WHERE GOD
AND
MEDICINE MEET
 
 
A conversation between a doctor
and a spiritual messenger
 
 
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
and BRIT COOPER, M.D. Also by Neale Donald W alsch
 
Conversations with God, Book 1
Conversations with God, Book 1 Guidebook
Conversations with God, Book 2
Meditations from Conversations with God, Book 2
Conversations with God, Book 3
Questions and Answers from Conversations with God
Bringers of the Light
ReCreating Y our Self
Conversations with God Re-MIND-er Cards
Moments of Grace
The W edding V ows from Conversations with God
Neale Donald W alsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood
Neale Donald W alsch on Holistic Living
Neale Donald W alsch on Relationships
Conversations with God for T eens
Friendship with God
Communion with God
Tomorrow’ s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge
The Little Soul and the Sun
The Little Soul and the Earth
The Complete Conversations with God
Home with God: In a Life that Never Ends
Happier Than God
When Everything Changes, Change Everything
The New Revelations: A Conversation with God
What God W ants: A Compelling Answerto Humanity’ s Biggest Question
What God Said: The 25 Core Messages of Conversations with God
That W ill Change Y our Life and the World
The Storm Before the Calm
The Only Thing That Matters
God’ s Message to the World:
You’ve Got Me All Wrong
Conversations with God for ParentsCopyright © 2016 by Neale Donald Walsch
and Brit Cooper, M.D. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information
storage or retrieval system without prior written
permission from the authors or their representatives. This book is to be regarded as a reference source and is not
 intended to replace professional medical advice or prescribe
 the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical,
emotional, or medical problems without the advice of your
physician. The author and the publisher disclaim any liability
arising directly or indirectly from the use of this book. Cover and interior design by Frame25 Productions
Cover photo © mutlu c/o Shutterstock.com
 
Published by:
Rainbow Ridge Books, LLC
140 Rainbow Ridge Road
Faber, Virginia 22938
www.rainbowridgebooks.com
434-361-1723
 
Visit the author at:
www.nealedonaldwalsch.com 
To Jennifer Jones. Thank you for your unbending support
in the writing of this book. To Em Claire. Neale’ s life partner , and
the best friend he has ever had.Authors’ Note
 
 
The text that follows is a transcription of phone conversations
between Brit Cooper , M.D. and spiritual messenger Neale Donald
Walsch. Dr. Cooper ’s voice appears in this Times Roman typeface,
and Neale Donald W alsch’ s voice appears in a sans serif typeface. Before delving  into specific medical topics, we explore the Four
Fundamental Questions of Life, which lay the groundwork and set
the context for the remainder of the book. Note also that the word “God” is used throughout this book. The
authors unders tand this term to be synonymous with Life Force, Life
Energy , Source, Universe, or , quite simply , Life Itself.Table of Contents
 
 
Foreword
 
Part 1: A New Dialogue on Health, W ellness, and Spirituality
1. THE DIALOGUE BEGINS: Who Are W e Really? 2. DISSECTING THE TRUTH:
Through a Look At The Human Body
3. BEYOND THE BODY : The Process of Creation
4. DOCT ORS AND DEA TH: When T o Resuscitate? 5. THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL: What Happens At The End
6. MEDICAL MIRACLES: Are They Within Our Reach? 7. THE MEDICAL SYSTEM: Is There A Place for God? 8. A LOOK T O OUR FUTURE:
Healing Humanity’ s Experience of Itself
 
Part 2: Questions and Answers
Question 1: Assisted Living Facilities
Question 2: Is There a “Soul Lesson” in Dementia? Question 3: Concern About Prescription Medications
Question 4: Abortion
Question 5: Sex and Disability
Question 6: Why Death OccursQuestion 7: Spiritual Healing
Question 8: Defining Good Health
References
About the AuthorsForeword
 
 
Are medical miracles real and is there a spiritual reason they occur? Is there  a place for euthanasia in the mind of the spiritu al seeker? Can participating in open-heart surgery and dissecting cadavers tell
a medic al student anything about the soul? Is there an intersection
between spirituality and physicality where the two become one? Let’s get more direct with our questions. Is there a place for God in the system of modern Western
medicine? Should metaphysical/spiritual principles be part of the
medical school curriculum? Is keeping patients alive an appropriate
top priority for doctors? The answer to all of the above questions is yes. It’s time we take a look at all this, don’t you think? From a new
point of view, I mean. From the standpoint of contemporary
spirituality . From a place outside the box of our past, and even some
of our current, thinking. It’ s time, yes? Yes. So I got on the telephone at the request of a young doctor from
Canada (it was all her idea, and I’m glad she had it) and talked with
her in weekly  conversations  over a period of several months to
explore Where God and Medicine Meet. That’ s the title of a book she said she urgently desired to write
as a result of what she said were two highly meaningful and deeply
impacting experiences in her life: her movement through, and
graduation from, medical school, and her attendance at nine SpiritualRenewal Intensives—5-day retreats which I facilitated over the final
two years of her medical training. Her medical school curriculum had as its foundation the
traditional model of Western Medicine. My retreats, on the other
hand, were based on a very non-traditional (to put it mildly) spiritual
model explored in the Conversations with God series of books. Thus,
over a period of the same 24 months, now Dr. Brit Cooper (she
graduated from the University of British Columbia Medical School in
the Class of 2015) found herself continually confronting the
crossroads of spirituality and physicality , engaging both aspects of
the human encounter with life in a way that few others might ever
experience. When I first met Dr. Cooper as she attended a CwG retreat in
June of 2013, I experienced her as a remarkably articulate, highly
intelligent young woman of 22, who I learned was the youngest
member of her medical school class, following undergraduate studies
in math and science at the University of Victoria. It was a delight to
have her in the room. I was happily surprised to see her at our very next retreat
several months later, and knew then that something she had heard
and experienced in relationsh ip to her spiritual life had struck a deep
chord within her. I did not, however , expect to see her at seven more
CwG  retreats, and to emerge as one of our most empowering global
spokespersons, having then attended, just after earning her M.D. degree, our CwG  School for Messengers. Brit had become one of the most energetic and purely
motivated students of Conversations with God that I have
encountered in 20 years of sharing its spiritually revolutionaryconcepts. So when she asked me if we might produc e a book
together on the nexus between God and Medicine—a topic that she
felt definitely needed exploring, given her medical school experience
—I immediately agreed. I knew this would be a text of immediate interest not only to
those in minist ries and medicine, but to all the people they served. I
couldn’t imagine anything more fascinating—or vital to the human
family . Thank you for visiting this dialogue with amazing Dr. Brit Cooper
and myself. We would both be interested in, and grateful for, your
response. Please feel free to join in the dialogue at
www.GodandMedicine.info
 
Neale Donald W alsch
Ashland, OregonPart One
 
 
 
