Introduction

I awoke from a sound sleep on August 2, 2016. It was The Urge that awakened me. I knew it well. I hadn't felt it in nearly 10 years, but I knew it well.

I had no idea what time it was, but I thought to myself, "If it's 4:23, will I need more of a sign than that?

I glanced at the clock on my bedside table.

4:13 a.m.

Of course. Just enough time to pull myself out of bed for my 4:23 "appointment."

The first dialogue I ever had with God began at 4:23 in the morning. And every morning for weeks I would be awakened between 4:15 and 4:30 by a deep inward urge: Get back to the dialogue.

This pattern continued for months (and subsequently, for years). I wondered if there was any significance to the timing of it, but ultimately released any need to know.

When the first conversations with God material, scribbled on yellow legal pads, actually become a published book (I was told in the dialogue that it would, so I sent it to the publisher on a dare), I thought that maybe something important had taken place there. And when over a million people obtained the book, translated into 37 languages, I was shocked into certainty about that.

Then it came to pass that requests for me to speak outside the U.S. began arriving, and I had to find my birth certificate in order to apply for a passport. It was nowhere to be found among my personal papers, so I applied to the records department of the government where I was born, paying the fee and asking to be sent an official copy.

I was stunned when I opened the envelope and examined the document.

TIME OF BIRTH: 4:23 A.M.

Of course.

The face that this experience of Divine connection always seemed to be initiated near the time every day that I came into this world somehow seemed meaningful to me. At the very least, I could not ignore the perfect symmetry on it.

Throughout the years, then, whenever I found myself suddenly wide awake between 4:15 and 4:30 in the morning, eyes staring at the ceiling, a certain energy coursing through my body, I knew what was going on. I got up immediately, raced to my laptop, and opened myself to whatever wanted to come through.

And so it was on this day, August 2016. I've just thrown back the covers and pulled myself out of bed. Now here I am at the keyboard. The only thing is, I didn't think I'd be doing this again.

Let me explain.

All of us are having what I have come to call conversations with God all the time. This was made clear to me on page five of the over 3,000 pages of the published CWG dialogues. So my experience was not unique, not uncommon. What was perhaps a bit unusual was that I made a written record of my innermost encounters, and then sent it to a publisher--who in turn actually printed it and placed it in bookstores.

I have come to understand and to experience that I (and all of us) have a deep and personal connection with God all the time, and that we may have an actual communication with The Divine, asking for guidance, help, insight, and assistance, whenever we finish. That was, in fact, the point of the book. It was placed into the world to open other people everywhere to this experience; to invite them to a new and more personal relationship with God.

The feeling that I must have such a dialogue, however--that "the time has come" for such an interaction, signaled by a deep inner feeling welling within me that cannot be ignored--is something else altogether. I experienced this as a feeling that comes over me, and I haven't had this feeling for nearly ten years. So I've held the idea that I had encountered it for the last time.

Oh, I knew I'd be writing again. I'll always be writing something. A column for Huffington Post. A blog for CWG Connect. A Facebook entry. An answer to someone posting a question at Ask Neale. Even a full-length book exploring in depth the messages I've received. Something.

But another on-paper conversation with God? Another back-and-forth dialogue with Diety? I thought those days were over. I thought that process was complete.

I was wrong.