554: How Can We Talk WITH God?

[INTRODUCTION]

 

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today, we are talking about How to Talk with God. Now, I’m going to unpack that word God in this episode. I just want to say right up front that that unpacking will talk about whether or not you even believe in God. It’s what is that voice of wisdom, that higher consciousness, universal or collective intelligence source or your own intuition, your own highest truth, whatever you want to call that. How do you gain insights and wisdom, valuable breakthroughs that can transform your life, elevate your consciousness, and improve you as a human being showing up in this world so that you’re more effective in your relationships at work, in every area of your life? How can you gain that wisdom? How can you be open to receiving what is available? Again, whether you call that God or something else, today is going to be valuable for you. And make sure you stick around at the end because, of course, at the end, that’s when I bring it all together and really break this down in terms of the actionable steps to talk with God or listen to or receive the wisdom that we all need to be at our best.

 

 

All right, with that said, I want to take a minute to thank our sponsor. Today’s episode is brought to you by Organifi. Most of us could use more energy in our day, but caffeine can only do so much. At some point, we need to look at the root causes of our fatigue. And it turns out two main factors in low energy are chronic stress, raise your hand if you can relate to that, and a lack of nutrition. Organifi creates delicious superfood blends that address both of these problems. They use adaptogenic herbs and mushrooms to help balance cortisol levels associated with stress, and they make it easier to add more nutrients into your day. You simply mix a scoop into water or your favorite plant-based milk of your choice, or put it in your smoothie and enjoy a natural boost any time of day. I take Organifi morning, noon, and night based on whatever my needs are at that time of day.

 

Head over to Organifi.com/Hal. That is O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I, Organifi.com/Hal, and use the discount code Hal, H-A-L, to get 20% off your order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.

 

Without further ado, let’s dive in to explore how we can talk to God, source collective consciousness, that voice of infinite wisdom to help us more quickly and effectively solve our problems, achieve our goals, and create the life that we deserve.

 

 

[INTERVIEW]

 

Hal Elrod: Two days ago, this is what I wrote on social media, and I should mention that I posted a picture of a journal entry that was titled Message from God on July 27, 2024. So, the date, the journal entry, it was a page in my journal that I posted a picture of, and this is the caption that I wrote to go with that picture, Do You Ever Talk with God, or whatever you call that voice/source of infinite wisdom that seems to know better than we do. Meaning, you don’t just pray or meditate and hope something magical happens, but you pray or meditate and then quiet your mind so that you can receive an answer or some form of guidance. I usually do this first thing in the morning during my SAVERS, my Miracle Morning, or right before bed. And when I do, I often get downloads like the one I posted a screenshot of here or a picture of here.

 

The reason I call these “downloads” is because they come into my consciousness so fast that I write as fast as I can without any conscious thought about what I’m writing. I’m just literally taking dictation, writing down what is coming through me. Do you ever have similar experiences? So, that is the caption that I wrote.

 

Now, the picture that I posted is actually what I read to you last week. Last week’s podcast episode was titled You Are Perfect Exactly As You Are. And then I talked about the paradox of perfection, which the essence of that is that we are inherently perfect and worthy of love and capable of anything and everything that we want in our lives exactly as we are. And yet, we are simultaneously infinitely capable of improving and changing and getting better, right? So, it’s that paradox where how can you be perfect if you’re imperfect? How can you be perfectly imperfect?

 

And the message that I was sharing last week and that I posted on social media that I titled Message from God, and I want to address that word God because, like all words in the English language, it is a word. It’s probably the most loaded word in the English language in terms of, you could ask different people from different religions or faith based or, if you’re atheist, what that word means, and you’d get a lot of different answers. And so, I had somebody mention in the comments that, “I do talk. I have a voice. I hear that voice, that inner wisdom,” he said, “but I don’t call that voice of God.” And that’s important, right? That’s important, that person voice, that perspective, because whatever you call that voice, that wisdom, and if you– last week, I talked about the book Think and Grow Rich, and Napoleon Hill talked about collective– I think he called it collective consciousness, collective wisdom. He essentially said that all wisdom was available in the ether and he had his board of directors, I think, he might have called it. Again, I haven’t read that book for probably 10 years, maybe the board of advisors, but I didn’t model what I learned from him, which is he has pictures of these famous people throughout history, people that he’s read their biographies, he’s learned about them. Some of them, he spent time with. They were alive during the time that he was alive.

