Friendship with God: An Uncommon Dialogue

• Understand the friendship-with-God framework: what specifically Walsch (and 'God' in the dialogue) means by friendship as the appropriate model for the human-divine relationship — the specific qualities (honesty, familiarity, playfulness, mutual unconditional acceptance, the comfort of genuine knowing) that constitute friendship and that are offered as alternatives to the reverence-and-distance model of most formal religion
• Grasp the communication dynamic: how Walsch describes the specific inner experience of receiving God's communication — the quality of attention and receptivity required, how God's communication is recognised as distinct from one's own thoughts and impulses, and how the capacity for this form of communication is developed through practice
• Recognise the self-transformation dimension: how developing an actual friendship with God changes how one relates to oneself — the specific changes in self-perception, in the relationship to one's own difficulties and failures, and in the quality of self-love that follow from genuinely knowing (rather than merely believing in) the divine's unconditional regard for oneself
• Learn the relational consequences: how Friendship with God traces the effects of the human-divine friendship outward into human relationships — the specific changes in how one relates to others when the foundation is genuine friendship with God rather than the various defensive postures (seeking approval, fear of judgment, competitive comparison) that characterise relationship from the ego's perspective
• Appreciate the theological implications: how the friendship model implies a specific theology — a God without wrath, without requirement, without conditions for acceptance — and how Walsch addresses the objections from traditional theology that this model will inevitably raise