LETTING THE DIVINE TAKE THE LEAD

How did you start your own journey into being able to trust the divine to

take the lead?

I would say it’s a daily practice, where it grows in you, like a muscle that gets developed
over time, until it becomes your reflex. I think the universe is always very creative in
giving you new opportunities to learn how to do this.

How did you start your own journey into being able to trust the divine to

take the lead?

I would say it’s a daily practice, where it grows in you, like a muscle that gets developed
over time, until it becomes your reflex. I think the universe is always very creative in
giving you new opportunities to learn how to do this.

I guess for me, this work started in response to the kind of nervous system I had,
because I was just this highly anxious person. Even though I seemed smart and
capable, and somewhat together on the outside, I was just fraught. I grew up with a mum
who, if we had a sore throat for two seconds, immediately thought it was throat cancer,
and who worried that if you walked to school you might get hit by a truck. And I sort of
took all that in, so by the time I was in my twenties, the level of anxiety about almost
anything was off the charts.

I was already by that point meditating and doing yoga; and I think there is a way that you
can use your own psyche like a laboratory, to learn how to relate to yourself differently.
So for me, a lot of it became certain kinds of prayers that I would use when I was in
situations that were absolutely overwhelming. I would say prayers like, ‘I can’t do this, so
do this through me.’

And I began to do it in very practical ways – like I was scared of heights, and all of a
sudden I would be somewhere up high, and I would say ‘Look through my eyes God,
take over my body, let you be the one acting through me.’ And then I would realise, ‘Oh
my goodness, this is completely shifting my perception.’

It is a complete revolution of perception when you are no longer

just the small struggling human having the experience – when
you begin to say to the divine, to this force of love, ‘Act through
me, do this through me.’

The human still has the responses she has, but something larger begins to come
through.

So it just began out of necessity because I couldn’t bear living with the kind of fears I
had. And I think in a way that maybe I chose to be born into a body that had so much
anxiety and fear so that I would be forced to learn some of these spiritual practices. Lots
of people talk about them, but when you ask them how they do this, they have no tools
that they can actually give you. They will just say, ‘Do it, just surrender.’ And when you
are scared to death, say about money, or whatever, ‘just surrender’ doesn’t mean much.

When you started to ask God to take over, it must have been through the

change in how you felt that you understood how?

Yes. And I am a Capricorn which is a very practical sign. So I really was never one of
those ‘woo woo’ spiritual people. Instead it was like ‘how does this affect my reality?’

So for me it was through trial and error that I realised anybody could do this – all they
needed was the willingness and the openness to begin to make this invitation.

As we start on the spiritual path many of us then think we need to be

loving all the time, at the expense of being loving with ourselves. What are

your insights here?

Yes I think that is a real misunderstanding. I actually think that the more you learn how to
pour the love and compassion towards yourself on the inside, the more you are able to
take care of that inner kid. Because you then develop a sort of inner goddess – the inner
divine inside yourself who is taking care of that struggling terrified kid. And once you are
pouring the energy towards that, then you have something to stand in; you are standing
in your own power and can tell the truth. It doesn’t mean you have to be mean to people
and rip their heads off, but you also don’t throw yourself under the bus. You really start
to get this instinctive sense of knowing the truth, and you don’t have to sacrifice yourself.

And in a sense some of this also comes from these ideas about the divine source – this
idea that everything, every person, place or thing, all finances, all energy, all everything,
comes from the divine. It doesn’t come from any person, place or thing that we are
making our source, or pretending is our source.

And as you learn that, you start to get that inner feeling that all
needs are going to be met, even if you don’t know how.

You might be in a situation where you have no idea how your needs are going to be met,
but you trust that you can call in this force of divine love. And then in that experience of
telling the truth to somebody, you are no longer thinking, ‘Oh my God, what if I do this,
what if I lose them, what if they’re mad?’ Instead you are thinking, ‘God is my source, if I
am guided to do this then give me the courage to do so.’

And it’s kind of funny, because you then can be more compassionate with other people,
because you are just – inside of you – taking care of you, by telling the truth. It lets you
actually feel an odd kind of compassion for people, because you are no longer scared of
them. And you know that with the divine as your source, it takes the pressure off.
Especially for women – all that endless people-pleasing that we are taught – it just gets
shifted so deeply. Because you realise that who you are now pleasing is the inner divine.
That is the job, to please the inner divine, and the more you honour that relationship on
the inside, the more you have to give to everybody else.

Say there is a family member, and you would like to express something

that is really important to you – it’s your truth – but you recognise that
the other person is not ready to hear it; how do you sit with that and

embrace that?

I actually grew up with that, because my father and I had totally different world views, so
I would really have to pick and choose what to share. But I found that as you start to
invite this inner divine, your instincts begin to sharpen; your inner knowing starts to
unfold, and you then begin to just know. So you then know when it is worth the battle,
and when it’s not.

You know that you are not going to slog your way through every argument with
everybody. Instead you start to know when it is important to stand your ground, and
when you just need to see that person less. You realise that they are not ready for this,
so you can literally cut back on seeing them. So there are all kinds of different ways to
approach this. It is not that you have to go in there blazing for every battle, but I think
when you are getting that instinctive sense of ‘oh yes, I have really got to stand up at this
one,’ then you can ask the divine to act through you and speak through you. And it’s
amazing what that inner love will do for you if invited.

How can we become aware of the difference between an opportunity

manifested from our ego, and an opportunity from the divine that is for

our highest good?

One of the ways you can tell the difference is by the level of attachment you have. I have
rarely if ever met somebody focused on manifesting stuff who was detached about the
outcome. The very nature of the ego is to want something, and the ego wants to know
how it is going to get it, and once it gets it, the ego wants to know how it is going to hold
on to it. That is all still the ego in the lead.

If it instead is offered to the divine, then something very

different happens, because then it is love’s agenda.

And in that, there is a kind of detachment that lets you actually enjoy it.
I can give you an example of this where there was a woman who for years really wanted
to meet her ‘soul mate’. And she had a vision board and when she finally met ‘him’, she
was in such a state of anxiety that she could not enjoy it. Instead she was jealous and
scared that she would somehow lose this dream. So I said, ‘You know, just drop all this,
and offer it back to the divine, because the truth is the divine brings your greatest good
when you are actually open to that. So if this is the person – great – and if it’s not the
person it’s because there will be somebody better. You don’t have to be manipulating
this from the state of the ego.’ And it just turned on a light in her. She let go, she
basically just let go, and ironically the person that she was so fixated on fell away, as he
was not the one. And a few months later, out of nowhere, she met the right person, and
she was actually in a state of being able to receive it and enjoy it, because it was no
longer like ‘now I have to manipulate the universe to hold on to it.’

And I think that is the fundamental difference. The state of receptivity and openness, and
also detachment, lead to a much deeper enjoyment. Because if you are busy grasping
something, then how can you actually enjoy it?

When we open ourselves to the divine we create an enormous

spaciousness inside. It is a spaciousness of being willing and
open to receiving the highest plan, and that is very different to
chasing something.

It is also very different to passivity, as it doesn’t mean you do nothing. A lot of time I will
say to the divine:

Just show me! Show me the actions. I am available to you.

Take over my body. The perfect place to live is already
selected. If I am meant to be here great, but if I’m meant to be
elsewhere I am wildly open to your plan. I’m here to serve you.
That is the sort of prayer I use. And this is so different to making a list of the things I
want, and then tracking down every lead and chasing them, and being angry if one of
them doesn’t open. It’s like you’re really saying over and over, ‘This will all unfold in the
perfect time in the perfect way.’

So when it looks as if something is about to happen, and then it falls through, you are
just coming from that place of ‘this is because the greater good is guiding this. It is either
not quite time yet, or there is a better route.’ And there is this spaciousness that then
starts to unfold, and you are saying, ‘I’m ready to receive this; I’m ready to understand
the right actions needed.’

Where do you notice most get stuck when it comes to trusting the divine to

take the lead?

I think it’s through a false sense of separation, where we believe that the divine has a
different agenda than we do, and then it takes us into fear. And I think some of this is
also due to confusion that has come out of the new age manifesting world – the idea that
any thought can be manifested and if it is not manifesting then we somehow need more
coaching, or we need more power.

Many people may reflect ‘well I’ve had this thought, and I have been really working on it,
and it’s not happening, so God must be against me or I must be blocking it,’ and this
creates so much tension. But when you move your consciousness to God’s side, trusting
that this is your deepest ally on the inside, then this is your soul’s knowing, and it no
longer is about the shopping list from the ego, instead it is about the soul knowing what
its agenda is to learn in this lifetime. It’s something the ego could never know. So as
soon as something happens that is baffling, or troubling, I am calling in the divine. I often
find that the prayer of ‘Use me’ will put you into alliance with the divine.