 

And it was like JD Rockefeller, and I don’t remember the others, but he had a handful or a little bit more board of advisors. And he would communicate with them. He would look at the picture and he would close his eyes and imagine what would they tell me that I should do in this situation. And he said it was incredible that I literally could gain the advice, the wisdom from that person, even though they might have died a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago or whatever it is.

 

So, whatever that voice that Napoleon Hill was listening to, whether it was the collective consciousness, the energy that was– and again, I don’t mean to get to woo-woo here, but stick with me, right? Whatever that wisdom from that person or if it was his own perception, if it was his own perception of what he thinks that person would say, but imagine, let’s look at, is this useful? Is this useful? So, you could say you’re crazy, Napoleon Hill, right? You’re crazy. Now, obviously, whether he was crazy or not, he sold I don’t know how many tens of millions of copies of Think and Grow Rich and transformed a lot of people’s consciousness with that book, helped a lot of people become wealthy with that book. So, he definitely had something within him that was extremely valuable for many millions of people.

 

So, with that said, let’s say, you could say, well, Napoleon Hill, just because you have a picture of JD Rockefeller and you’re asking JD Rockefeller from advice and you think that your thoughts are from JD Rockefeller, doesn’t mean that they are, in the same way that someone that’s an atheist or skeptical could say, just because you think you’re talking to God and you get wisdom from God doesn’t mean that you are, right? That could be your overactive imagination.

 

In fact, I remember the book Conversations With God when he is “talking” to God in that book, Neale Donald Walsch, which also has sold tens of millions of copies, right? So, you could argue, I’m always trying to think of what the skeptic is thinking or responding to whenever I’m talking. That’s why kind of in real time, I will iterate and address objections or skepticism. But when Neale Donald Walsch was writing that book, he said, he was “talking” to God, right? And there’s a lot of skeptic. I was skeptical when I was reading and I was like, what this guy is talking to himself? The wisdom that he shared in that book, it’s almost like, look, I don’t care whether that came from God, whomever God is to you or universally, whatever that truth is, whether it came from God or from himself or his highest truth, or Napoleon Hill’s belief that we could all tap into collective consciousness, that every idea that had ever been thought was floating through the ether as an energetic field and available to access from all of us, wherever it comes from.

 

Is it valuable? Is it useful? And I’ll tell you, when I read Neale’s book, I went from being skeptical to listening to the questions that he was asking God during that time that he was in prayer and journaling and recording, the answers where he was downloading that were coming through him. And as he was doing that, I’m going, this is profound. Like, the answer that he received that he believed was from God, whether it was from God or just from himself or something else, it’s profound and it’s useful and it’s valuable, and I can actually apply it to my life and it will improve my life and my mental and emotional well-being and the course of action that I’m taking to create results in my life, right?

 

So, is it valuable? Is it useful? I think people get hung up on the source. They get hung up on the source. In fact, I was interviewing with Tom Bilyeu. I was on Tom Bilyeu’s show earlier this year. It was my second time on his show. And he got really hung up on the concept of unwavering faith. We were talking about the Miracle Equation, which, if you’re not familiar, that’s my follow-up book to the Miracle Morning. And the subtitle is The Two Decisions That Move Your Biggest Goals from Impossible to Inevitable.

 

And the two decisions are unwavering faith and extraordinary effort. And it’s the idea that if you study the world’s most successful people, they all maintained unwavering faith that they could overcome or accomplish things that they had never done before. And it was where most people would give up the faith because they weren’t on track for the goal. It didn’t look likely, didn’t look like it was going to happen. They give up the faith, and then the effort goes out the window right after it because why would you put effort toward something that you don’t have faith or any belief is actually going to happen?

 

So, we were talking about this, and he really spent a lot of time, so much so that I asked him if we could move on. And actually, I later regretted that request. I mean, we moved, right? But he goes, “No, Hal, I don’t want to move on. I really want to understand this.” And he was talking about where do you put your faith? That’s when he was really hung up on, where do you put your faith? And I was saying, it doesn’t matter. And he goes, “I think it does matter.” And my take is, let’s say your faith, you have faith, and we’re applying this right now to this concept of where does this voice in our head, this voice of wisdom that Napoleon Hill tapped into, that Neale Donald Walsch tapped into, Napoleon Hill called it collective consciousness or universal consciousness that all the wisdom throughout eternity is available in the ether for all of us to access at any given time. That was Napoleon Hill’s way of describing it. Neale Donald Walsch called it God. This was him having a conversation with God.