A NEW DIALOGUE ON HEALTH,
WELLNESS,  AND SPIRITUALITYChapter One
 
THE DIALOGUE BEGINS:
Who Are We Really? DR. COOPER: I have found one of the most powerful inquiries of the
Conversations with God material to be the Four Fundamental
Questions of Life:
 
1. Who am I? 2. Where am I? 3. Why am I where I am? 4. What do I intend to do about that? It was the answering of these questions that catapulted my
understanding from being merely conceptual to transformative . The
material began to have a noticeable impact on my day-to -day life. I
began to walk through the world in a brand new way, almost as if my
glasses had been cleaned and I could at last see the world through
clear lenses. That is, through the lenses of what is really going on
and what we’re really “up to” on the planet, and on this journey of
being human. So I would love to chat about this today , Neale. I think it’ s a powerful place to start . NEALE: Great. There are really seven  simple questions about Life
that I think are important for people to ask themselves . . . yet my
observation is that 98 percent of the world’ s people have never
asked themselves those questions. Most go from birth to death,
actually , and never even consider  askin g themselves those
questions. The questions never even occur to them, except,
perhaps, in the most fleeting, passing way—if at all. I have
categorized these seven simple questions as: (A) the Three
Persistent Questions, and (B) the Four Fundamental Questions of
Life. The first three questions  are important because they
contextualize, or provide a reason, for asking the next four. Or, to put
it another way, if everything  was beautiful and wonderful on the
Earth, and the people of this planet were both collectively and
individually experiencing the lives that they wished and had hoped to
experience, then the Four Fundamental Questions would almost be
needless. There would be no real purpose in asking them, and
certainly no urgency around the answers. What creates  an urgency around the Four Fundamental
Questions of Life are the three questions that precede them in my list
of Seven Simple Questions. The first question is:
How is it possible for over seven billion people on the Earth to
all say they want the same thing and to be unable to get it? That’ s
the contextual basis for the Four Fundamental Questions of Life. As I
said, if everyone was living the life they wish they could experience,
there would be no point in asking those final four questions. The only reason to even get into self-examination is not for the
spiritual or intellectual exercise of it, but because something is notworking . One doesn’t walk into a room where the lights are all on and
say, “Do you think we should check the fuse box?” Everyone would
say, “Why bother? Everything is working fine.” But if you walk into
the kitchen and the lights aren’t on and the toaster doesn ’t work and
nothing else is operating, you’d better check the breaker box. So the Three Persistent Questions are not unimportant. That
first question again: How in the world is it possible for 7.3 billion
people on this planet to all say, including you and me and all the rest
of us, that we all want the same thing, but are unable to get it, except
for the tiniest percentage of us? The second question: Is it possible that there is something we
don’t fully understand about God and about Life, the understanding
of which could change everything? And the third question: Is it possible there is something we
don’t understand about ourselves , the understan ding of which would
change how we experience ourselves, and how we relate to all of
Life? DR. COOPER : It’s a mind-boggling concept that over seven billion
people could all claim to want the same things—pe ace, love,
opportunity , joy, abundance—and be utterly unable to achieve it. I’d
never quite thought of it in those terms before. It certainly puts the truth right in front of our eyes, when it
comes to examining the state of our world. And to pondering how a
presumably intelligent specie s—one that can send man to the moon,
uncover the mysteries of our ever-expanding universe, unlock the
genetic code, and discover miraculous medical miracles—could finditself at such a seeming “impasse” when it comes to the basics of
life. Simple things like joy , love, food, and shelter . And not only do we seem incapable of experiencing these
things to the degree that we would like to, we seem to struggle to
experience them in even the smallest degree. Speaking of eye-opening things, it certainly wakes us up to the
state of the world reading the statistics in your book God’ s Message
To The World: You’ve Got Me All Wrong . To quote from it, over 650
children die per hour of starvation. Almost 21 million women and
children are bought and sold into commercial sexual servitude every
year. About 2.6 billion are without basic sanitation, and 1.6 without
electricity . And the list goes on. So it certainly provides the context
for self-examination, both individually and collectively , for all of
humanity . NEALE: And 1.5 billion do not even have access to clean water. Imagine that. DR. COOPER: It’s unbelievab le. And Neale, I really want to ask you,
Why? How is it possible that such circumstances could  be
“accepted” in our world, almost without a second thought? Are
people not shocked that such a phenomenon is possible? NEALE: Peopl e live in a bubble. Especially , and probably primarily ,
people who “have it good.” Which is just about 5-to-8 percent of the
world’ s people. They live in a bubble. They  think that because they have it
good, everybody has it good. Because they’re doing well,everybody’ s doing well. It doesn’t even occur to them —it’s not even
a part of our thinking—that billions of people might not even have
access to clean water . Or, that billions of people—not a few hundred
thousand, or even a few million, in outlying areas, but billions around
the world—need to relieve themselves out-of-doors. It doesn’t seem
feasible or possible, because  it’s simply not part of our experience,
and it’s hard for us to imagi ne that this is even going on; that any
race of compassionate sentient beings would allow  it to go on. I spent some time in the Seventies in Central West Africa, and
in South America as well, and in other places on the planet where
what I’m saying to you is—or  at least it was in 1976—the way things
are. It was just how things were. I visited families in places like
Ouagadougou and other locations in Africa where such conditions
were rather common. DR. COOPER: How did it feel to see that? NEALE: Y ou know , it changed my whole point of view about Life. I never again allowed myself to become upset or furious
because I couldn’t get a long-distance phone call through  from Los
Angeles to New York in seven seconds, and I wanted to know the
reason why. I can remember those days when I was so impatient
that the modern conveniences of life were not functioning properly
for me. You know , “Waiter, waiter!”, or whatever . That kind of an
attitude. When I came back from spending two and a half months in
Central W est Africa, I never again held those attitudes.I remember being in a so-called hotel in Upper Volta (now
known as Burkina Faso) that was actually just a brick shell of a
building without any windows. They simply had knockout holes in the
wall for windows. If you didn’t have a sleeping net—and I did not—
you were attacked by mosquitoes, and woke up the next morning
with your face swollen. I had to be given medical care at the
American Embassy, with all sorts of shots to counteract the effect of
being hit with fifty or sixty mosquito bites. And we’re talking about mosquitoes the size of a Volksw agen. Very large creatures. And in Upper Volta I recall I wanted to call back to the United
States. I went to the front desk to ask if there was a lobby phone I
could use to call home. (There was no phone in my room.) They
said, “Yes, sir, but you’ll have to request a long-distance line—and
there’ s a queue, so you’ll have to get in the queue.”
I had to wait three-and-a-half hours to get a line to the United
States, and I was given fifteen minutes to use the line! I recall that
vividly—that you had to wait in line and then they would call your
name. “Mr. Walsch, your line is available now.” And you’d rush to the
phone in the lobby and pick it up, and you’d be able to make your
call to the United States. I recall,  when I came back to the U.S., thinking of how many
times I’d tapped the phone impatiently (this was way before the
appearance of cell phones the size of a playing card), and I’d be
demanding, “Operator , opera tor!”, wanting to know why I couldn’t get
a trans-continental call across the country in the blink of an eye. So I came back from Central West Africa with an acute
awareness of all that I had been taking for granted—not just thetelephone service. And that was a great deal. Not a little bit, but a
great deal. I recall going to the home of a family living on the outsk irts of