I guess that to me, rather than seeing it as oppositional, like ‘well here is what I want,
and then there is the divine which may have its own agenda that I’m terrified of,’ I
instead move into communion by saying, ‘Use me, allow me, open me, change me into
one who wants to serve this force of love and let the highest good occur. You know
what’s needed for the arc of my soul’s evolution in a way that I don’t.’
The moment you say that, you are then in communion, where
you allow yourself to be guided, and you are letting the Divine
take the lead.

LIGHT IS THE NEW BLACK

How did your own journey begin?

I grew up in Australia and I was always intuitive and empathic, but around the age of 13 I
became even more sensitive. I felt really alone, and I could feel this overwhelming
sadness in the world. I did not understand what was happening, as I had no one else
there who could explain it to me. I prayed that I would find others I could share these
experiences with, and after a while I ended up becoming friends with women who had
undergone some really hard life experiences. One of them was Angela Wood, who had
lost her daughter after she had taken an ecstasy tablet, and I was so inspired by how
Angela managed to turn a tragic experience around into something that was able to help
uplift the human spirit. I felt a longing that I might also be able to inspire others, but I did
not feel qualified to do so. I remember how I used to pray that something really bad
would happen to me so that I might have something that could inspire people. I was so
desperate to put love out there, but nothing bad happened.

Instead I ended up going into advertising, and because I had been inspired by Doreen
Virtue’s book The Lightworker’s Way I felt that perhaps I could be an undercover
lightworker through the form of advertising. I had an amazing career that took me to
London, but I kept feeling a niggle that perhaps this career was not my real calling.
Although there were so many aspects of the work I loved, I was exhausted at the end of
the day, and felt I was not using all of my gifts. Eventually I did get my wish: a lot of bad
things happened and my life completely crumbled, and through that experience I found
my light and my true soul purpose.
What is a lightworker?

A lightworker is someone who is choosing the call of spirit over the call of their ego.
Anyone can be a lightworker, and you find them in all professions. It is about consciously
choosing to follow your spirit, and to be a bright light in the world instead of someone
who brings others down.

We are here to grow as a soul, and as this is one of the

densest places in the universe, if you can turn your light on
here, you can turn it on anywhere.

However, we are not only here to grow as souls, but we can also help the planet grow by
being of service. In my practice I get a lot of lightworkers, who know they are here for a
reason; they feel they are here to do something but working out what this is can create
such a huge pressure. The big game-changer for me was when I stopped being so
focused on doing the light, and instead focused on being the light.

How can you be the light?

By following what lights you up! Once you follow that, you will effortlessly end up in the
middle of your soul purpose.

When my life crumbled, it was the best time ever, because I then had to look at what
truly lit me up. I knew I had to follow my inner light in order to find my path again. I
realised that roses light me up, so I started buying myself flowers every week, which
inspired me to also seek out beauty in nature, so I discovered London parks. I would
make sure I spent time in a London park every day, and I would meditate there, with my
notepad, and the beauty around me inspired me to start writing. I would then share my
writing on Instagram, which turned into Rebecca’s Thoughts, which then became Instant
Guidance on my website, which in turn became a book proposal for Hay House, which
now has manifested as my book Light is the new Black. As I was writing the last
paragraph in my book I looked up and realised I was sitting in Regent’s Park’s Rose
Garden and I was amazed how something seemingly so insignificant as buying myself
flowers was actually what had sparked this whole chain of events that led to my book
being published. But because I allowed myself to follow what lights me up, and feed my
soul with that, in the act of buying myself flowers and spending time in nature, I naturally
allowed myself to be inspired by my spirit.

Have you got some more tips for how we can find our soul purpose?

The first step is to follow what lights us up, every day, and prioritise that, and when we
do we find we naturally light up the world. Another great tool is to meditate and fill
ourselves up with light, such as in a Sourcing Meditation.

Sourcing Meditation

● Rub your hands together to open your heart (your palms are extensions of the
heart chakra). Then, gently pull your hands apart and notice the subtle energy
you have activated – this is your connection with Source. Rest your hands, palms
upwards, on your lap, noticing the subtle pulse that has been activated in the
centre of your palms. Imagine a beautiful flower in the centre of your heart.
● Now close your eyes, and imagine a beautiful channel of white light
streaming down from the heavens straight for you. Allow this bright
supportive light to come through the top of your head and straight into your heart.
Imagine the flower in your heart opening.
● Breathe and allow yourself to be supported. Breathe and allow yourself to be
filled up. Breathe and allow yourself to be nurtured. Breathe and allow yourself to
come home. Breathe and listen to the callings of your soul. Breathe and allow
yourself to light up.
● You don’t need to worry about your mind being quiet or sitting still for
hours, all you need to do is to open your heart, breathe and receive the
beautiful energy washing over and into you from the heavens.

This meditation puts you into your feminine instead of your masculine, as you are
allowing yourself to receive, rather than doing something.
What is the difference between our ego, our soul and our spirit, and how

can we align more with our soul and spirit?

The ego is the part of us that is driven by fear, the human part of us that is reactive, and
sees itself as separate from others. The soul is the part of us that travels with us through
lifetimes, and it is like a beautiful piece of art, that can bring with it wisdom and all these
gifts we have been crafting for lifetimes. It can also bring with it memories, that can be
from painful events that have happened in the past.

The spirit is Source, the divine part of us. When you have a heart-break, it is a good
thing, because it allows the heart to break open so the soul can step forward. And at
times when we experience something difficult in our lives, which perhaps triggers a deep
soul learning or soul memory, our soul can have something I call “soul-break”, which is
when the we have a real cracking open of our soul, and we can then truly surrender,
allowing Source, that is spirit, to step forward.

I feel we have chosen to go through the big events in our lives, that they are
predetermined, and these are our opportunities for our soul-growth, and although these
events are hard to go through, they happen for you, almost as if the universe is trying to
get us out of our own ways, so we realise how supported we actually are.

When we finally surrender and give it all up, we are allowing

Source to step in and help us.

It is like that poem by Hāfez describing the difference between our experience of
Existence and that of a saint; the saint knows he has no more moves left in his chess
game with God, so he surrenders, whereas we may think we still have a thousand
moves left.

Sonia Choquette taught me that there is no difference between a good and a bad
experience; they are all good. When it comes to spirituality some people have made
spirituality into some kind of “If I do all the right things, my life will be amazing”, and that
is not what spirituality is about. Sonia explains that we are all here to learn, grow and
evolve, so we cannot become immune to “bad” things happening, but instead learn how
to deal with them.

What is your daily practice so you can live and be in the light?

I do the sourcing meditation daily, ideally in nature. During this meditation I receive
guidance from spirit, making it easier for me to live my life in alignment with my soul and
spirit. That is the cornerstone in my spiritual practice.

I also surround myself with flowers, light and beauty, as this really lights me up. My
whole back room in my house looks like a rose garden, it is so filled with light, beauty
and flowers, and this helps to nourish my soul, which helps me to be inspired so I can
easier live and be in the light.

MAKE YOUR LIFE WORK

How does it feel to communicate with God?

God – or the essential essence, the pure being of life itself – is communicating with me
all the time, as part of the normal processes of daily living. So God doesn’t communicate
with me at 5.30 in the morning or 2.30 in the afternoon, or when I call upon God in a
specific way, or at a specific time, or through a specific process, but rather God is
communicating with me – and with everyone and everything – all the time through the
process of life itself.

It is really rather like tuning in to a radio where there are many stations and the radio
signal is always there. When you turn on the radio, you don’t create the signal. It was
there before you turned the radio on. You simply tuned in to the signal that’s always in
the air, and when you tune to a particular station on the radio, you are deciding what
music you like best! So you really are tuning in to the station or the portion of the signal
that most specifically relates to you as an individual.
How can we know whether these messages are coming from the divine or

from the ego-mind?

First of all, I understand the thrust of your question, but let me quibble just a bit with the
terms. There’s nothing that’s not God so even your ego-mind is, in my definition, part of
the divine. There’s nothing on earth that is not divine and there’s no part of us that is not
divine. So it’s not really a question of whether the messages are coming from the divine
or coming from our ego, because that suggests the ego is separated from, or other than,
the divine, and such a construction would be impossible in the known universe, as there
is nothing that’s separate from anything else.

The challenge is that although everything is an expression of the divine, not everything
expresses the divine in fullness, so the known universe might be depicted as a filtering
system for the divine, much as a strainer might filter the ocean pouring through it. I
notice that the essential essence which I call God is expressed in varying levels
depending upon how large the openings are in the filter, and how big these are depends
on the level of consciousness that any individual expression of divinity has reached and
is conveying at that moment.

So the question you’ve asked – how can we tell the difference between the messages
that are coming from God and the messages that are coming from the ego-mind – the
answer is: all messages are coming from God. The real question is: how can we tell the
difference between the unfiltered messages from God and those messages which have
been filtered and strained through the limited understanding of a person’s mind, given
their present state of consciousness? Not everyone is functioning at the same level of
consciousness. I’m not functioning at the same level of consciousness as the Dalai
Lama or the Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. I am, however, functioning at perhaps a
higher level of consciousness than the two-year old child I saw being carried through the
supermarket the other day by his mother, although that may not be true. He may, in fact,
be operating at a higher level of consciousness than I am, but from my observation it
appeared as if he was not.
Consciousness is a quality of being that can expand or
contract, interestingly enough, at our own will, and we are given
an opportunity to take a look at the messages we’re receiving
and to see if they are in harmony with who we really are, which
is simply pure love.