 

And again, these are words, right? God is a word. Collective is a word. Consciousness is a word. And could they not be human words describing the exact same thing, you could also call it your intuition, another word. Intuition is nothing but a word. Might intuition, or when you’re accessing wisdom for intuition, God, collective consciousness, might that all be one in the same? I don’t know, right? Or may there be some overlap? But with Tom, I said, look, if you have unwavering faith that God will enable you to overcome the challenges that you’re facing or to cure your cancer or to, whatever you’re trying to overcome or accomplish in your life, if you have unwavering faith, that God is the source of strength and will carry you through, then that will enable you to do the things to move forward in your life because you believe God is guiding you.

 

Now, let’s say you’re an atheist. You have no faith in God. You go, no, I have faith in myself and my ability. Then that faith in yourself and your ability will enable you to continue to move forward in your life and generate the outcomes that you want in your life. And so, that’s the point I was trying to make to Tom. As I said, I don’t think that it matters what your faith is in, as long as it’s unwavering. Now, if your faith is in yourself and it wavers, or if your faith is in God and something happens in your life that’s tragic and then you lose faith in God because you go, God would never let that happen to me. I can no longer believe in God, right? Wherever your faith is, if it’s wavering, it doesn’t matter. So, it doesn’t matter if it wavers and it’s in God or yourself, or if it’s unwavering, but it’s in God or yourself, it’s going to enable you. It’s going to be useful. It’s going to enable you to move forward in your life.

 

So, I just want to address that. It’s an important point because then the point being, to bring it back to this message of talking with God, whether it is God, it is your intuition, it is your highest truth, it is collective consciousness, universal intelligence, source, the universe, these are all words that human beings have come up with to describe the undescribable, the unseen. So, you make this apply to you, whatever your faith or non-faith or whatever it is.

 

So, for me, the word I use is God. And I was raised Catholic. I would not consider myself to be Catholic anymore. But it was a very valuable experience for me. And it introduced me to prayer. And prayer was having faith and talking to what was for me God. And to this day, it’s still God that through prayer and meditation, which to me are very similar and there’s infinite approaches to how you pray or how you meditate. So, one person could meditate exactly like another person’s praying. They just call it two different things. For me, I pray and then I meditate. And the difference, praying is a conversation with God. Meditation is more of a surrendering, a receiving. So, the prayer is more proactive and the meditation is more passive, I guess. It’s more passive, right? So, I’m receiving.

 

And the reason I call these downloads, and I said this when I read you this caption from this post is that they come into my consciousness so fast that I write as fast as I can. And that’s where my faith is really strong because I’m not thinking of what I’m going to write. It’s literally being downloaded. I’m writing it as fast as I can, and it’s once I’ve turned my brain off and I’m in a state of meditation and I’m just open to whatever is going to be downloaded and come through me, and then it just starts coming through so fast I can’t even keep up. So, I can’t explain that. I can’t explain. There could be an explanation of, well, maybe that’s just your subconscious is now feeding you all of that information. Maybe it is. I don’t know, right?

 

My philosophy in religion and spirituality is much more of an open-ended curiosity and exploration throughout life versus a conviction that I know exactly what’s right and what’s true and you’re wrong. And I’m right because I haven’t figured out, and you don’t. I don’t like to think that way, right? I like to think that maybe you have it figured out. I want to learn from you. Maybe you know more than I do. Maybe you stumbled upon the truth that I have not yet stumbled upon. So, I want to always remain open and curious more so than convicted, that I know. I know. I know what’s what.

 

And we explored that a few weeks ago. I did a podcast called Reflecting on Religion and Spirituality. And the exploration there was I talked about or I asked the question, where did your beliefs come from? Where do our beliefs come from? Were they things that we arrived to on our own through our own direct experience? Or are they beliefs that other people told us were true? If you watch the news and they’re telling you this is what’s right and this is what’s wrong and this is who’s right and this is who’s wrong, and you’re just nodding your head going, “Oh, okay, thank you. Thank you for telling me. Now, I know what to believe.” Or when I grew up, going to church, I was like, I was told, this is what’s right, this is what’s wrong, this is who’s right, this is who’s wrong, this is the truth, this is what’s false, right? And then I realized, I’m part of one religion out of 4,000. I can’t imagine it. I don’t know. And I could be wrong about all of this. Like, I never want to claim that I know it all ever. Ever. I know a lot less than I know. If I’m looking at what do I know and what don’t I know, I think there’s far more that I don’t know.

