The afterword by Neale Donald Walsh.

You have just read one of the most important books you will ever read in your life. And because you have gotten this far in this extraordinary book, you are one of the Crucial Ones. You are one of the people who will play a key role in co-creating our future on this planet. You may not have thought of yourself in that role, but if you've gotten this far in this book, you've been given it.

That's how Life works. That's how the Universe functions. That's how God converses with all of us. First we are confronted with data, information - a communication. Then we are invited, urged, or compelled to absorb the information, to receive the communication. Finally, we decide Who We Are in relationship to it.

That's what you're doing now. You're deciding Who You Really Are in relationship to the incredibly important information you've just absorbed. And now, no matter what you decide, you will play a key role in co-creating the future on Earth.

If you decide to ignore this information, you will co-create one kind of future. If you decide to act on it, you will co-create another.

You can't step out of your role now. You know too much.

When I first read this book I knew that I could never view my life in the same way again. I could see myself as part of the problem, or as part of the solution, but I could never again see myself as having nothing to do with either.

Somewhere in the middle of this book you may have been saying to yourself, "I see the problem. I get it! But what can I do?" Hopefully now, with you having completed the book, that question has been answered. But there is another question that must immediately follow for all thinking people: "Can it work?"

I'm here to tell you that it can. But much will depend - everything will depend - on whether you believe that it can, know that it can, intend that it will.

We are now engaged in the process of what Barbara Marx Hubbard calls "conscious evolution." We are recreating ourselves anew on this planet, with every daily decision and choice we make in every Moment of Now, and we are doing so - perhaps for the first time in human history (and especially after reading this book) with full awareness of what we are creating, and how.

I am encouraging you with all my heart not to put this book down unresolved. Thom Hartmann has presented here a plan of action. He has given you tools you can use, beginning right here, right now, in helping to change the collective consciousness, and write a new "story" with which to fuel the engine of the human experience.

If you do not think that one person can do much - can do enough - to make a real difference, I urge you to read another of Thom's books, The Prophet's Way.

Get it now. Read it immediately. It will inspire and excite you. For it will show you in real life terms just what one person can do, and lift you to a place of new determination to play your rightful role in the Creation of Tomorrow.

As for this book, quote it everywhere. Buy ten copies and give them away. Don't let this call to action go unheard.

You may feel like a voice in the wilderness, but it is your voice we are waiting to hear. Yours is the crucial vote. You are the determining factor. We reach Critical Mass when we reach you - and you choose to reach others - with the simple message of this book: We are all One.

Let us act, at last, in the best interests of us all. Then the Sun will shine another day, and another still, and life will not merely go on, but achieve its highest expression, its grandest glory, its greatest joy. Can we give this gift to our children?

Please say yes.

-- Neale Donald Walsch