Therefore, if the messages that we are receiving reflect the purest and highest form of
love, then they are clearly unfiltered, undistorted messages that reflect our divinity.

When the messages I receive are coming from my ego, then they are concerned with
me – that is, Neale the Small, Neale the Little – with what Neale the Little needs, wants,
feels he deserves, or is worried about losing or not having enough of.

But when Neale the Large, Neale the Big, Neale the Universal is present in my mental
experience, none of those other considerations matter. So I can be clear that the
messages are from the highest source in the universe when they have nothing to do with
any small concerns that I might have about my own self; how I’m going to survive and
how I’m going to make life work. Because who I really am needs nothing and requires
nothing in order to express The Everything That Is.

Feelings are also the language of the soul and if I’m feeling
expansive and enlarged, then there’s very little filtering going
on.

But to the degree that I feel contracted, as opposed to expanded, I can rest assured that
the messages from the highest intelligence, the greatest wisdom, the grandest love, are
being filtered accordingly.

Is the ego a tool to provide us with a challenge?

The ego doesn’t provide a challenge, because it is not the ego’s job to challenge us, but
rather to simply provide a context, which is quite different. If I go outside in a bathing suit
and it’s ten degrees below zero, the temperature isn’t challenging me.

It simply has created a context for me to decide: do I really want to wear a bathing suit or
shall I get dressed up in something that’s warmer? So the weather creates a context, it
doesn’t create a challenge. It just simply says: this is the contextual field, what kind of
clothing do you want to wear? The ego, likewise, is not creating a challenge, but a
context that shows us who we are. It is the ego’s job to contextualise life in such a way
that it shows us clearly who we are, who we are acting like, and who we can be, and
then it invites us to make the choice.

So ego is a good thing. The ego is a marvellous, marvellous tool, but it’s been
condemned, it’s gotten a bad rap; there’s actually nothing wrong with a healthy ego.
There’s nothing wrong, for instance, with me getting up in the morning and saying I am
wonderful, I am marvellous, I am a creative, exciting, love-filled being and I’m absolutely
fantastic. There’s nothing wrong with that, that’s a very healthy ego, that isn’t ego run
amok, that is ego that’s healthy, that’s creating the grandest notion of ourselves that the
mind can embrace and conjure. So the ego is not our enemy, but the ego does create a
contextual field within which we can decide what part of ourselves we want to wear. Is it
hot outside or is it cold outside? What part of ourselves do we want to express and
experience?

But ego that is suppressed – ego that is called our enemy, ego that is imagined to be
something other than good and wonderful – that kind of ego is simply misunderstood
and people aren’t clear about the function of the ego inside the human experience. So I
can tell you that ego is our servant, but if we are not careful, we will allow the ego to run
away with us, to imagine that not only are we magnificent, wonderful and incredible, but
somehow more magnificent, wonderful and incredible than anybody else. That’s ego that
has run out of control. The ego is hugely powerful, because it contains the power of
divinity itself. The ego is God’s energy, it is the energy of divinity itself, and that energy is
so spectacular that if we are not aware of where that energy is coming from and what its
purpose is, it can actually be too much for the unaware person to control.
So the unaware person will start to believe that magnificent means better, that wonderful
means grander. And if we’re not careful, we will imagine that we are somehow superior
to other aspects of divinity, which of course is the great illusion, because a thing cannot
be superior to itself. You can’t be greater than you are. The very idea of being better or
superior carries with it an illusion of separation, but when we are clear, there’s no
separation; nothing is better than any other thing. My little finger isn’t better than my
thumb, they’re both fingers on the hand of the body of God, but if I imagine that my little
finger is better than my thumb, then I’m imagining that somehow they’re not attached to
the same body. But they are just simply different expressions of the same thing called
Neale.

So in exactly that same way, everything is an expression of the same thing called God.
When we truly live in Namaste and don’t just use it as a nice saying – the God in me
sees the God in you – then the ego has no place to run amok, it is not out of control, and
‘Namaste’ becomes a statement that says I am clear that my ego is a wonderful tool that
God has given me to know who I really am and to see who you really are as well.

What is the divine purpose for us being here?

To experience and express our absolute, complete and true identity, and our purpose for
being here is identical to the purpose of Saturn being a planet, the sun being in the sky
and the purpose of grass growing in the field and a flower blooming in the garden. The
purpose of life is everywhere the same, to express and to experience, to become and to
fulfil, to give evidence to the presence of divinity and to allow divinity to know itself fully
and completely in its utter magnificence

Our purpose for being on the earth as human beings is to be

expressions of the divine and to recreate ourselves anew in the
greatest vision we hold about who we are in the present
moment.
My purpose, therefore, in my life is to use each incoming moment as an opportunity for
me to know myself even more fully as I really am, thus giving God the ongoing joy of full
expression in infinitely countless ways and knowledge of that magnificence experientially
and not merely conceptually.

What is the purpose of the challenges we encounter in life?

The contextual field is placed into the experience of all sentient beings as a manner and
a means by which all individuated selves of divinity may experience themselves fully. To
offer an elementary, but perhaps a clear example: if one understands oneself to be the
light, one can know that one is the light, one can conceive of oneself as the light, but one
cannot experience oneself as the light unless and until one finds oneself in the darkness.
In that moment, one can experience one’s true identity and one can express it as the
light. Therefore, every great master who has walked the planet, has had their version of:
Raise not your fist to heaven, and curse the darkness not, but be a light unto the
darkness that you might know who you really are. And all those whose lives you touch
might know who they really are as well.

That’s why not just one master but virtually every spiritual master of every spiritual
tradition has each said in their own words: love your enemies and bless those who curse
you; do good to those who seek to damage you and be a light unto the darkness.

These experiences are brought into our present moment in

order to offer us opportunities to express and experience who
we really are.

But now here’s something that’s important to know, something that’s important to
understand alongside that explanation. The contextual field that I’ve described is being
created by us, and the wonder of who we are is that we have been given the authority
and the ability to respond – to create the contextual field of our highest desires such that
we can express and experience who we really are, most grandly and most magnificently.
And we can do so without the need for suffering or pain or damage or fear being a part
of that contextual field. Now, one might ask how that can occur.

There are several ways to create, other than being who we are. If I want to know myself
as the light, I do not have to experience the darkness, much less create it in my own
presence. All I have to do is look outside of myself. I don’t even have to create it on the
earth, I just look into the sky and all I see is darkness and light. I see the cosmos all in
front of me, surrounded by darkness, so I don’t have to create the darkness in my own
personal direct experience, in my own life. One does not need to create the contextual
field, the contrasting element, the law of opposites in one’s own personal experience,
which is why it’s not necessary for spiritual masters to experience pain and suffering and
anxiety and fear in their own personal experience.

When an entire species like the human race rises to the level of mastery – which is
coming on this planet relatively soon – then that whole species realises it does not have
to produce global nightmares in order to create, in order to experience global paradise.
It’s not necessary. All we have to do is look elsewhere, and a marvellous tool that human
beings have is the ability to use memory. The reason we’re given memory is so that we
don’t have to repeat what we did before, so we don’t even have to have any negativity
on this planet ever again. All we have to do is remember a time when we did, as we
were maturing as a species. And by the way, there are many human beings who
understand this perfectly. That’s why if you ever go to any holocaust memorial anywhere
in the world you’ll see the same sign in different languages. In English, it’s three simple
words: Lest we forget.

The whole point of a holocaust memorial is to allow us to create a contextual field within
which we announce and declare, express and fulfil, and experience who we really are
without having to recreate the opposite of that in our physical environment. We merely
need to remember a time when we did do that. The beauty of memory is that it gives us
the ability not to repeat the same thing over and over again, but simply to know of its
existence.
Evolution has enabled in us the process of spiritual maturation
to understand this.

We have the ability right now as a planetary species to end terror, violence, anger,
retribution and all the other negative aspects of life that we’ve perpetrated – by simply
remembering who we really are, our ultimate purpose for being on the planet, our
ultimate reason even for being alive and the process by which that can manifest in our
reality without having to create a contextual field in physicality in this moment now that
presents us with the exact opposite. This is the highest spiritual teaching and sooner or
later, people will understand it perfectly. When that happens, what you are seeing now
on the earth in terms of how we treat each other will disappear completely.

In your book ‘God’s message to the world’ you mention that God does not

want us to suffer, and God does not have a plan for us.

God does not include suffering and pain as a necessary part of the process of the
expression of divinity, but just the opposite, meaning that when we know who we really
are, we don’t even experience suffering, because our knowledge of who we really are
precludes the possibility of us suffering.

