so intentionally. Intention is everything. It sets the energetic signature for events that follow. You can get in your car and drive down the road and be doing everything that a good driver would do, but if you haven’t set your intention about where you’re going, you’ll find yourself getting nowhere.

But now, if you’re saying that from this day forward your intention in everything you think, say, and do is to awaken your species—all as part of a self-expression that moves you forward on your own evolutionary journey—then you’re going to see a different level of outcome. The conversation we are now having is for everyone who “accidentally” finds their way to it. You know who you are, because here you are.

The awakening of others will not happen by chance, or as a nice-but-not specifically- focused-on result, but as an intended effect of the personal evolution of all those who self-select to accept the invitation that has been extended here. A part of how you will all do this is by allowing your personal growth—and your struggles to achieve it—to be on display, to be modeled, publicly.

NDW: That’s a big one. That’s a huge thing to even contemplate.

Yet should you agree within to do it, you will have expanded the evolutionary impact of your day-to-day journey and moment-to-moment choices from Little You to Big You, from Local You to Universal You, from the Singular You to the Collective You. By all of you allowing your personal evolutionary process to be observed by others, it can become a means by which the evolutionary process of all humanity is advanced. And what a Perfect Time for Advancement this is.

NDW: But how could anyone even attempt to do this kind of thing without being tempted to feel grandiose? I wouldn’t want to start deluding myself into thinking that I’m the hope of our species.

Let’s be clear. This is not about walking around declaring yourself to be the model of perfection and the example of evolutionary excellence. This is about simply not hiding your personal choices, but presenting yourself authentically to the world with regard to both your struggles and your progress as you seek to fully awaken.

If you really, genuinely, and humbly notice within that your personal, interior process is not focused on anyone else, and certainly not on “saving the world,” but is only intended to move forward, as best you can, your own individual and personal evolution, and if you quietly share this with anyone who asks about your change of behavior—because others will notice it—you will not take yourself to the place you’ve described.

And if you really, genuinely, and humbly accept what you have called your own “so-called” imperfections (I see you as perfect just as you are, but we’ll discuss that later), and you view yourself and declare yourself to be a person whose evolution is “in progress” and not anywhere near complete, you will also avoid the place you’ve described. If you are clear that your purpose to help awaken your species is not to set you up as some sort of leader, but to simply and humbly share that it is you who have been led, by a deep guidance from within, and now see that there is another way to be human—a way that humbly seeks to be more beneficial to yourself and others—you will never self-aggrandize.

NDW: If we are being invited to awaken the species, I wish to know to what. What is the Way of Being to which we might invite everyone to awaken? Are we supposed to simply embrace and adopt the principles and practices, understandings and behaviors of a totally different civilization living in a different dimension? Can’t we achieve a better life as individuals, and a better tomorrow as a global collective, using the highest values of humanity?

You certainly can. But it may be helpful and beneficial to you to think in terms of different energies, not different civilizations. This whole question of what makes life work wonderfully, joyously and masterfully is not a matter of “local customs,” it is a matter of universal truth regarding life’s fundamental energy. There is only one energy or essence in the cosmos, and that is what you have called, in human language, Love. The ideas that Highly Evolved Beings (HEBs) have sought to place before humanity are simply thoughts about how to live and love in a way that is more beneficial to your species, and will give each individual a chance to advance in their personal evolution more quickly.

HEBs don’t assert that their way of living is “right” for humans. They simply offer you the opportunity to decide for yourself. This is their way of helping you, even as you may seek to help others to awaken. So it may be of benefit to take a look at these ideas, see if or where you may find a contrast with human behaviors, and decide if you choose to try some new ways of being human.

NDW: I agree. And I already know there will be contrasts… so tell me what the biggest difference is.

The most striking and significant difference is that Highly Evolved Beings are utterly and completely, absolutely and entirely without violence of any kind. They do not engage in physical violence, they do not project verbal violence, they do not even momentarily entertain violence in their thoughts. They do not call violence “self-defense,” they do not call it “entertainment,” and they certainly do not call it “sport.” They simply cannot justify or support the inflicting of physical or emotional pain—not even the slightest discomfort—on any other entity.

NDW: Is there a formula by which they have been able to achieve this? What do they know that we don’t know that opens the way for them to be like that?

All violence has disappeared from their culture because all anger has disappeared from their reality. They live in the knowing that they have nothing to lose by being good and kind and caring and compassionate and unselfish and giving and accepting and unconditionally loving in every instant of every moment of every circumstance or situation. They know that they cannot lose their life for any reason or in any way, nor can they lose anything else of value to them, because nothing else is of value to them other than life itself, their very existence— which they understand is what provides them with the opportunity for the only experience they desire.

NDW: Which is?

The experience of their Divinity.

NDW: So these beings cannot be killed? Not even by an outward circumstance having nothing to do with being violent with each other? Like a Black Hole (just to make something up here) swallowing their civilization’s home?

There is no outward circumstance within the physical universe that could cause them to equate the changing of their manifested form to losing their life or ending their existence.

NDW: So moving from the physical into the non-physical isn’t seen by them as the end of anything.

That’s exactly right. They know that they will always exist and never cease to be, no matter what happens to their physically manifested forms. That includes a “black hole” swallowing any planet on which they may happen to be embodying.

NDW: When you do not fear losing your life, ever, you have no reason to ever become violent? What about losing something, or not being able to get something you desire?

You have already been told, by masters on your planet that desire that you feel must be satiated, is the cause of all suffering. And suffering is the cause of all violence. Eliminate suffering and violence goes away, evaporates, dissolves, disappears.

NDW: If you’re fully awakened, if you’re a Highly Evolved Being, you escape all desires?