Ouagadougou—way outside of town. I traveled there by taxi when I
was invited as their guest. They wanted me to visit their home. And it
was considered to be a really modern home, because in this home
there was electricity . The source: One bare bulb hanging on a cord
from the ceiling in the main room of the house. They would take out the bulb during the day and put in an
electrical adap ter so you could plug an iron, or some other kind of
appliance, into it. And in the evening you didn’t use appliances,
because a bulb was put in there. That was their source of light in this
small adobe kind of home, in which lived probably twelve  or thirteen
people. It was a four-room dwelling. There was, of course, no indoor plumbing, no showe r, no
washer-and-dryer , none of those things. I’ve been to 26 nations around the world and I can tell you that
it’s astonishing how many people live without what you and I
consider stand ard, ordinary , every-day conditions that turn out to be
quite luxurious to somebody in Ouagadougou. I would think that the average person, upon seeing that, would
then create a context within which they would begin to examine their
own life—and life in general. More broadly , life in general. What’ s going on around the Earth? Why is it this way? What is
really happening here? How is it possible for all of us to say we want the same thing,
and we’re supposed to be an evolving species . . . how can seven
billion member s of an evolving species be unable to produce theoutcomes we say we want, except for the tiniest percent age of us? Not that the outcomes are, necessarily , washer-and-drye r . . . but
surely , just a source of pure drinking water . . . What is the missing data? What is it we don’t understand? And that’s what led me to clarity about the final Four
Fundamental Questions of Life. DR. COOPER:  And what shocks me even more is that, even among
the 5 percent of people who hold or control 95 percent of the world’ s
wealth, there is an underlying yet highly prevalent level of discontent
and dissatisfaction. Even those who appear to “have it good” are not
guaranteed to have an under lying level of happiness, in the way we
might expect. I recall you saying in your book God’ s Message To The World:
You’ve Got Me All Wrong that when even the “best of f” members of a
species are unhappy , it’s a sure sign that something is amiss. It’s a
sure sign that there is missing data  of some sort. That we are lacking
clarity on why we are here, what we are “up to,” and what we are
trying to achieve—both individually and collectively—suc h that the
joy and happiness that is the birthright of every human being almost
becomes elusive, seemingly impossible to achieve, and always just
out of reach. Further to that, I have noticed  working in the medical profession
that the rates of mental health  crises have skyrocketed over the past
several years, in a way that cannot be explained by biology and
medicine alone. This further raises my suspicion that there issomething we may not fully understand about life and about
ourselves, the understanding of which would change everything. NEALE: You’re right—when even the best off of us are lacking in
happiness and fulfillment, that’ s a sure sign that something is amiss. DR. COOPER: It is! And those “luxuries” you mention us taking for granted are
more often than not viewed as hassles in the modern-day world. It’s
a “hassle” to make a long-d istance phone call, a “hassle” to drive
through traffic, and a “hassle”  to get groceries and cook meals, when
others would be indescribab ly grateful just to get the leftovers we
throw in the garbage. Clearly , there is something that does not add up in this picture. And clearly , the conditions around us do merit further investigation. NEALE: And the conditions  around us have nothing to do with
whether we’re happy or not happy . We just think that they do. But it
turns out it’ s not about the car in the driveway , or the house. You know , I sometimes wince when I hear myself and my
contemporaries talk about the things that we find intolerable, like
driving through traffic. Some people find it intolerable—can you
imagine this, an intolerable condition —that they have to drag the
vacuum cleane r from the first floor to the second floor to clean the
carpets once a week. So people now have to have a vacuum cleaner on every floor of
the house. One for the first floor and one for the second floor—and if
you live in a tri-level, one for the third floor—so that you don’t have todrag the vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs. God forbid you
would have to do that. So we have homes in North America and
elsewhere in Europe (and in other places in the western world) where
in fact, just to make a point of it, there are two, and sometimes three,
vacuum cleaners in one house. I call that the V acuum-Cleaner Syndrome. DR. COOPER: Good diagnosis there. And yes, I agree with you. It’s
not the external circumstances of our lives that determine our
happiness. But I think it is our mistaken assumption that these
circumstances define Who We Are. In this regard , we have forgotten
Who W e Really Are. So this takes us to the first of the Four Fundamental Ques tions
of Life, Who am I? I think the vast majority of the world, including myself before I
met you, would be tempted to define themselves by listing things,
such as their education, their career , their families, their friends, their
hobbies, their possessions, and their accomplishments. In this, we
mistake “who we are” with the “story of our lives”— and the two are
not the same. The “story of our lives” tells people what we have done and the
road we have travelled, but it says nothing about the fundamental
essence of Who We Are. It fails to address the spiritual component,
which I have come to understand is the most important aspect of all. In my observation, the happiness that comes from connecting
with the spiritual piece in ourselves far exceeds anything  that could
be achieved in the physical realm alone. In other words, the “story of
your life,” no matter how “good” it gets—even if you’re among the 5percent of the richest people  in the world—never can and never will
measure up to the truth of Who Y ou Really Are. So I would venture to say that a true willingness to answe r the
question Who am I? , without relying on your “story” for the answer , is
the first step toward true fulfillment in any circumstance. NEALE: Not only to answer the question Who am I?, but to create the
answer. I wanted to double back just a second here to talk about this
business of happiness without three vacuum cleaners in the house,
and what I didn’t say a moment ago about the people of
Ouagadougou is that they were the happiest people I’d ever met in
my life. The evening that I spent in their home—that adobe, or
hardened mud brick building,  with no windows and one hanging cord
for their source of electricity , in which ten or twelve people lived, as I
recall—was a revelation. These were the happiest people I’d ever
encountered. They sang and they danced, and they hugged and kissed each
other , they enjoyed eating meals together , and the laughter that filled
that dwelling was heard all over the place. And I though t, Oh, my
goodness, my heavens, what is it that these people know that I, with
my two vacuum cleaners, have only begun to touch? What is it that I
don’t understand, that they clearly understand? And, of course, they clearly understood that their personal
happiness had nothing to do with their possessions, or virtually
anything material in their lives. It had to do with immaterial things. Things that were not necessarily physical, but the non-physicalaspects of their life, which I would characterize, among other things,
as simp le love. They just loved each other enormously , and they
realized that they were all part of the same unit, the same tribe, and
the same experience. So yes, when we have a willingness to ask that first question,
Who Am I?, and then to create the answer , it is immensely powerful
to not simply respond to the question intellectually , as an intellectual
excursion, but to create a response that makes sense to our soul. A
response that announces Who We Choose To Be, as opposed to
who we imagine ourselves to be. Who I choose to be is an Individuation of Divinity , a wave on the
Ocean of God. DR. COOPER: I have a question for you. Why do you think it is that
so many peop le in our cultu re here in North America have such a
struggle with that? With embracing a spiritual answer to the question
Who am I? Because I’ve noticed in coming to your retreats, for instance,
that many people will resonate with the messages you share. They
will go home on a “workshop high,” feeling like at last they
understand life, and have clarity about who they are and why they’re
here. Yet within a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months if
they’re lucky , many if not most people will revert back to the cultural