Let me give you a plain and simple example: I had the joy of seeing my son’s wife
deliver three of her children. She must be an angel on earth, because I watched her
through her labour and although she was experiencing pain, she was not experiencing
suffering. Actually, she was smiling joyfully. The look on her face was angelic and even
though the pain, when it really hit, was causing her to wince and contort her facial
expression now and then, through that you could sense her experience and her
expression of joy. And the reason was clear. She wasn’t suffering. Although she was in
pain, she wasn’t suffering, because she understood exactly what she was doing. She
was bringing new life to the planet and her joy in that moment overrode any possibility of
her experiencing it as suffering.
I suggest that pain and suffering are two entirely different
things.

Pain is a physical or emotional experience. Suffering is our judgement about it. Suffering
is our announcement that it should not be there, it should not be happening, but if we are
clear that the pain is there because it’s part of the larger process that’s occurring, then
the pain becomes not only tolerable but virtually extinguished in terms of the amount of
suffering it causes us.

A second example is from my own life when I experienced the worst toothache I ever
had, and it happened to be a Sunday when all the dentists were closed. Eventually I
found a dentist who was willing to help me and he said, “This is going to be painful,
because you’ve got a badly impacted tooth, badly infected and we need to do a little
minor surgery here.” I said, “You know what? I don’t care how much pain it is. If you can
help me, do whatever it takes.” So I endured the pain of the dental procedure, I endured
that willingly, happily, like yeah, stick the needle in, do whatever you have to do,
because I was clear about what the pain was about.

That is, the pain was part of a procedure to which I agreed. We don’t earn points in
heaven based on the amount of suffering that we are experiencing on earth. In fact, no
suffering is required for us to experience our true and complete nature, the divinity within
us.

God does not have a plan

Obviously God doesn’t have a plan for us. If God had a plan for us, why would God not
tell us what the plan is? Would God be sitting up there thinking: “I’ve got to create a plan
for Neale but I’m going to wait until he’s around 75 to tell him, because if I tell him too
early, then he’d really have a wonderful life and I don’t want that. I want him to spend his
entire life searching, straining and stressing, trying to figure it all out. And then, maybe if
he’s a good boy when he’s around 75, maybe I’ll give him a little inkling, a little clue what
the plan is. Look at him squirming down there trying to figure it all out.” Obviously God
does not have a plan for us. God has a desire for us, but not a plan for us.
God’s desire is that we understand and comprehend completely who we really are, and
then accept, embrace and utilise the power of divinity itself which flows through us, in us,
as us, in order to express our own plan, the plan that we have set for ourselves. The
sadness is that most people do not set a plan for themselves, they do not create a plan
for themselves, because they’re either waiting for God’s plan to be made clear to them,
or they don’t even have any understanding at all of the real purpose of life so they have
no idea what they’re doing here or where they’re going.

I remember a man just a few years ago who pulled up alongside me on the kerbside. He
rolled his window down and said, “Excuse me, sir, could you give me directions?” I said:
“Of course, I’d be happy to, where do you want to go?” He said, “I don’t know.” I said,
“Really? Well, if you don’t know where you want to go, I can’t give you directions. But
when you know where you want to go, tell me and I’ll tell you how to get there.”

The challenge before the human race is that most of us don’t

know where we want to go, and we have no idea of who we are
and why we’re here.

There are four fundamental questions in life: Who am I? Where am I? Why am I where I
am? What am I doing about that? Most people have never asked themselves those
questions, much less answered them.

People who have achieved and embraced a deep understanding of the answers to those
four questions, and a deep understanding of themselves, live extraordinary lives; lives
without suffering, lives where they don’t feel they need anything that they do not now
have, lives of incredible joy and peace regardless of the furnishings of their day-to-day
life. Their joy has nothing to do with how many cars they have, how big their house is,
whether they have a house at all or anything that is materially oriented.

Before I understood all this, I was living my life according to the formula that most people
on the earth live their lives. Get the guy, get the girl, get the car, get the job, get the
house, get the spouse, get the children, get the better car, get the better job, get the
better house, get the better spouse, get the better spouse, get the better spouse, get the
office in the corner, get the name on the door, get the promotion, finally get the
retirement watch, get the grey hair, get the sickness and get the hell out.

Then I asked God, “Why isn’t my life working? Can you just give it to me simply, in a
single sentence, what does it take to make my life work?” And God smiled, and said:
“Neale, it’s really very simple. You think your life is about you, but your life is not about
you. It’s about everyone whose life you touch and the way in which you touch it.”

When you touch everyone’s life in the way that expresses the
divinity that you are, all the things you were stressing and
straining for before you understood this formula, will come to
you automatically.

“Don’t go around asking what are we to eat, what are we to drink, wherewithal will we
clothe ourselves. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added
unto you.”

THE HEALING POWER OF MYSTICAL PRAYER

My own journey into mystical prayer started back in 1992 when

I became a student of A Course in Miracles.

I would read from the course, do a lesson each day, then sit and meditate underneath a
tree in Primrose Hill and literally commune with God, the angels and all those unseen
forces that I could feel were there, holding me and supporting me. This was during my
first ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ experience, and as I was sitting there in the park I would
surrender to God all those unhealed areas of myself that I was deeply ashamed of, or
just did not understand. I had given up trying to be in control – instead I had finally been
brought to my knees realising I had no clue how to get myself out of the darkness I was
in. But God did. I could feel it.

As I entered into this deep mystical prayer, I could feel the

darkness lift, and it was as if I was being bathed in light. I knew
that something sacred was taking place, and there was no
turning back.

I was then 24 and this spiritual initiation healed me so deeply (my depression went away
in just 6 weeks) that I knew through my own experience the incredible power of mystical
prayer. I have since that time realised that what I experienced was very similar to the
form of mystical prayer that was practised amongst early Christians and in ancient
indigenous traditions.

What is a mystic?

A mystic is someone who is drawn to experience the divine, rather than just talk about it,
so they can move from ‘I believe’ to ‘I know’. This enables them to connect deeply with
their soul, letting it guide them on their path, rather than just following the wishes of their
ego.

One great mystic was Saint Teresa of Ávila. Before she began writing her classic book
The Interior Castle (published in 1588) she said a prayer in which she stated she didn’t
know where to begin. She then had a vision, where she saw the soul, and to her it
looked like a crystal with seven different mansions, all with different levels of
consciousness leading closer and closer to God.

This is similar to the description of our seven chakras, which

form part of our energetic spiritual anatomy, all with their own
unique wisdom and consciousness.
Many different mystical traditions talk about chakras; of course we find it in Ayurvedic
medicine, Tibetan Bon (mystical shamanism from Tibet) and yogic philosophy, but also
in the ancient shamanic energy medicine from the Amazon.

Our chakras are energy centres; the lower three represent our connection with Mother
Earth and our physical reality, meaning they deal with how well rooted we are in life, how
able we are in using our creativity to manifest our dreams, and our ability to have happy
and healthy relationships, both with others and with ourselves. Our fourth chakra is the
heart, which is the doorway between our physical and spiritual reality, as well as the seat
of our ability to give and receive love, whilst our upper three chakras are our connection
with our soul, the divine and with Spirit. When the chakras are healthy they let us be
conduits of love, so we can use our voice to speak our soul’s truth, trust our intuition and
be able to receive, understand and act on divine guidance.

We cannot move up the last three chakras with our mind, instead the mind has to
surrender its need to be in control when we reach the level of the heart.

It is here we atone for our mistakes and come to the

understanding we need to forgive ourselves and others.

This causes us to go through a spiritual transformation where the mind becomes a

servant to the heart, creating an inner shift that makes us ready to expand our
consciousness and ascend through the upper chakras, connecting us even more deeply
with our higher consciousness.

Mystical prayer is one of the processes we use for this journey, as it helps us heal by
creating a sacred space where we can become aware of dysfunctional patterns being
played out in our lives, casting light on our shadow – all those aspects of ourselves we
try to keep hidden – as well as connecting us with our inner love so we can commune
more deeply with the divine. All of this helps us heal and balance our chakras, tuning us
into a higher vibration of divine consciousness – just as Teresa of Ávila could see that
mystical prayer would help us ascend the soul’s seven different mansions.
Having a daily practice of mystical prayer helps us cleanse away yesterday’s stress and
lifts us above our fearful thinking so we can better understand and observe what is going
on. It tunes us into our soul’s intelligence so it can guide us on our path forward. But
above all, it takes us straight into God’s loving arms, filling our whole being with a deep
inner peace, allowing us to feel that we finally have come home. And as we open our
eyes we can see how the world has taken on a new light, as if it has been sprinkled with
divine fairy dust. And once we have experienced that we know the sweetness and
healing that mystical prayer brings.

Mystical Prayer

Dear God/Goddess/Great Spirit

Thank you for shining your light so deeply into my mind that my darkness is easily
revealed.

I know that this darkness is not the truth of who I am – it is only an illusion that keeps me
feeling as if I am separate from you – so I now surrender to you all the ways in which I
block your love from flowing freely through me, all the ways in which I get tense,
anxious, fearful or judgemental, all the ways in which I am not allowing myself to be the
best version of myself that I can be (say here your own specific details of what it is you
want to surrender).