 

And I would encourage all of us as human beings to maintain that perspective. We get very convicted in our beliefs, but I would encourage us to consider that there is far more that we don’t know about everything, everything, the human body, God, spirituality, I mean, Earth, the climate, like you name it. I think there’s far more that we don’t know than that we do know. But human beings, one of the six human needs is certainty. And so, we latch on to beliefs that we can resonate with and feel are true. And I do that, too, by the way. I’m no different, but I try to step back and go, okay, well, maybe I don’t know everything.

 

So, I’m going to read this to you real quick. This is the message from God that I received on July 27, 2024. So, this is the social media post from two days ago. And I read this to you last week, but I am going to read it to you again. I think it’s an important message. In fact, I read this every day. When I start my Miracle– I shouldn’t say every day. Some days, I just skip it. But when I start my Miracle Morning, this is one of the first things that I read when I read my affirmations. I read this. So, again, I read this every single day to reinforce this message, not just once in a while. So, yes, I read this last week, but I’m going to read through again.

 

And here’s what it says. This is what I posted on Instagram and Facebook a couple of days ago. “Hal, I love you. You are perfect exactly as you are. You don’t need to change anything or improve anything or become anything or achieve anything. You are perfect exactly as you are.” By the way, let me pause, I want you to receive this as if it was for you because that’s what I believe it was. I believe this is a message for all of us. Whenever I receive any sort of message or download, I believe it is for all of us. And I’m just the messenger, right?

 

The Miracle Morning was a download. It was a message that I received from a quote, from a friend, from– I mean, there were a lot of different sources where that wisdom that came together and culminated to become the Miracle Morning where it came from. But I often say, I don’t take ownership or responsibility for that wisdom. I feel like I’m the messenger that gets to bring that message to the world. But if you look at the SAVERS, the six practices of the Miracle Morning, I didn’t invent any of those. None of those are my original practices. Those are meditation or silence, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, and scribing. I didn’t invent any of those. And it was my wife that had the idea for the acronym, right? So, it’s like, I’m just the messenger, just bringing all the message.

 

So, back to this download, so I’m going to say it again, “Hal, so receive this. This is for you. I love you. You are perfect exactly as you are. You don’t need to change anything or improve anything or become anything or achieve anything. You are perfect exactly as you are.” Now, go spread that message of inherent divinity to as many people as you can and use your unique gifts and abilities to make sure they really understand it and can embody it fully and live completely at peace and loving themselves, you, the listener, yourself, the way that God loves all of us and start with your family. And I wrote down, my wife, my kids, then my sister, my parents, friends, the rest of the world, this is the miracle of life. It is your birthright and everyone else’s. You are all my children. And like every parent, I just want you to be happy and healthy.

 

So, last week, I read this and it was through in the context of You Are Perfect Exactly As You Are, that was the title of the podcast. And I talked about that paradox of perfection that we’re perfect, we’re worthy of love. And when I say perfect, again, that’s the context. Perfection is a perspective. Imagine a person, I’m a man, so let’s say a woman and let’s say, me and another man, look at this woman. And we list all of her strengths and all of her faults. I’m thinking of my wife right now, right? So, all of her strengths and all of her faults. And the other man goes, “Oh, man, she is imperfect. I don’t like that about her. I don’t like that fault, like that. I don’t like her nose. This thing bothers me, and yeah, not for me.” And I might go, “I don’t know what you’re talking. I mean, okay, that’s your perspective. But to me, she’s perfect. All of those faults, that’s part of the perfection. I’m glad she has those faults. I wouldn’t want her to be flawless.”