story that “Who I Am is what  I have.” And I say this because I work
with these people; I get emails from them asking why it’s such a
challenge to implement these concepts in an ongoing way . . . So my question is why? NEALE: Because people are reluctant to even consider the
possibility of giving up what  they have in order to be Who They
Really Are. They’ve confused the experience of their possessions
with that which they imagine is prohibiting them from being Who
They Are. People who understand that they can be Who They Are and
still be the richest person on Earth, that they can be Who They
Really Are and still have three vacuum cleaners, and that being Who
You Are does not mean have to give up what you have, are people
who stay within their spiritual awareness long after the retreat ends. But the reason that so many people have a difficult time
embracing that notion, and they go back to their Monday through
Friday lives, is that they have it in their mind that “Oh, it’s all very well
and good what Neale is talking about, but you know, I’m not really
willing yet, I’m not even sure that I’m able, I don’t know how to exist
without my stuff. Gosh, just take my iPhone away from me and I’m
dead, much less strip me of my laptop. I can’t get through the day
without my laptop!” And, one could add in many cases, “the other
possessions that I have in my life.”
And it’s understandable that we would be reluctant to do that,
even afraid to do that, because we have not been trained. We don’t
know how to exist without these things! You know, when I was a youngster I could rattle off the phone
numbers of everybody important in my life. My Grandma, my aunt
Irene, my friends—I even knew the phone number of the school. These days you ask somebody , “What’ s the phone number of yourcousin Jean?”  and they have to look in their cell phone, because
we’ve forgotten how to use our minds to memorize anything. Watch the younger clerks operating the cash register at the
supermarket. If the cash register doesn’t tell them how much change
the customer has coming, they don’t know how to figure it out. They
don’t know how to make change. When I was a kid, there was no cash register that explained
that if you were  given a $20 bill and the customer spent $5.37, what
they got in change was $14.63. You simply counted backwards, and
you learned how to do that pretty quickly . These days, many a
nineteen-year-old cashier at the grocery store would be flummoxed
at having to stand there and simply make change if they didn’t have
the machines that tell them exactly how much is owed the customer . What we’ve seen in our world is the dumbing down of humanity. And the incapacitation of humanity . We have seen ourselves incapacitated. That is, we don’t know
how to survive without these things. So naturally , when you get home after a workshop “high,” you
fall back  into your modes of living, because it’s self-survival time. We
actually don’t know how to survive without, you know , a television in
every room of the house. When I was a child, it was a huge, huge luxury to have  one
television set. We had one little black and white TV set with a screen
the size of a handkerchief. Now we have television sets with screens
the size of the state of Monta na. And we have one in every room of
the house—or at least one on every floor. One upsta irs in the
bedroom, one downstairs in the recreation room, one in the living
room, perhaps a smaller one in the kitchen.And we don’t know how to survive without our “stuff.” If the
cable goes out, and we can’t get television, we’re dead ! We don’t
know even how to talk to each other anymore. You know , like . . . let’s just get some cheese and crackers out,
with some apple juice or some wine, and sit in the living room and
talk to each other . It would  be incomprehensible . “You mean we’re
going spend from six o’clock in the evening until ten o’clock, when
we go to bed, talking? Are you kidding me?”
Or, God forbid, reading a good book? So the answer to your ques tion is that people return to their
lifestyles because they don’t know any other way to live. They have
not been shown or trained in any other way to live. But we don’t have to give up our possessions in order to claim
our identity . It’s perfectly okay to have a television in every room of
the house, you know , and three cars in the driveway , and whatever
else it pleases you to enjoy , in terms of your physical accouterment. It’s perfectly fine to do that. There’ s nothing inherently wrong with
that, and it won’t damage you in any way or curtail your spiritual
growth, as long as it hasn’t overtaken your ability to identify with Who
You Really Are, and to demonstrate and express that in your
experience. To the degree that your poss essions stop you from expressing
and experienc ing Who You Really Are, then to that degree your
possessions have gotten the best of you. That is, they have literally
gotten the best of you! But to the degree that you’re using your
possessions to facilitate the demonstration and experience of Who
You Really Are, then those possessions actually wind up being toolsthat you use beneficially to generate larger and larger expressions of
your true identity . So the possessions themselves are not the issue. DR. COOPER: Do you mean if our possessions serve a spiritual
purpose, they are okay, but if we are mistakenly allowing them to tie
us to our “story” (or to what we “have”), then they are not serving us? I’m not quite sure I’m following everything here. I get that our “possessions” are not Who We Are, but I have
also been taught—as has been the Cultural Message for as long as
most of us can remember—that “becoming established” and “getting
our act together” (when it comes to what we “have”) is key to a
successful life and to a life well-lived. How does what you are saying tie into what the Cultural Story
tells us about our possessions? NEALE: I don’t disagree with you that that has been the Cultural
Message. And by the way, some of the possessions that I have in
my own life, just to use myself as an example, have no apparent
spiritual value or benefit—no  way to bring benefit to the process of
expressing my true self . . . unless I include as my identity that I am a
being, an essence in the universe, who enjoys “enjoying Self.”
There’ s a place in life for us to enjoy ourselves . So I don’t apologize for the fact that I have a television set in
my living room with a screen as big as the state of Montana,
because I enjoy watching a good movie, and I enjoy watching sports
events. And that’s okay with me. I had to really allow myself to bringthat device into my living room, my big screen television set, and be
okay with the fact that I derive enjoyment, recreation, from it. Because to the degree that I allow myself enjoyment, to the
degree that I allow myself to have a good time—to have  wonderful
recreation—to that degree I can re-create myself anew in the next
grandest version of the greatest vision ever I held about Who I Am. It’s clear to me that the happier I am, the happier that I can
make other people around  me. So I’m in favor of material
possessions that bring happiness to me. And I’m very grateful that
my life has provided me with the wherewithal to provide myself with
those kinds of physical possessions. So the possessions don’t have to serve what looks to some
people like a “spiritual purpose.” Being happy is a spiritual purpose. Yet if I provided myself with those possessions in a way that stopped
me from sharing my happiness with anybody else, then I would
consider that I had been overtaken by my possessions. So I make
certain that, financially and in other ways, I share abundantly with all
those whose lives I touch. This allows me then to feel very good
about sharing with myself as well. I put myself on the list of people I love enough to go out and
obtain the possessions that I have, to make myself feel happy and at
peace and good about the life that I’m living. I’m not suggesting for
one minute that my possessions are the source  of my feeling happy
and at peace. But they certainly assist me in having a joyful
experience of life, and allow me to continue to experience myself as
one who is happy, and can therefore share happiness and, for that
matter , actually  provide happiness for others . DR. COOPER: Absolutely! I love the statement you have made at
several of your retreats: “Include yourself in the circle of people you
love.”
Let’s move on now to the next questions: Where am I? and
Why am I where I am? In many of your presentations, you invite the audience
members to make an important decision. You ask them to consider
whether they see themselves as Chemical Creatures —that is,
nothing more than “logical biological incidents” that happened to
emerge from mother and father—or whether they, in fact, see
themselves as Spiritual Beings . People attending your presentations and reading the
Conversations with God material have presumably made the latter