Lift me high up into the sky, so I can soar above the thinking of this world, helping me to
see, feel, hear and know the truth of who I am – a being of light – and the truth that we
are all sacred, divine beings, having a human experience, and that we are all doing the
best we can, with the resources we have available to us.

Thank you for filling my heart with so much love that I may send blessings and love to
those I have judged, healing to those I have wounded and forgiveness to those that may
have hurt me.

I give to you now my heart and thank you for shining your light so deeply into my very
being that the insights I need for healing are revealed to me now (be still here for a
moment so these insights can flow into your awareness).
Thank you for making me an instrument of your love, so I may bring light where there is
darkness, healing where there is pain. May your shining light flow through me and
illuminate my path so I can easily see the steps you want me to take.

THE LOST MODE OF PRAYER

Can you explain the difference between praying for rain and praying

rain?

My wife and I live in a remote area, a rural community in Northern New Mexico. When I
first acquired our land in the early 1990s, it was during one of the worst droughts since
the National Weather Service had started keeping records, in 1888. The cattle were
dying, crops were dying, and people were having to sell their farms because there was
no water. That was when a native friend of mine asked me if I wanted to join him to pray
rain.

We went to a very sacred place that his people had created long ago for specifically this
purpose – to commune. This is an important word in the ancient Christian text, because
the word ‘prayer’ didn’t even exist in the original translations of the bible. Instead the
word was ‘commune’. So our ancestors, whether they were doing this from a native
perspective or from a biblical perspective, were communing with the forces of nature,
and that is very different from praying for something to happen.

When we are praying for something, we are conditioned to feel

that we are essentially powerless, so we are asking for an
intervention from a higher power.

Whereas, when we commune with the forces of nature – with the earth and the wind, the
sun and the elements, with the angels and the spirits of nature – instead of conveying a
sense of helplessness, we feel that we are part of, rather than separate from, the world
around us, and because of that we are part of the solution.
After my native friend had completed his very brief process, I said to him, ‘I thought you
were going to pray for rain.’ He answered, ‘No, if I prayed for rain, the rain could never
happen, because when we pray for something to happen, we are actually empowering
the very condition of lack that we had hoped to change. It actually strengthens the not
having.’

Basically what this means is that when we are asking for something to happen, we are
saying ‘It is not here now.’ So when we pray for the healing within our own bodies or in
the bodies of our loved ones, or we pray for the perfect relationship or abundance in our
lives, however well-intentioned these prayers are, the very act of asking for something
affirms that it is not present in the moment.

So I asked him, ‘Well, when I saw you in this medicine wheel and you closed your eyes
just for a few seconds and you held your hands in a prayer mudra over your heart, what
happened during that time?’ He said, ‘It was then that I felt the feeling of what it feels like
when it rains in my pueblo village and I can walk with my naked feet through the mud
and the mud is there because there has been so much rain. I could smell the smells of
the rain falling on the earth and I felt the feeling of walking with my naked chest through
the storks of corn and the corn is bitter because there has been so much rain, and I gave
thanks for the rain that has already happened,” even though on that day we were still in
a drought.

So he was giving thanks for the rain that had already happened
as if it were already there.

This is the difference between praying in a linear sense and praying in a quantum sense.
When we pray in a linear sense, we are conditioned to be in the place where we don’t
have something and we are asking for it to be brought to us. Whereas when we pray in a
quantum sense, we begin with the outcome, so we begin as if the rain were already
there.

Can we also do this with healing the body?

In a medicine-less hospital in China, a man that I had studied with, recorded a film of
what we in the West would consider a miracle, but it is only a miracle until we
understand what happened and then it’s no longer a miracle, instead it becomes a
technology. In this case, a woman had had Western doctors tell her that she had an
inoperable tumour in her bladder and they couldn’t help her. As a last resort, she went to
this traditional medicine-less hospital, a healing clinic where they began preparing her
for the process that was about to happen.

These traditional healers, they don’t just walk up to you, perform the healing and then
walk away. Instead there is a preparation stage that involves the person who is asking
for the healing – they are a willing participant in the process. This differs from surgery in
the West where we are more passive and say, ‘Make my condition go away,’ and then
we get healed. In the medicine-less tradition they have a change in belief systems, they
have a change in diet and the nutrition in their bodies, and when they have successfully
completed all of that, they undergo a process.

The film is in real time, two minutes and forty seconds long, and we can see how the
woman is in a room with three practitioner and we can view her bladder through an
ultrasound. In the film we can see how the tumour responds to the healing from the three
practitioners that are with her – to the prayer if you will. Those three practitioners are
praying quantum just like my native friend did with the rain. They begin with the outcome
– they feel the feeling of the woman’s body being already healed.

What was interesting to me was that they didn’t even focus on the tumour per se.
Instead they came from the place, a feeling, where this woman’s body was fully healed –
as if it had already happened. So any condition in her body that was not in harmony with
her life force would have responded. If she had a cold it would have responded, if she
had a virus it would have responded. These three practitioners – who are trained in this
particular technique of merging the feeling of their heart with the energy in their bodies
into a single potent force –created a field from this force which caused the living tissue in
the woman’s body to respond, and it responded by coming into full harmony within those
two minutes and forty seconds.
So when we see that film, it looks to us as though the tumour just disappears – a
miracle.

But we are all capable of having these experiences, because

we are literally wired to heal our advanced nervous system,
which allows us to heal spontaneously and to regenerate.

Every organ in our body is now documented by science to have the ability to regenerate
and heal – but only when given the right environment.

So when my native friend was praying rain, that was a condition outside his body, but it
began inside his body by him feeling as if the rain is already present. He induced this
feeling by using his senses: he smelled the smells of the rain, as if the rain was already
there; he could hear the rain falling on the ground; and he fully incorporated all of his
senses and then he gave thanks for what was already there. In the traditional medicine-
less hospital, they do something very similar. They feel the feeling as if the woman is
already healed. They give thanks for what has already happened and they incorporate
as many of their senses as they can – and there was a positive outcome in both
instances – the rain happened and the tumour disappeared.

Now, as a scientist in the West I can’t go on stage in front of thousands of people and
say that my native friend made it rain or that those practitioners made the tumour
disappear. I can’t say that as a scientist, because we don’t allow for those connections in
science. So what I have to say is, ‘There is a high correlation between the time my
native friend invoked the deep sense of gratitude for the rain or the healers invoked the
deep sense of gratitude for the healing, and the results that we saw in the real world.’

I am a scientist. I believe in science, but science does not have all the answers right
now. When we then see these indigenous practices, whether that is the indigenous
traditions in the American desert southwest, or a 5,000-year-old healing tradition in
Central Asia, we witness the relationship between us – the human being – and the world
around us that science has yet to allow for.
So this form of quantum prayer remains a mystery in Western science, but it’s very much
a part of our ancient and most cherished spiritual traditions; the belief that we are deeply
connected to one another, to the world around us, and that we have within us the ability
to participate in our own healing.

This healing is about communion, from the word ‘commune’

which was translated as ‘prayer’ a little over 1,000 years ago.

This insight leaves us with a very different sense of ourselves, and our relationship to the
world.

A time of extremes

This indigenous wisdom is very powerful, but it’s not the only wisdom. Science is also
powerful, but it’s not the only wisdom either. The spiritual traditions of our past are good,
but they’re not complete. This is the generation where we have the tools and the
technology at our fingertips, where we have got the internet; enabling us not only to
access records of our past but also to share them – so we get to bring all of that wisdom
into our lives and into the conditions of our world. This is a time of extremes, which
means big changes in the world, and big changes in our lives, where we’ve got to live
and think differently, more so than we have ever had to in the past. But to think and live
differently we have to have new knowledge and this is the knowledge that we have at
our fingertips; the indigenous knowledge, the spiritual knowledge and the scientific
knowledge.

I think when something is true, you’ll see it show up in a lot of different places at the
same time. For example, the fact that we live in a world where everything is connected –
this is something our indigenous ancestors and our spiritual traditions have told us about
for thousands of years.

Now science, at a quantum level, knows that everything is connected too, and right now
scientists are asking, ‘Okay, everything is connected, so what do we do with this
connection? How do we apply that in our everyday lives?’ Because science can only tell
us how things work, it can’t tell us how to apply that knowledge in our lives. That’s where
the spiritual principles of 5,000 years come in: they can tell us how to apply this
knowledge in our lives, even though they can’t necessarily tell us how it works.

If we are willing to embrace all the knowledge that is available to us and take the best of
science, the best of spirituality and the best of the indigenous wisdom, we can then
weave this into a wisdom that is more in its union than it could ever be as purely science
or purely spirituality or purely indigenous traditions.

How can we address the imbalances that are showing up in our lives,

without giving more energy to those imbalances, and instead allow for

healing to take place?