 

And I talk about that last week that there’s a difference between perfection and flawless. And I get it, it’s semantics. I’m sure that flawless and perfection, they’re probably synonyms for each other. But in the context that we’re talking about last week, on last week’s podcast, which was Episode 553, by the way, if you want to go back and listen to it, you can go to MiracleMorning.com/553. But in that context, being perfect, I don’t mean flawless, right? As human beings, we all have flaws, but in this example, I’m giving you that I can look at my wife and go, “Well, but she’s perfect. I love those flaws. I want her to have those flaws. I want us to both have flaws, so that part of the perfection is this journey of growth so that we can learn and evolve together. And if we didn’t have any flaws, we couldn’t. There’d be nothing to learn. There’d be nothing to evolve, nothing to improve. And to be that wouldn’t feel perfect.”

 

So, if you’d understand, perfection is a perspective in this way. And I’ve got this poster, or not a poster, it’s a framed quote that I just printed on my printer that’s sitting right here next to my desk. It says, “My life is always perfect.” And always is in all capital letters. “My life is always perfect. I am grateful for every moment and enjoy the journey because I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to be doing right now.” That’s a perspective. Anyone could argue, what do you mean? You’re not exactly where you’re supposed to be. You should be further along than you are. That’s also a perspective. And when we have, it’s perfectionism where we’re comparing ourselves to this ideal, right? It’s been hard, I would say, we are in the gap, this gap between where we are and where we are choosing to believe that we could or should be. And then we don’t feel worthy. We don’t feel good enough. We don’t feel great about ourselves. We feel inadequate. We feel bad, on and on and on.

 

So, with all of that said, I want to close this out by sharing with you, oh, dang, and I took it out of my pocket– by sharing with you how to talk to God or that voice, whatever you call it, that voice of wisdom. How do you talk to God? And I will tell you this. It’s only when I quiet my mind and allow my brain to turn off and stop actively thinking and trying to control my thoughts and control my outcome that I receive these downloads.

 

And by the way, I’ve got probably hundreds of these over the last, I don’t know when I started, and I guess it was a long time ago, maybe as a kid, I don’t know, but I have so many of these documented downloads where I get these messages and they are invaluable. And they often, by the way, are turned into a book or I share it in different ways on the podcast. Just until last week, I wasn’t really comfortable sharing where these come from. I just might say, hey, I got this idea or this message or whatever, but I just feel compelled to talk, to share with you how to do this, how to duplicate this, how you can gain access to the wisdom, that voice of higher intelligence. And it might be your highest intelligence, I don’t know. Might be your intuition. Call it what you want.

 

But most of us are constantly thinking and we’re trying to control our thoughts and we’re trying to control our feelings and we’re trying to control outcomes. And what we have to do is the opposite of control would be to surrender. It’s quieting your mind and allowing, surrendering, not controlling, but being open to receiving. So, surrendering your control of your thoughts, and then receiving what it is that might come through you. And the first step in doing that is to set an intention, right? That’s why I usually pray, and then I meditate. And I’ll praym I’ll say, God, give me– please fill me with the wisdom that I need. I need guidance right now. I need strength. That is my intention. That is my request. That is my prayer. Please fill me with– and I’ll ask for what I need insights or guidance or clarity on.

 

So, I’ll set that intention, and then I’ll meditate and I’ll quiet my mind. And I won’t try to control the outcome, I won’t try to grab hold of the answer that I’m asking for, that I’m looking for. I’ll just allow myself to receive. And it might take– I mean, some mornings, I can’t get out of my own head and can’t get out of my own way and I don’t receive anything. And I just, all right, whatever, move on. I ran out of time. Maybe I got to finish my Miracle Morning out. But more often than not, I will get– I’ll sit there with my journal right next to me. So, this is a little tactical piece of it. Having your journal next to you, starting with a prayer, which is where you simply and, again, if you don’t believe in God, then you want to call it a prayer, word doesn’t resonate with you, it’s setting your intention. That’s a simple non-religious, nondenominational way of putting it. Set your intention, right?

 

That my intention, and you could be talking to your brain or to the universe or to collective consciousness or universal intelligence or whatever, and set the intention that I intend right now for me to receive the answer to the following question or the wisdom that I need or the guidance that I need or the clarity that I need or the strength that I need, set that intention, whether it’s through prayer or just through intention setting. And that might only take 30 seconds or 60 seconds, or maybe it takes a little while because maybe you aren’t clear on what you need help with and you need to talk your way through it. You might even journal, right? Sometimes, I pray journal, meaning during my scribing practice, I will write out what I need help with and I’ll gain clarity by simply letting my pen flow, not even knowing where I’m going to start. Sometimes, that download comes in the form of like, I need help with what I need help with, right? I need help with what I need help with. And then that download, I’ll just start flowing and writing in, and it’ll be– they call that free writing. You just free write without knowing what you’re going to write. And sometimes, more often than not, you find your way to something of value, to a clear intention, to a clear question, or whatever it is that you need in that moment.