decision—that we are Spiritu al Beings choosing to have a Human
Experience. And this is not an insignificant “remembrance.”  In fact, it
is a remembrance that changes everything! If we are, in fact, Spiritual Beings having a Human Experi ence,
we can infer that we have chosen to come to Earth for a very specific
reason—one that beautifully and gloriously serves the Agenda of our
Soul. That is, no matter how much of a “struggle” it may appear  to be
here, physical life is, in fact, a gift, when we can remember our true
identity and use it to navig ate our day-to-day encounters in an
entirely dif ferent way . Like the people of Ouagadougou, who found happiness even in
the most trying of times, when we have a willingness to explore
where we are and why we are where we are, we open the gateway
to findin g happiness and fulfillment, no matter what is going around
us. We unders tand that we have chosen  to be here for a specificreason that serves us (and that serves the Agenda of our Soul), and
we can then begin to see past struggle and to “see the gift,” as we
reconsider what any given day or any given moment is about. NEALE: Struggle disappears when one answers those  questions
with clarity, and with the wisdom of the soul . . . providing the
response, “There is no such thing as struggle.”
Not only does struggle cease in any given moment, it literally
dissolves and it disappears from our life. It ceases to have its illusory
form. All struggle disappears . There is no such thing as struggle
when an entity , a sentient being, has answered for themselves who
they are and why they are here. In fact, struggle turns into celebration. All strug gle becomes celebration, ultimately , in the mind of the
Master , who understands that every circumstance and condition has
been produced co-jointly , by all of the souls collaboratively creating
that experience or that event, in order that each of the souls might
have a perfect contextual field within which to announce and to
declare, to express and to fulfill at the next level, Who They Really
Are. This is about spiritual growth. This is about spiritual expansion. This is about the soul’ s evolution. And so Spiritual Masters celebrate every circumstance and
condition, though this may be difficult for the normal human mind to
comprehend. And in the celebration of the circumstance and the condition
that some may call “negative,” the circumstance and the condition
itself begins to transform. This is because the vibratory  frequency ofcelebratory energy , which is so powerful and positive, has a positive
effect on the exterior physical expressions of life. And gratitude , by the way, is the foundational energy of all
celebration. When we are grateful for the situation previously thought
of as stressful , that gratitude turns stress into celebration and can
produce remarkably different results and outcomes, both internally in
the way we are experiencing life, as well as externally in the way that
life itself is expressing. That is, when we hold the experience that we’re now moving
through differently inside of ourselves (as a celebration of our true
identity, providing an opportunity to demonstrate it, rather than an
obstacle to that demonstration), the resulting shift in the energy we
are feeling and projecting begins to produce outcomes outside of
ourselves that can sometimes be remarkably altered, from a purely
physical point of view. Ancient alchem ists called those altered outcomes miracles , and
that’s how miracles are produced. It’s the alchemy of the universe. When we understand that Who We Are is pure energy, the
Essential Essence of Life itself, and that this energy not only
composes us and comprises us, but is projected through us, from us,
and outward into the world . . . and when we understand furthermore
that energy affects other energy, that all energy impacts other energy
. . . then we begin to understand that how we think about a thing
determines how the thing is, and continues to be. Or, as physicists
have put it: “Nothing that is observed is unaffected by the observer.”
This is pure physics. This is pure science. When we understand this, stressful situations can be
transformed in a remarkable way, because we don’t hold themanymore as stressful situations, but rather , as opportunities for, and
platforms upon which we can enjoy , the celebration, the wonder , and
the glory of Who W e Really Are. DR. COOPER: What a point of view to hold! And it seems  to me that
the key ingredient in that process of gratitude and celebration is the
willingness to open your mind to go there . In medicine alone, I have witnessed times when a patient has
come in with an “illness” that has a certain “expected outcome,”
which may be perceived as negative. Perhaps they are told that they
have only a couple of years, or a couple of months for that matter , to
live. And if a doctor gives a patient a prognosis like that, and the
patient becomes resigned to it being true, then it likely will be. Yet there are countless stories of “medical miracles”—t hings
that are unexplainable by modern medicine—that are so often linked
to those people who had the willingness to go to the place of
acceptance, gratitude, and yes, even celebration, despite what
appeared to be occurring in their lives and the seemi ngly tragic
nature of it. The courageous young woman Amy Purdy , who was recently
featured on Oprah’ s Super Soul Sunday and released a book called
On My Own Two Feet, is a powerful example of this.1 She was a
professional snowboarder aiming for the Olympics who, at the young
age of nineteen, became severely ill with bacterial meningitis. She
was hospitalized with “less than a 2 percent chance to live.”
She was brought into the operating room, knowing she would
be having both of her legs amputated, in addition to having her
spleen and kidneys remove d. She did survive the operation but,needless to say, her quality of life was drastically altered and only a
fraction of what it was prior to her illness. However , as she was learning to live with her handicap, Amy
Purdy asked herself the following life-altering question: “If my life
were a book and I were the author , how would I want the story to
end?”
And from that moment on Amy began to visualize a new life. Although she could not snowboard like she used to, she would
imagine every day getting back on the slopes and how it would feel
to have that experience again . She never once let go of her vision of
Who She Dreamed To Be, even in the face of overwhelming
adversity . That simple yet profound question, “If my life were a book and I
were the author , how would I want the story to end?” , ignited Amy’ s
passion to make the most of her life. It was by no means an easy
road, but she did, in fact, regain her ability to snowboard, ultimately
earning herself the bronze medal at the Paralympics. But even more inspiring— even more inspiring than that—was
the inner transformation  that took place along the way. For Amy
realized that who you show up as in the face of challenge is what
defines who you are. It relates back to our willingness to answer the
question for ourselves of why we are here on the planet to begin
with. Amy Purdy has become a global spokesperson and a mentor
helping others with disabilities, spreading her message to the world
at large about what it means to never give up on living what she calls
an inspired life. And Amy is just one example.I can’t tell you how many patients I have met who have
transformed “devastating diagnoses” into stepping stones toward
spiritual enlightenment. Talk about “seeing the gift” in even the worst
of times. And every time I hear about, or witness, a story like that, it
gives me chills—because it is exactly what we’ve been talking about,
demonstrated with clarity in these people’ s lives. And it does, in turn, af fect their outcome. There is no doubt in my mind about that. These are the people—if anyone is going to recover
“miraculously ,” or turn their life into something profoundly meaningful
following a devastating illness, as Amy did— this is the energetic
framework from which it occurs , in my observation. NEALE: You’re  correct, in my experience as well, that acceptance of
“what is” and seeing it as a gift allowing us to experience and
demonstrate who we are, is the most powerful response that a
person could possibly give to circumstances, events, and situations
that could be defined by a person who’s not spiritually aware as
stressful. And so stress turns  into celebration when we move to step
one, the first of the three steps that you articulated a minute ago:
acceptance of exactly what is so . What’ s So is What’ s So, and that’ s what’ s true about that. And as Conversations with God says: “What you resist persists,
and what you look at disappears. That is, it ceases to have its
illusory form.”
Or, as spiritual teacher Da Free John put it, eloquently I
thought, in his prescription to turn stress into celebration: “Cease allAgainstness.”
 