It all comes back to the story that we tell ourselves about who we are and our
relationship to the world. Any of us who have been educated in the West in the last 150
years, since the time of Charles Darwin, are steeped in a scientific story of separation,
scarcity, competition and conflict.

We have been taught that we live in a world where we are separate from our own
bodies, we are separate from one another, we are separate from the earth, we are
separate from the past, we are separate from the cosmos, and through the theory of
evolution we’ve been taught that there is really nothing that exceptional about human
life.

The spark of spirit is something that science simply has not

been able to embrace.

So although we live in the 21st century in a modern, technologically advanced society,

the foundation of our modern society was built in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
precisely when this scientific story of separation, competition and conflict was being
embraced.

In our outer world we have an economic system that is also based on lack, scarcity,
competition and conflict and it’s collapsing right now, because those ideas are
unsustainable; and they are false assumptions. When we deal with life through these
false assumptions of separation, it’s no wonder that the chemistry in our bodies falls out
of harmony, because we are dealing with life issues through beliefs that are simply not
grounded in truth.

We don’t live in a world of separation, competition and conflict.

The good news is that the new science of the 21st century has overturned 150 years of
thinking; the best science of today tells us that we are deeply connected to our own
bodies, to our thoughts, feelings, emotions and beliefs, to one another and to the earth.
One of the big discoveries in just the last 15 years or so is that nature is based upon this
model of cooperation in what biologists call ‘mutual aid’, not the competition and the
conflict that Darwin led us to believe in the mid-1800s.

But although this new science has overturned those false assumptions that we were
steeped in there is a reluctance and a resistance to accept what science is now telling us
about ourselves and our relationship to the world. So mainstream classrooms,
mainstream textbooks, mainstream media and mainstream documentaries are still
clinging to those old ideas of scarcity, competition, conflict and separation.

I believe this is the great challenge that we face in this generation. Are we going to raise
our young people in the false beliefs that have led to the very crises that we face today?
Are we going to steep our children in the thinking of the past that has led to the greatest
human suffering that we’ve seen in recorded human history? Or are we willing to
embrace the deepest truths of our existence that are borne out in science as well as our
indigenous and spiritual traditions, that we are deeply connected to our own bodies, and
that when we change the way we feel, we change the chemistry in our bodies in the way
that allow our bodies to find the harmony that we call healing.

It is obvious that the old ways of thinking – of competition, conflict and separation – are
not solving the big problems in the world. So all of these imbalances, whether within our
own bodies or in the goings-on in our lives, they are all a reflection of these false
assumptions. For me the good news is that we now have the wisdom to choose
differently and that wisdom is based on the best science of the 21st century and
supports some of our most cherished and ancient spiritual traditions.
How can we apply spiritual wisdom so we can embody that wisdom

through our practice?

There was a great visionary who died in 1983. His name was Buckminster Fuller, and he
made a statement that I think of at least several times every day. What he said is, ‘You
never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new
model that makes the existing model obsolete.’ In other words, in fighting against what is
not working, whether we are fighting against a cancer or fighting against a political or
monetary system that doesn’t work, we are not going to get very far.

I’ve found that to be true in my own life. You don’t just want to survive, you want to
thrive, and to do that you have to find a new way of going about what it is you are trying
to do. We have an advanced nervous system between the heart and the brain that
allows us to thrive in whatever life brings to our doorstep, but some people try to go out
and fix all the things that are wrong, and they get so busy doing that, they miss the joy of
everyday life.

For me personally, when I began to heal and find the harmony in my relationship with my
body, that harmony also showed up in my most intimate relationships and in my closest
friendships. It even showed up in my finances. It wasn’t about the money and it wasn’t
about the friends so much. It was about something within me that changed and was then
reflected in the world around me. That insight was a very powerful awakening in my life.

In 1991 it was discovered that within every human heart there is a collection of about
40,000 specialised cells that are called sensory neurites, which is a technical word for
what are essentially brain cells. But they are not in the brain, they have been found in
the human heart, to such a concentration that the scientists now call these 40,000 cells
the ‘little brain’ in the heart.

These cells in the heart, they do everything the cells in the

brain do. They think, feel and remember independently of the
brain in our head.
So we have two separate organs with a way of thinking, knowing, feeling and
remembering, and when we harmonise the heart and the brain together, although they
are still two separate organs, we create a single potent neural network that allows us to
trigger and to optimise the healing in our bodies. This triggers our deep intuition, our
anti-ageing hormones for youth and vitality and our super immune response. All of those
things are possible just from harmonising the heart and the brain so they begin to work
together, and this harmonisation is something that has been used in indigenous
traditions for a very long time, such as in the most ancient modes of prayer.

Science has now found the very same thing, and the Institute of HeartMath has found
three simple steps to harmonise the heart and the brain.

Step one – move our awareness into our heart centre.

Step two – slow our breathing down, for example to five seconds’ inhale, five seconds’
exhale, which sends a very powerful signal to the body that we are in a place that is
safe.

Once we begin to focus on the heart and slow our breathing to the best of our ability
comes step three – to focus on a positive regenerative feeling, such as compassion,
care, gratitude or appreciation.

Those four words, researchers have found, work for almost everyone. If we can feel one
or some combination of those feelings, it establishes a communication between the
heart and the brain, so the brain cells of the heart begin to communicate with those of
the brain, just from having these feelings. This simple process harmonises the heart and
the brain together and is called ‘heart brain coherence’.

How can we create our own prayers so we can consciously choose to

become co-creators with the divine?

I think the answer to that is very simple. We recognise that life becomes the prayer. So
rather than viewing prayer as a certain thing we do, at a special time, where we create a
special environment, we begin to understand that every moment of life is the prayer.
Rather than something that we do, it’s something that we become. Life becomes your
prayer.

CONNECTING WITH SPIRIT THROUGH THE

POWER OF THE ORACLE

My experience with the oracles

When I was 19 years old I got my first tarot deck, and shortly after that I started working
with runes, to later also study the I Ching. All three are great oracle divination systems,
and I liked the simplicity of the runes, the concept of the I Ching and the storylines in the
tarot.

As I was working with them I started to find a way to blend them and their core
principles, and it is now my life’s work to synthesize these ancient systems and place
them together in various combinations. It was as if these different oracles became alive
and started speaking to me, and they each had their own soul and personality. When I
created the “Wisdom of the Oracle” it literally talked to me and said, “This is what I want.”
I even dreamt about all the characters, where they came to me in my dreams to tell me
how they wanted to look, what needed to be born and how they could be of assistance
for society right now at this time.

What is an oracle?

Oracles are a conduit for the greater consciousness that helps us see symbolically those
concepts, ideas and energy that already exist in the invisible and are related to our
personal destiny, individually and collectively, because you can read for an entire culture
as much as you can read for a person.

We seek answers in time of uncertainty

In times of uncertainty we seek answers and I think globally we are now more in
alignment with uncertainty than we are with certainty. I believe that Spirit is the living
consciousness that we are all part of, a consciousness that lives in us and exists in
everything in the world. We are its creation and we are here to create on its behalf, and it
is not a separate deity; instead, it is the cosmic force of all of life.

What is pertinent to every single faith on the planet is that there is some form of higher
power that we are in service to, but for me this is more of a neutral force, a force of great
power, and our imaginations are the entryway into this power, allowing us to connect
with this invisible world.

It is also important to understand that the way we think, feel

and believe will eventually create, because the world of form is
not our primary reality – the world of Spirit is our primary reality.

Oracles operate as a method of connecting us to this invisible world, through our first
sense, which is our intuition, so that we realise we are souls first, meaning we are in the
invisible world first and then our consciousness enters our body and stewards it for its
lifetime.

As a medium, I know it is true that we are an immortal soul and that our intuition is not
our sixth sense, it’s actually our first. Since society and civilisation began to form we
have started to lose this form of communication, but there are tribes that are not
“civilised” who still use telepathy, so they can communicate from one part of the jungle to
other tribe members in another part. It’s like there’s another way for us to connect and
we’ve lost that through living in our urban world.

The oracles as a means to help us prosper

When we look at oracles as a means to help us prosper, we are really using them as
communication devices. Each deck is geared to communicate with you in a particular
way, reflecting where you are in your dominant energies so as to help you understand
yourself better by showing you if you are off track, or if you are repeating something
based on your past.
When we feel uncertain we want certainties, but working with an oracle is like having a
best friend in the dark take you by the arm and say, “Hey, don’t go this way. If you go
this way you’re gonna get what you got in the past. Let’s go this way instead.”

It is also important not to engage in oracle abuse, where you get really obsessive about
an outcome, because that’s actually the worst way to work with an oracle, especially at
this time. This is because we are now in such a rapid evolutionary phase of human
experience that predicting people’s future is actually not helping them, because what if
they can create something even better for themselves? The future is mutable. But by
using the oracles you can become more conscious, so you can actively co-create with
Spirit.

Many people get stuck on this idea that ‘I am the creator of my

life’ and they then go in and try to use the universe as a
vending machine to get them what they want.

This is the ego’s doing, where the ego wants to use Spirit to create what it wants,
instead of surrendering to this higher power, and letting our soul guide us instead.