You escape the incapacitation of desires. You escape the ruination of being ruled by your desires. When you know that your life will never end, you know that anything you wish to experience, you have an eternity to create–or to recreate if you’ve had it once and wish to experience it again. There’s a saying n the cosmos: Eternal Life brings Eternal Peace. If, on the other hand, you imagine that you have a limited me in which to experience, you will give up your peace to acquire it, or to hold onto it if and when you do acquire it.

NDW: That’s the story of humanity if fifty words of less, for sure. So life for HEBs from Another Dimension is felt as an eternal reality.

It is an eternal reality. Life is an eternal experience for all sentient beings, but few sentient beings who think of themselves and express themselves primarily as a physical body experience their eternality as a felt reality. They experience their physicality as their felt reality, and they imagine that when their physicality is over, their existence has come to an end. At best, they hold the idea of eternal life as a concept, a theory, a doctrine or belief; as something that “might be,” but about which they are not sure. Because the fully awakened entities I have been talking about exist and have their being in Another Dimension, they are certain that life is eternal.

NDW: Sure they are, because it’s easy for them! They are experiencing it, not just thinking about it or praying about it or hoping about it. And they have been experiencing it since… well, since forever.

So have you. The difference is, they know it and you don’t. They remember it.

You may want to memorize this. Or at least put it in a place where you will see it often. Some of the chief characteristics of an awakened species, and the major differences between such a species and humanity in its present unawakened state:

1. An awakened species sees the Unity of All Life and lives into it. Humans in an unawakened state often deny it or ignore it.
2. An awakened species tells the truth, always. Humans in an unawakened state too often lie, to themselves as well as others.
3. An awakened species says one thing and will do what they say. Humans in an unawakened state often say one thing and do another.
4. An awakened species, having seen and acknowledged what is so, will always do what works. Humans in an unawakened state often do the opposite.
5. An awakened species does not embrace a principle in its civilization that correlates with the concepts that humans refer to as “justice” and “punishment.”
6. An awakened species does not embrace a principle in its civilization that correlates with the concept that humans refer to as “insufficiency.”
7. An awakened species does not embrace a principle in its civilization that correlates with the concept that humans refer to as “ownership.”
8. An awakened species shares everything with everyone all the time. Humans in an unawakened state often do not, only sharing with others in limited circumstances.
9. An awakened species creates a balance between technology and cosmology; between machines and nature. Humans in an unawakened state often do not.
10. An awakened species would never under any circumstances terminate the current physical expression of another sentient being unless asked directly by that other being to do so. Humans in an unawakened state often kill other humans without that other human requesting them to.
11. An awakened species would never do anything that could potentially damage or harm the physical environment that supports the members of the species when they are physicalized. Humans in an unawakened state often do so.
12. An awakened species never poisons itself. Humans in an unawakened state often do so.
13. An awakened species never competes. Humans in an unawakened state are often in competition with each other.
14. An awakened species is clear that it needs nothing. Humans in an unawakened state often create a needbased experience.
15. An awakened species experiences and expresses unconditional love for everyone. Humans in an unawakened state often cannot imagine even a Deity who does this, much less do they do it themselves.
16. An awakened species has harnessed the power of metaphysics. Humans in an unawakened state often largely ignore it.

There are more differences, of course, but those are some of the chief characteristics of an awakened species, and the major differences between such a species and humanity in its present unawakened state.

NDW: Gosh, part of me feels that this list is an indictment of our whole species, our whole way of life.

Is it an “indictment” of a three-year-old to observe that adults understand things she does not? Celebrate that you know what you know! Celebrate that you clearly see the difference between your behaviors and behaviors that you may decide are more beneficial. Celebrate the growth of knowing this, even as you celebrate the early steps of every child.

NDW: Thanks for reminding me. We really are a very young species. Perhaps we should drive that point home in specific terms, so it can become real in people’s minds. A lot of folks like to think of humans as highly evolved. In fact, humanity has just emerged from its infancy on this planet. In their book, “New World New Mind,” Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich placed this in perspective in one mindboggling paragraph: “Suppose Earth’s history were charted on a single year’s calendar, with midnight January 1 representing the origin of the Earth and midnight December 31 the present. Then each day of Earth’s ‘year’ would represent 12 million years of actual history. On that scale, the first form of life, a simple bacterium, would arise sometime in February. More complex life-forms, however, come much later; the first fishes appear around November 20. The dinosaurs arrive around December 10 and disappear on Christmas Day. The first of our ancestors recognizable as human would not show up until the afternoon of December 31. Homo sapiens—our species—would emerge at around 11:45 pm… and all that has happened in recorded history would occur in the final minute of the year.”

That puts things into perspective beautifully. And it creates a context within which it can now be understood why, in human societies, most people deny much of what they see. They even deny their personal feelings, and, eventually, their own truth.

NDW: But what’s been said here now, repeatedly, about how early in our development we are as a species gives me great hope. I’m seeing wonderful, wonderful days ahead—both for us individually and for humanity collectively—as we mature and grow into our potential. Yes, this is the Perfect Time for Advancement! But do we have to wait until the whole human race, or the majority of our species awakens, before any of us can experience living as a Highly Evolved Being? Because it could be a long, long wait until most humans get to that place.

Not only do you not have to wait—you are not supposed to wait. History is now watching to see who on Earth will choose to self-select as being committed to modeling these behaviors and, by their words and actions, join in a global movement to awaken their species. Who on Earth will celebrate fully their True Nature, and who will joyously co-create the wonderful days that lie ahead when they do so?

Neale Donald Walsch is the author of the Conversations with God series of books, which arose from what he experienced as direct dialogues with the Deity. He lives with his wife, the American poet Em Claire, and may be reached through cwgconnect.com.