DR. COOPER: Y es, I like that. NEALE: When  I first heard that, I thought, “What a remarkable
formula, in three words.”
Cease all Againstness. Therein lies the wonder and the glory of Who You Are. Because
when you cease to be against what’ s going on, you embrace and
accept what is happening, and transform it, however it turns out—
whether , in fact, you do leave your physical body in three or four
months, or you live for another five or ten years. Either way, it’s
totally okay , because you’re not against what is occurring. As my friend Byron Katie puts it: “Stop arguing with life.”
 
DR. COOPER: Ha-ha! Yeah! Well, it seems to me like you’re ceasing
to hold onto your illusory story, which is not Who You Are. And I think
it’s the holding onto the “story” which produces the resistance; in
other words, it is the expectation that things be a certain way, and if
they’re not, then not being okay with that. But I think the moment we cease holding onto our “story” . . . NEALE:  . . . our struggles disappear . DR. COOPER: Exactly! And as you said at your last retreat, which I
love: “Ground zero is the best place to be.” Because ground zero is
the basis of all creation.You are then invited to look at your life from a whole  new
perspective, which is not one contained within the bounds of your
previous “story ” of how it should be, but rather like an empty canvas
with all of your paints waiting for you to paint whatever picture you
want. That is, whatever response to the circumstances that would
best serve the Agenda of your Soul . And all of this brings us to the fourth question. Given that I’ve
decided who I am, where I am, and why I’m here, what do I intend to
do about that? You can then take any circu mstance and, from “ground zero,”
from the funda mental platform  of creativity , you get full choice as to
how to respond  in that mome nt as the highest demonstration of Who
You Are. NEALE: Yes. That’ s the moment of definition. As Conversations with
God says: “Every act is an act of self-definition.”
And in the moment when we answer “What do I intend to do
about that?”, we are really saying, “This is how I currently define
myself. This is how I define Who I Really Am. This is how I define
Divinity , as a matter of fact.”
One day I’m going to write a book called Demonstrating
Divinity , and in it I’m going to offer the idea that defining Divinit y is
the process by which we say, “this is what God is” in this particular
circumstance, in this situation. I know you know what God is, and
what Divinity is, but I’m now going to show you, in case you might
have forgotten. And that’s really what all Great Masters have done. Whether
we’re talking about Lao Tzu or Buddha, whether we’re talking aboutMoses or Jesus, Mother Mary or Mother Theresa, Mohammed or any
of the Great Masters, male or female, ancient or contemporary, they
all moved through the world in such a way that their demonstration of
Divinity defined Divinity. We now call that Divine, because of their
demonstration. DR. COOPER : So we are here to define the Divine. Conversations
with God also says that our life lived is our most powerful message
to the world . . . NEALE: And to ourselves. DR. COOPER: Y es! NEALE: W e’re not even here to send a message to the world. That happens automatically . We’re here simply to send a message  to ourselves —that is, to
remind ourselv es—so that we might fully remember , and then fully
express, Who We Really Are, thus to complete in that moment the
Agenda of the Soul, over and over again, moving through all the
moments, days, and years of our life, coming to Completion in the
process of remembering Who We Really Are through the
demonstration and the expre ssion of it. Not so that the world is in
some way impacted, but because our own personal agenda invites
us to do so. However , when we do this, the world is inevitably touched by it,
because this sort of demonstration is remarkably impacting upon thephysical enviro nment, for the simple reason that—as I have noted
now a number of times—energy impacts upon energy itself. So it has been  said that if a Christ, for instance, were to walk
down the middle of a battlefield between two opposing armies, the
members of those armies would lay down their arms. They  would lay
down their arms simply because of his presence there. And that’s
what happens when Who We Are is expressed fully in us, through
us, as us, as part of our own evolutionary process, without seeking
directly to affect or change the world. It simply does so automatically ,
because of the impact that Energy has on Energy Itself. We are talking about The Essential Essence interacting with the
Essential Essence. By the way, doctors know all about this. What I’ve just said is
something that everyone in the medical profession either knows . . . or shou ld know . That the very way they walk into a room . . . you
know , a doctor needs to unde rstand that as soon as she puts on her
white coat, and as soon as he puts the stethoscope around his neck,
they might as well put a badge on that says: “I am a Healer . I am a
Doctor . And you’re going to be okay.” Or, at least you’re going to be
as okay as the physical experiences that you’re now moving through
will allow you to be. And metaphysically , you can be totally , totally
okay. Most physicians don’t understand that they are also
metaphysicians. That is, they are larger than physicians . They are
meta -physicians. But only one out of a hundred doctors understands
this. Those who do understand are said to have developed an
extraordinary “bedside mann er,” because they understand who they
are when they walk into the room of a patient. That they’re not justPhysicians, they’re Metaphysicians. That is, they’re larger than that. Even as Life is not simply physical, it is metaphysical. It’s larger than
simply the physical. So when doctors understand that—when more people in the
medical profession understand that energy impacts upon energy
itself—they will walk into every room in an entirely different way. No
matter how busy they are. DR. COOPER: Absolutely! And I think that often, in the rush of things
at the hospital, it can be viewed as the “nice doctors” who are willing
to offer that extra dose of compassion and understandin g. People
sometimes don’t “get” why certain doctors might take more time to
do that; howev er, for me, having been exposed to your work, I see
clearly that the reason isn’t just about offering more compassion or
understanding to the patient. I believe we give at least as much to
ourselves in being willing to “show up” in that sort of a way . For me, begin ning to walk into the room in that way was the
beginning of remembering Who I Really Am, and realizing that I
loved how it felt to show up like that. So it’ s about re-uniting with your
own soul . . . with the piece of you that, deep down, you desire to
express and to bring forth in that moment. As you said just a moment ago, I think it is about daring to
show up in a way that is Divine. NEALE: Every body is a minister , everybody is a doctor , and
everybody in the world is a healer . All we’re doing on the planet is helping each other .All of the professions, all of the occupations—I don’t care if
you’re a butcher , a baker , or a candlestick maker , you know . . . I
don’t care if you’re a florist, or a gas station attendant, or a plumber ,
or a lawyer, or a doctor—all that anyone is doing is helping  someone
else. W e’re all helping each other . That’ s what we’re doing. So, in whatever occupation you have, do you see yourself as
helping another? And if you see yourself as doing so, as a means of
expressing an aspect of yourself— as a demonstration of Who You
Really Are —suddenly your whole relationship to your occupation will
change dramatically . And so, too, will the way that the people you
serve receive what it is that you are of fering. So whether you’re a doctor walking into a patient’ s room, or a
gas station attendant walking  up to a car, it doesn’t really matter . The
process is the same and the ef fect is the same: helping and healing. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who I had the great joy of working with
for a period of time in my life as one of her staff assistants, used to
say this. She would respond to people who asked her how she was
able to be such  a wonderful presence in the life of her patients such
that she would walk into the room and people would immediately feel
better , just because of her presence. She once made this comment, in front of a large room full of
medical studen ts: “Oh, I see. You think it’s because I’m a doctor . But
I want to tell you,” she went on in her Swiss accent, “that the lady
who comes in behind me to clean the toilet and mop up the floor has
an equal effect on the patients. And I can’t tell you how many
patients have gotten better because of the lady who’s cleaning the
bathroom. So if you think it’s my occupation that creates that effect,
you do not understand what’ s happening here.”So it is important to see that we are all in the helping
professions. There’ s nobody who’ s not. Everything we do helps someone else. And to that degree we are rewarded internally and, as well,
often, externally . That is, people give us stuff (money , etc.) for the
help we’ve given them . Everybody on the planet is in the helping
profession, and everybody can feel like a doctor or a minister
walking into a room. Everyon e can feel that sense of self-fulfillment
and full expression of the most wondrous part of themselves,
whether they’re a doctor or a minister or a person with flowers at the
flower store, or candy at the sweetshop, or magazines and papers at
the news stand, or legal advice in a lawyer ’s office—or a mommy or
daddy at home, offering humankind the greatest gift it could ever
receive: the love and nurturing of its of fspring. It doesn’t really matter what you do, only how you are helping
and what you are being  while you are doing it. DR. COOPER: I love how you transform “work,” which I perhaps
previously would have considered an “obligation,” a “social
responsibility ,” or a “less than fun thing to do,” and make it into what
seems like a very exciting and “soul-serving” thing to do. You make me very excited to wake up and to serve in that kind
of a way! NEALE: It’ s the most exciting thing that anybody could do! It’s what gets me jumping out of bed in the morning! Exac tly, at
71 going on 72, hopping out of bed nevertheless with the sameamount of excitement that I had when I was 21 and imag ined that I
was doing it for a dif ferent reason. But now at 71 going on 72, I jump out of bed at five o’clock in
the morning, unable to wait to get started with the day, with another
chance to self-express and to demonstrate to myself the highest
notion I ever had about Who I Really Am. And to do so in such a way
that I wind up loving myself, loving life, and loving all the conditions
of life that have allowed me to do that. If that doesn’t make one fall in love with God, then nothing will.Chapter Two
 