What is prosperity?

I feel prosperity means being fully engaged in all aspects of your life, including your
suffering, so recognising that nothing in your life ever goes to waste, ever, that every
experience has value, including the tears. You prosper when you experience life fully
and deeply, not when you are sitting on a shelf hoping bad things will never happen to
you. So prospering is more about how we can take our place in life and add our light to
the sum of all lights. The surrendering piece is so important here, and then to follow what
you are inspired to do, rather than listening to what the ego wants. Like I am inspired to
create oracle cards, I’m inspired to teach this. This is my passion and it’s got nothing to
do with my ego, because frankly my ego would prefer me to be more mainstream and
have everybody like me. I was born into an academic family, so it took a while until I
accepted I was so different.

So you have the inspiration and then you turn the results over to your Higher Power. You
just keep turning it over and saying, “This or something better now manifests for me in
divine appropriate timing.”

As long as the essence of your desire is clear, then the

essence is what’s going to manifest, but Spirit will decide the
form and the timing of that.

Likewise you can also create by being consistently focused on something that is
negative, leading to that eventually being reflected in your outer world and at some point
you will see how everything in your life was set in motion by your past self.

The beauty with this is that it was not set in motion by your present day self, and you are
building your future today, not tomorrow. So you can change your life, because it was
your past self who set the conditions of your life in motion, but your present day self can
change all of that for the future.

Divination speaks to what we can’t see, allowing us to tune into

this invisible world of energy by reflecting to us the dominant
energy that is in our unconscious.

In order to translate what it says you may need protocols and strategies to learn to
navigate within this invisible realm. This helps you track your energy so you can change
it before it manifests.

A threshold in consciousness

We have now entered the age of consciousness and many of us want to tune into the
greater consciousness, something we cannot do through our intellect. We just can’t
reach this greater consciousness with our five senses, so we need to find another way, a
bridge between these worlds, and oracles can be that bridge.

When you use the oracles you also enter into timelessness and
in that moment your energy is shown to you in a way that you
can understand.

In this way you learn to have a conversation with your highest self, with the greater
consciousness, and you then realise you are not alone. Instead Spirit is always here to
guide you, and it does so through your intuition and through tools such as the oracles.

ASK THE ORACLE

Q. We are thinking of moving to a new area, which feels right and our youngest
son is really happy for the move, but our eldest daughter (who will be off to
university then, so she won’t be living much at home) is upset that we are leaving
the area where she has many of her old school friends. Are we doing the right
thing by moving although it seems to be upsetting her?

Colette: I chose two cards to answer that question. So the first card that came up for
this is The Fates. The pushback ultimately is because she feels powerless and there’s a
familiarity that she feels with the people she knows right now and The Fates here
represents the feeling of powerlessness and not having a say. So that’s one of the
reasons why there’s a pushback. However, the positive end of that is that it is fated for
her to have a strong relationship with someone new and some long-term friendships is
going to come from the new place, so her fear is that it took her a while to get connected
to people and now she worries about having to assimilate into another group.

The second card is Milk and Honey, which shows that it’s going to be wonderful. It’s
going to be just wonderful. So you can expect her to be petulant for a while, but
eventually milk and honey happens, and she will feel playful and happy, with a wonderful
feeling of connectedness and happiness by the sea. So although there will be an initial
pushback and probably temper tantrums and refusing to go and being very dramatic,
she will end up having the best time ever there.

So it is fate and your destiny that you move there.

ARE YOU WALKING THE PATH OF A MYSTIC,

HEALER OR SHAMAN?

Did you know that if you are destined to become a mystic, healer or shaman, then your
darkest moments and greatest challenges are often spiritual tools used by your soul to
awaken you?

So instead of seeing these events as ‘bad’, try to appreciate

that they may actually be exactly what are needed for you to
become all that you are meant to be.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all live happy, peaceful lives, with no sadness, suffering,
pain or loss? But the truth is that although our soul is like a beautiful loving star radiating
an exquisite light, the moment we take up residence in a physical body, we find
ourselves in a reality that consists of light and dark, life and death, fear and love.

This contrast allows us to experience the variety that exists here, so that we get to
choose what we want to focus on, and from that focus we get to express ourselves as
that which we choose to be. Say if you want to experience yourself as the light, then that
is not an easy thing to do when you are surrounded by light. But the moment you are
surrounded by darkness then your inner light can become like a star that lights up the
midnight sky.

The key is to remember that you are still the light, even if
everything else around you seems dark.
So although we all have to experience intense emotional pain and inner turmoil, no one
really teaches us how we can move through these darker periods of our lives.

The personal development community says “just change your attitude”, the
pharmaceutical industry says “we have a pill for that”, and often our loved ones freak out
when they see us low and lacking in enthusiasm. And how do we deal with it ourselves?
Often by avoiding the feelings as much as possible, so we distract ourselves by working
more, watching TV, drinking, gossiping, escaping into a fantasy world, or even finding
smaller problems we can focus on so we don’t have to deal with the real underlying
issue that is trying to get our attention.

So why is it then that we go through these periods of feeling low? And why do some of
these periods escalate into utter darkness? Is it really something ‘wrong’ with us when
we experience this darkness, or is it instead like a metaphor for how the night is always
the darkest just before the dawn breaks?

Well the good news is that there is nothing wrong with us.

Often this darkness is like a calling card from our soul, urging
us to awaken and expand our consciousness.

Of course I am not talking about when someone has a mental illness, like schizophrenia
or severe bipolar disorder, but just the ‘normal’ dark episode that most of us will
experience at some point in our lives, especially if you are walking the path of a mystic,
healer or shaman.

The Journey of a Shaman

A shaman is someone who can journey into the deepest darkness and up into the
brightest light, so she can journey into the darkest, most hidden regions of your psyche,
to help transform that darkness into light, connecting you with the divine source and your
soul again.

The shaman cannot make this journey unless she first has done it herself, so if you are
destined to become a shaman, whether you ever work with it or not, you will go through
periods of intense darkness, psychic pain and real inner turmoil, and through that pain
there will come a moment when you finally surrender to the divine. And in that sweet
moment of surrendering the light is able to shine through – the light that guides you
forward on a path that helps you to awaken further and connect more fully with your
soul. But until you surrender, it will feel as if the darkness is eating you alive.

The Journey of a Mystic

A mystic goes through a similar journey, where it can feel as if she is falling into a huge,
black hole of overwhelming darkness – the famous dark night of the soul experience –
which is more like a dark night of the ego, as it is all the expectations and dreams from
the ego that now shatter, where you might end up feeling as if you have no clue what the
purpose is anymore. You feel totally lost and broken. Then, as the pain becomes almost
unbearable, you finally fall to your knees and pray for help and guidance. And in that
moment of surrendering, the Holy Spirit’s voice, the divine source within you, can finally
come through, and you are reborn. But until you surrender, it will feel as if the world is
out to crucify you.

The Journey of the Healer

The path of the healer is similar, but here you often experience some deep trauma in
your life, something that is just too much for you to cope with, and you end up being
deeply wounded. As you heal this wound, you are taken on a healing path, which
teaches you the medicine you will later share with others. But before you start your
healing journey, you may be stuck in a victim mentality, where you feel there is nothing
you can do to change how you feel. If only other people would understand you better,
society would change, or those that hurt you would apologise, then all would be fine. In
these scenarios you give your power away, causing you to feel helpless. Eventually the
emotional pain is just too much, so you finally decide to take your power back and stop
blaming others.

Or it may be that your inner emotional pain has created an illness, and this illness is the
catalyst that sets you off on your healing journey. And once you start healing, you realise
that the illness, or the inner pain, was never the problem you thought it was, but a
messenger sent from your soul to help you awaken.

The pain as a catalyst for healing

So whether you are on the path of the mystic, healer or shaman (or all three), know that
the pain you are experiencing is meant to help you grow, by helping you become more
aware of which thought patterns, behaviours or beliefs you have that are stuck in fear, so
that you can surrender these to the divine, and ask to be shown a new way of
perceiving.

You are basically being taken on a journey from fear to love,

from darkness to light, from victim to hero, from wounded to
healer, from unconscious to awakened mystic.

The depression, illness or psychic pain were just spiritual tools of awakening, that set
you off on this inner journey. A journey that goes beyond the mind, as the mind cannot
come with you on this healing odyssey, because the mind does not speak the language
of the soul. But the mind can instead bear witness to the journey, and by doing that you
expand your consciousness and evolve into a higher state of being.

This is where we are today, as a collective consciousness. We are being invited to

evolve into a higher state of being, and to do that we have to have the courage to heal
our past, our ancestral patterns, our karma and ourselves, and let go of our addiction to
our personal dramas and problems, and instead step into something so much greater
and bigger than our ego mind could ever comprehend.