 

So, that’s one, is to grab your journal, have it next to you, and then set your intention or say a prayer, to pray your intention. And then set your timer for 5 minutes or 10 minutes or whatever you have time for and just sit there in silence. And when I do that, usually within– depending on how active my mind is, usually it’s not too active at that point if it’s first thing in the morning before I’ve looked at my phone or my computer or my emails and I’ve stimulated myself. My mind is quiet and then I just receive like an antenna. And I will always have, oh, profound breakthrough idea insight, right? And I would grab my journal and write it down and then set the journal down on my lap. Close my eyes. Breathe. Not controlling. Not trying to force an outcome, but just surrendering and receiving. It takes faith just in this process alone. It takes faith that this process could work and it might take practice if this is so foreign to you.

 

And by the way, I know for a lot of you it’s not because I posted this on my Instagram, on my personal Facebook, on my professional Facebook page in the Miracle Morning Community and got, I don’t know how many comments, over 100 comments, I’m not sure how many comments of people saying that, yes, I get these downloads, or I don’t call them downloads, but yes, I pray. And then I receive and I journal and I– so I mean, I saw so many of you’re relating to that and you’re relating to this podcast right now, right? You’re like, yes, I do this and this, now, I’m just picking up a few extra. Either this is reinforcing what I already do, what you already do, or you’re picking up some extra tips and tricks and strategies and tactics that you can apply to your process of, and I call them downloads, I sometimes also call them breakthroughs. In fact, I used to call them breakthroughs because I would get these just breakthrough insights.

 

And also, by the way, at night, it’s not just in the morning. I have a journal next to my bed and these often come at night when I’m falling asleep And I want to draw a parallel right now for you, which is think about this, when I am laying down at night to go to sleep is that’s probably more than any other time when I’m not trying to control my thoughts. Now, sometimes, I will influence them to focus on things that I’m grateful for if I’m naturally letting my mind is wandering distressful thoughts.

 

If you read the Miracle Evening chapter in the new Miracle Morning updated and expanded edition, I talk about the second step in the SLUMBERS acronym is to let go of stressful thoughts and emotions, and I talk about replacing them with grateful thoughts. But in general, my point in the evening is to quiet my mind so that I’m not thinking anything. I’m just drifting off to sleep. And it would make sense that when I’ve quieted my mind to fall asleep, that’s when these downloads, there’s space for them, because if you’re thinking, there’s no space for the download, for the breakthrough, because you’re filling that void, that space in your mind, in your consciousness, you are filling it with your thoughts. You are choosing or following thoughts that you are generating from your mind.

 

And the idea here, and I know it’s nuanced that this is not a very easy tactical black and white, do a jumping jack. How do you do a jumping jack? That’s simple. You learn the exact format of a jumping jack or a push up and you know exactly how to do it, right? What we’re talking about today, having a conversation with God or with higher intelligence, universal consciousness, source, intuition, whatever you want to call it, that’s not quite as cookie cutter, as black and white, as simple, as straightforward. It’s a little more nuanced. How do you surrender? How do you receive?

 

So, I hope this is valuable for you. I encourage you to try this for the next week. Ideally, go for 30 days, but at least the next week. And if you want to try it at night or in the morning or ideally both, the more you do it, the more you’ll start to– it’ll become normal for you. You’ll start to get comfortable with this process of tuning in to receive whatever wisdom is available to you, and I believe it’s available to all of us.

 

So, I was just pausing for a moment to think if there was anything else that I wanted to cover. Oh, I know what I wanted to share with you. A few books that I will recommend that can help you with this. The first is How You Can Talk With God by Paramahansa Yogananda, one of my favorite spiritual teachers who basically studies all religious traditions or did study, I believe, but looks for the commonalities and the themes within all of the different spiritual traditions and religions. And that’s actually a very tiny booklet. I think you can buy it on Amazon for less than $5 and it’ll fit in your pocket. And again, I own this. So, I’m not just telling you about something that I don’t personally own and have read, but it’s called How You Can Talk With God by Paramahansa Yogananda.