DISSECTING THE TRUTH:
A Look at the Human Body
 
 
DR. COOPER: That was beautiful. NEALE: Life is beautiful. It’ s just a matter of seeing it that way . DR. COOPER: Yes, I get that. I really do. And I really want to
embrace this optimistic viewpoint you have. It all seems so
magnificent, so wonderful, so freeing! And I do agree— that the point of life is what we make it. That
we have the immense privilege to select in every golden moment of
Now who we next choose to be, and how we next choos e to “show
up.”
But I do have a few more questions for you. NEALE: Y es . . . How may I serve you? DR. COOPER: Well, it’s all very nice to understand conceptually that
we are Spiritual Beings, here to fulfill the Agenda of the Soul. And to
understand that all struggle can turn to celebration when we dare to
ask ourselves, and to create the answers to, the Seven Simple
Questions and the Four Fundamental Questions of Life.And I really “get” that this is possible. I mean, your stories from the people of Ouagadougou are living
proof that it’s possible to live in this sort of a way—w ith peace,
harmony , joy, and unity among people, despite being among what
we would clearly call “the disadvantaged people of this world.”
I mean, it is remarkable —living with one light bulb that has to
be traded with the rare appliances they may use during the daytime
when light is not needed. Living in dried mud huts or concrete
dwellings, with no such things as professional careers or financial
success or exotic vacations as we have it here in North America. And still these people argua bly have more love and happiness in
their hearts than could be bought with all of the wealth on the planet! So clearly it illustrates that there is “something more” going on
here—another reason for being on the planet—and that it is this
“spiritual journey” we have come here to continue. A spiritual journey
that has much more to do with how we are being than what we are
doing. But Neale, as I sit here listening, I still feel somewhat shocked
at how this is all possible . . . Because even as you’re telling me that it’s true that we can live
this way—and you have visited 26 nations on the planet, some of
which have clearly demonstrated this way of living—I still find myself
not quite sure how to apply this wisdom in my everyday 9-to-5 life
here in the Western World. As you said yourself, it goes against all we
have been taught and trained to do. So many of us do not understand
how to “survive” within this new way of holding life. Even myself, who
has been practically “raised by Neale Donald Walsch,” find myself
struggling with it at times! NEALE: And why are you struggling with it? Why aren’t you
celebrating it? DR. COOPER : Because at times it feels like I have to make a
choice. A choice between serving the Agenda of Physical Life—
everything from the perceived “needs of my family ,” to my job and
income, to how I’m going to pay the next rent bill and get food on the
table—and serving the Agenda of my Soul. And I’m not quite sure
how the two can co-exist in a way where one complements the other . So I think some clarification would be helpful here. Because
I’ve noticed that people, myself included, often experience spirituality
and physicality as if they were two separate aspects of life, rather
than seeing them as linked at the most fundamental level (which, of
course, they are). But it is nevertheless hard to truly live that way . NEALE: I think we have a very powerful point to make here—this
business of the Intersection between physicality and spirituality  that
not so many people really experience. They may think of them
together conceptually , but in terms of their actual on-the-ground
experience  they may hold them entirely dif ferently , thinking that one’ s
physical expre ssions and experiences are other  than, or different
from, one’ s spiritual expressions and experiences. And maybe the purpose of this whole dialogue that we’re
having might be to impress upon people not only the significance of
the fact that there is no separation between our physical and spiritual
experience, but that the co-mingling of the two is exactl y what lifewas intended to produce, it is our reason for existing —and that when
we understand this, our whole lives will change. DR. COOPER: Yes! It is an important concept to touch on. And it’s
absolutely been my observation that, even among people who would
consider themselves to be “very spiritual”—I’ve been to a number of
your retreats, and a lot of the people there would consider themselves
to have spirituality as an integral component of their lives—I’ve still
observed, as I mentioned before, people going home and returning to
their lives and still living as if there is separation between the physical
and the spiritual. Perhaps they wake up in the morning and meditate for a while,
which appears to be a spirit ual aspect of life, and then they go to
work, and that appears to be a physical aspect of life. I’ve observed this in friends I have met at your retreats, as well
as in spiritual coaching clients who have come to me for the very
reason that they want help implementing spirituality in an ongoing
way in their lives. And I think it’s a struggle for much of humanity to
really understand how to live our moment-to-moment existence as
not only a physical entity , but also a spiritual entity— and to have a
moment-to-moment spiritua l experience as well. That is, to
understand how to really put these spiritual concepts on the ground
in day-to-day life. There is a story I would like to insert and share here, Neale . . . one that I think is fitting to what we’re talking about. NEALE: Go ahead. DR. COOPER: I would like to describe the moment I first realized we
are “more than our bodies” . . . because I remember this vividly . It was the mom ent I entered the anatomy lab in my first year of
medical schoo l. However , this was no ordinary anatomy lab. It was
one where we actually dissected human cadavers over the course  of
two years. We dissected everything from the heart to the lungs to the
muscles and nerves, and even to the brain and spinal cord. We
delved into the deepest understandings that science and
neuroscience can provide about who we are, actually being able to
see and visualize it right before our eyes . It was one of the most
striking things I ever witnessed in my life. And certainly not an
experience that many people come across at the age of twenty . I can tell you that prior to this experience I was very attached to
my physical body being Who I Am. However , the time I spent in that
lab dramatically changed my understanding. What struck me most was the total lifelessness of the bodies
before me. As they were lying on the lab benches and we went to
make the first cut with the scalpel, all I knew without a shadow of a
doubt was that this is not the human being. This is not the person! And it became  absolutely clear to me that the mere “physical
body” had very little to do with the person who had walked on this
Earth. Although people may unders tand this conceptually , to actually
see it and experience it is both startling and eye-opening, to say the
least. And the thing is, it wasn’t just a hunch. It wasn’t just a subtle
feeling that there was “something more going on.” It was an
undeniable truth, and I believe that anyone standing in my shoeswould have seen, and known, the exact same thing: that without that
“added presen ce”–that spiritu al quality , if you could call it such–our
bodies have little to do with who we are. It then poses the question, “ Who are we really?”
And it invites us to consider: how, if at all, does this “extra
presence” play a role in the day-to-day , moment- to-moment
unfolding of our lives? NEALE: It sure does pose the question. Thank you. DR. COOPER: You know , Neale, when I was in that lab as a young
student, my mind went to the place of: “My gosh, what if this were
my parent whose cadaver was lying here?” And that thought scared
me! It scared me that the sum total of someone I loved could
disappear at the moment their body “crossed over .”
This is why the revelation that we are more than our bodies
brought me such comfort. Because I could see the truth right before
my eyes that even if that was my mother ’s body lying there, I would
know that it was not her . Many people have asked me, “How did you know that?”
It’s not an easy thing to expla in, but what I tell them is that the
skin on the cadaver was hardened and rubbery and so pale; the
body was utterly limp. The face was expressionless to the point of
being almost unrecognizable—no smile, eyes closed, and none of
the expressions that previously shone on the face of that person. I think that when we mistake our loved one’s body for Who
They Are, it is because we are seeing the energy that animates
physical form—the joy sparkling in their eyes, the dance of a smileon their lips, or even the tears of sadness falling upon their cheek. We’re seeing the human emotions and characteristics, both the
good and the bad, that shape the expression of that body, and give
us the experience of Who They Are. We’re seeing invisible energy
made visible, metaphysical life made physical. But anyone who would have seen the utter lifelessness of these
cadavers would have known—and would have literally seen— that
when this “presence,” the energy , was gone, the disintegrating
remains had very little, or perhaps nothing at all, to do with the
person who once inhabited that body . NEALE: What a surreal experience. DR. COOPER : Yes! I wish you could have been there  to see it,
Neale. In fact, I think it’ s an experience that would profoundly change
almost anyone’ s life. Here I was, sitting in that lab day after day, with the professors
describing the intricate work ings of the human body from birth to
death and every moment in-between . Yet something about the
purely medica l and scientific theory just didn’t sit right with me. Intuitively , I felt like it was an incomplete way of looking at life. The feeling that “there must be more” was most noticeable in
the neuroanatomy portion of the lab, where we spent two months
dissecting the brain and spinal cord. I was literally holding a brain in
my hands , tracing the pathways with my scalpel, and being told:
“These are the pathways of people’ s emotions. This is what creates
who we are. This is our personality ,” and so on.Yet all I could think to myself was, “No, this is not who we are! I
don’t believe you. This can’t be who we are!” It just didn’t make
sense. In my experience, and from what I felt in my heart and soul, this
could not be who we are.
Where_God_and_Medicine_Meet-_Neale_Donald_Walsch.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        WHERE GOD
AND
MEDICINE MEET
 
 
A conversation between a doctor
and a spiritual messenger
 
 
NEALE DONALD WALSCH
and BRIT COOPER, M. D. Also by Neale Donald W alsch
 
Conversations with God, Book 1
Conversations with God, Book 1 Guidebook
Conversations with God, Book 2
Meditations from Conversations with God, Book 2
Conversations with God, Book 3
Questions and Answers from Conversations with God
Bringers of the Light
ReCreating Y our Self
Conversations with God Re-MIND-er Cards
Moments of Grace
The W edding V ows from Conversations with God
Neale Donald W alsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood
Neale Donald W alsch on Holistic Living
Neale Donald W alsch on Relationships
Conversations with God for T eens
Friendship with God
Communion with God
Tomorrow’ s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge
The Little Soul and the Sun
The Little Soul and the Earth
The Complete Conversations with God
Home with God: In a Life that Never Ends
Happier Than God
When Everything Changes, Change Everything
The New Revelations: A Conversation with God
What God W ants: A Compelling Answerto Humanity’ s Biggest Question
What God Said: The 25 Core Messages of Conversations with God
That W ill Change Y our Life and the World
The Storm Before the Calm
The Only Thing That Matters
God’ s Message to the World:
You’ve Got Me All Wrong
Conversations with God for ParentsCopyright © 2016 by Neale Donald Walsch
and Brit Cooper, M.
"Where God and Medicine Meet"
What is the title of the book written by Neale Donald Walsch and Brit Cooper, M.D.?
Neale Donald Walsch and Brit Cooper, M.D.
Who wrote the book "Where God and Medicine Meet"?
The intersection of spirituality and physicality, with a focus on the Four Fundamental Questions of Life.
What is the main focus of the book "Where God and Medicine Meet"?
The idea that people are more than their physical bodies and that spiritual growth is essential for true fulfillment.
What is the main theme of the book, according to the author?
The importance of understanding that we are not defined by our physical possessions or circumstances, and that true fulfillment comes from embracing our true identity and expressing it in our daily lives.
What is the main message of the book, according to the authors?