 

Another book is Conversations With God. That’s one of my favorite books. It’s a series. The original has sold over 10 million copies, maybe a lot more than that. That’s a great book. The Surrender Experiment is kind of a fringe recommendation because that’s not about– I don’t know if there’s any talking with God in that book. But in Surrender Experiment, he talks about surrendering, where he realizes that all the best things in his life, he didn’t actually consciously choose or create, but they just kind of came to him. They showed up in his life, the people in his life, the best people in his life, right?

 

Like, my wife, I didn’t decide, I want to meet this person. I’m going to find her. I might have set the intention that I want to find a wife, I want to find this woman who has the same attributes that I have or that I value, that I aspire to live by and share my life with someone who has similar values or the same values and aspirations. I set that intention, which is part one of this process that we’re talking about. But then I was open to receiving it, and then someone delivered my wife to my life, right? God delivered my wife into my life.

 

And so, in The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer, who wrote The Untethered Soul and Living Untethered, those are three of my favorite books of all time, by the way, I read The Untethered Soul first, and then I read the Surrender Experiment, and then I read Living Untethered, but in that book, The Surrender Experiment, he just decides that he’s going to surrender and stop trying to control his life. And it’s kind of like that Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man, where in that movie, if you haven’t seen it, Jim Carrey decides he’s normally someone that says no to everything. No, he says no to social situations and he’s afraid of everything. He doesn’t go after his goals. He just says no and stays in his comfort zone.

 

And then in that movie, he decides, I’m going to say yes to everything from now on. And whenever he gets asked, “Hey, Jim, you want to come with us?” “Yes.” “Hey, Jim, you want to try this?” “Yes.” He says yes to everything, right? So, it’s kind of a surrender experiment where Michael Singer decides, I’m just going to say yes to everything and I’m going to see where it takes me. And it takes him on this extraordinary journey of going from being a hippie that lived in the woods and walked barefoot everywhere to being the CEO of a multimillion-dollar company to being featured on Oprah when she was at her peak to share his book that was flowed through him, The Surrender Experiment– or sorry, The Untethered Soul.

 

Anyway, so it’s a good book in terms of teaching you the paradigm of surrender. And for most of us, myself included, I like to control things, right? I try to take control of my destiny. I’m a Tony– I learned Tony Robbins when I was 20 years old, and I took control of my destiny. And there’s a time and a place for taking control of your destiny, for sure. But when you learn the power of surrender and you can learn to dance in between those two, dancing in between, taking control when it makes sense and it’s appropriate, and then surrendering when it makes sense and is appropriate, and doing both of those sometimes simultaneously.

 

So, that’s the reason I recommend The Surrender Experiment because if that is a foreign concept to you or one that you really have trouble with, the idea of surrendering freaks you out because you like to control things, I think welcome to the club, but that’s a great book to help you shift that mindset. And it’s beautiful. It’s just a story. So, it’s a really easy read. I think I’ve read it at least twice, The Surrender Experience by Michael Singer. So, those books again are How You Can Talk With God by Paramahansa Yogananda, Conversations With God by Neale Donald Walsch, and The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer.

 

All right, friends, I hope that was valuable for you. I really appreciate it. And just so you know, like when I decide what to talk about it, I usually do it in a meditation or a prayer on this podcast, and I get nervous sometimes. I’m like, I can’t do a podcast titled How to Talk with God. Like, how presumptuous is that, that I’m claiming that I can talk with God? People will judge me for that. In fact, maybe I’ll say that when I record the introduction, because I– so it’s like literally, I’m afraid to record podcasts that are anything other than these straightforward step 1, step 2, step 3, here’s how you achieve goals.

 

But I feel called and compelled to share this with you, and I hope it resonates. I hope it is helpful. I hope it’s valuable because I don’t think it’s a coincidence or a mistake or an accident that I get the message that I’m supposed to record this podcast right now. So, okay, I’ll do it. I’ll surrender, right? And not try to control it and just hit record and start talking. And I got a few notes in front of me and see what comes out. So, I hope it’s helpful for you. I love you very much and I look forward to our conversation next week. Take care.

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