Healing our ancestral patterns can help us find our soul purpose

I believe we choose our parents and family dynamics. I have chosen to believe that
partly because it empowers me, as I am then at choice, instead of being a victim, and
also because to me it just makes so much sense that we choose our circumstances to
help give us the best training ground possible for us to learn the life lessons we want to
master in this lifetime.
I remember when I, during a healing journey, went back to the time before my
conception, and how I sat up there in Heaven having a discussion with my spiritual
council about the plan for my next lifetime. I could see how I wanted to learn about
healing, acceptance, forgiveness and being able to trust my soul’s light even when I was
surrounded by darkness.

I could see how my parents’ patterns, their dysfunctions – my father’s brain damage, his
alcoholism, the patterns of abuse that were running through my mum’s family line to
several generations back – how all of this would help me learn about healing,
forgiveness and acceptance, as I undoubtedly would get wounded growing up in this
dynamic, thereby giving me the tools I needed to work with in order for me to grow and
evolve. My spiritual council asked me: “Are you sure you want to do this?” And I was
100% certain! I was so ready. I was even looking forward to it, feeling “What a ride this is
going to be!” So I chose to be conceived, knowing full well what I was letting myself in
for.

During a shamanic healing session I could see how I, at the age of 3 weeks, chose to
take on board some of my father’s dysfunctional energy, as if he had an entity (negative
energy) that controlled him. I so wanted to help him I volunteered to take some of that
energy inside of me. And then I locked it inside my heart and put a crystal lid
(energetically) over it in order to protect those I loved so they would not be affected by
this negative entity. That was the first time I experienced an epileptic fit.

During the healing session I could see all of this – images

flashed before me in quick succession, accompanied by an
inner sense of just knowing.

My conscious mind could not make sense of it all, but my inner being could feel the truth
in what I was being shown. My body was shaking, as if I was having an epileptic fit, and
the person doing the healing session with me was quite concerned. I was not, however,
because I was filled with an immense peace as I knew I was healing.
Then the next insight came, and that was from my father. I could feel his consciousness
come into the healing session, and he said, “I never wanted you to carry my pain. It was
mine to carry, mine to sort out.” And in that moment I could see how the need in me to
help him had caused me to sacrifice myself to try to heal him, and how this had not
helped him at all, as it had robbed him of the opportunity to do it for himself. My father’s
consciousness shared with me that it was time for me to learn to invite others to heal
themselves, without me rescuing them or sacrificing myself.

This pattern, I feel, was something I had carried with me from previous lifetimes, and
also a pattern that I had inherited from my mother. She tried to rescue my father, hoping
he would one day change. He never did. He died an alcoholic, and he was completely
alone, as my mother by this stage – after she nearly died of a heart attack – had realised
that his aggression and violence were destroying her health.

After she left him he went downhill very quickly. Death in the end liberated him from his
pain, from a dysfunctional mind, and after his death I actually felt peace, as I could feel
he was now reconnected with his true self.

Once I could see how my volunteering to carry his pain had not helped him, I awakened
to such a degree that I literally stopped rescuing others overnight. A boundary had been
drawn.

Another pattern I discovered when I did a journey into my unconscious mind (underworld
in shamanic language) was how I would sacrifice my light in order to create balance in a
dysfunctional dynamic. I could see how I had started doing this as a child, and then
continued with this pattern due to feeling a lack of self-worth and self-love, and
sometimes due to believing that if I didn’t sacrifice my light, then all hell would break
loose – never realising that the sacrifice was how I kept the experience of hell going…
As I healed this I could feel my power and light return to me.

Shortly after this discovery, something happened in one of my close relationships, where
in the past I would have sacrificed my light in order to keep the peace, bending over
backwards to please, just to keep this person in my life as she would threaten to cut me
off if I did not toe the line.
 But this time something in me roared, and I could feel how a
boundary was being drawn.

I was no longer willing to sell my soul in order to keep the relationship going. So I cut the
cords.

I then went through a grieving process, as I love this person, but I knew that the pain I
felt was still less than the pain I would have felt if I had allowed her to continue this type
of emotional abuse. Once the grieving was over I could send her light and blessings, and
be grateful for the lessons I had learnt.

As I changed this energy within me, I healed. Not only my mind, but also my soul and
body, and it felt as if I had shifted a very old heavy energy, as if a karma had been
hanging over me, and it could only be freed the moment I learnt to love myself enough to
create healthy boundaries and take my power back.

Incidentally, when I spoke with this person’s soul, her soul told me that she didn’t want
me to keep bending over backwards to please her, as this kept the unhealthy energy
going, and she was stuck in this pattern too. So even though her conscious mind may
not have had a clue about this, her soul recognised that cutting her off was exactly the
right thing to do – for both of us. That helped to ease my grief, and I could see how she,
just like my father, had never wanted me to sacrifice myself in order to help or please
another.

What helps us make this journey of deep healing?

The first step is to acknowledge that you have powerful allies by your side – the whole
divine intelligence is here to help you heal. The universe literally has your back, as the
universe is invested in your healing and self-realisation, because as you heal and
expand your consciousness, the universe also expands.

There are many ways to heal, but one of the paths is to dare to journey into the
unknown, into the depths of your psyche, so you can heal so deeply that you start to
radiate your inner light. I will here outline a few of those paths.
Shamanic healing

In shamanic medicine we use the jaguar archetype to help us make this inner journey,
as jaguar has the ability to see in the dark.

Since jaguar is at the top of the food chain in the Amazon rainforest, she represents the
power of transformation as she helps to weed out the weak, and by doing that she helps
to create room for something new to be born. She teaches us about letting go of old
patterns, old beliefs, old ancestral patterns and pain, so we can give birth to a new
version of ourselves. Jaguar also teaches us that crisis is a time of opportunity, and that
death is a call to rebirth. She is the force of change, the guide that takes us on a journey
of deep healing and transformation.

To find the areas you need to let go of, in order to create room for something new,
you can ask yourself the following:

1. Which aspects of me have already started to die?

2. Where have I lost my life force?

3. Where has my life started to go grey or feel empty?

4. Which boundaries do I need to set?

5. What do I need to let go of in order to make room for the new?

As you answer these questions you start to identify which areas in your life jaguar can
help you heal, allowing you to step into your own power. This is Jaguar Medicine.

Transforming the darkness into gold

In some cultures, jaguar is seen as the Black Mother, and to me jaguar is the shamanic
version of the Black Madonna, the Dark Divine Feminine, that beautiful presence that
knows our humanity and our suffering so well, that always loves us, no matter what. To
me, it is as if jaguar and the Dark Divine Feminine work together to help us heal. They
know that the darkness is a good place for us to hide our inner pain, since it is dark, and
I feel that they are present in that darkness, holding sacred space for us, until the day we
are ready to undertake this journey of deep healing.
The Black Madonna is often symbolised in three colours – black, red and gold –
representing that journey of healing, from our deepest darkness, through the fire of
transformation, which allows our inner gold to form. This gold then becomes the healing
wisdom and medicine you later share with others.

Exercise to transform darkness into gold

Light a little fire.

Have a few tiny burnable objects nearby, such as twigs, leaves and small pieces of
wood.

Close your eyes, and set your intent to let go of all that is no longer needed in your life.

Sink into your inner stillness, going deeper and deeper into your heart.

As you reach the centre of your heart, imagine a sacred sanctuary in there. Step
inside this sacred space, and call on jaguar and the Divine Feminine to meet you.

Ask jaguar to show you the areas in your life you have outgrown. Trust what she
shows you.

Ask the Divine Feminine to show you where your love has not yet reached, the areas
in your heart where you hold on to pain, grievances and guilt. Trust the information you
receive.

Then blow the essence of that which you have been shown into one of the little
burnable objects, and place it on the fire. Do this with all the areas you are meant to let
go of, heal and transform.

Watch how the fire burns it all away.

Then sit in stillness and let the healing cleanse you from deep within.

Jaguar and the Divine Feminine now give you a gift which will help you on your
healing journey. Allow yourself to receive this gift, and notice how it can help you.

Ask them if they have any messages for you.

Thank them, and then come back with your awareness to the here and now.
Mystical healing

Another path to healing is through identifying any thought patterns, behaviours or areas
within your mind where you are still seeing through the eyes of fear, anxiety and judgement,
and then surrender these to your Inner Teacher, that divine part of your mind that is forever
connected with God. Some people call this Inner Teacher the Holy Spirit, or their Inner
Being, or the Universe – it does not matter what you call it.

When you have identified an area of your mind which is stuck in darkness and fear, an area
of stress and tension, imagine yourself placing it on the altar of God, and as you do so, say a
prayer where you feel how you totally let this go – trusting that as you let this go the divine
intelligence, which knows how to create worlds, also knows how to help you heal.

The prayer can be something like this:

“Dear God/Universe/Spirit/Source of the Highest Light,

I now surrender this to you.

Let me choose peace instead of [this] [whatever ‘this’ is].

I am willing to change, and I am ready to perceive this differently.

Please act through me, and show me what I need to learn and understand.

I am open to your guidance.

Amen.”

And then trust that the guidance will come. It always does. All you have to do is stay awake
to the signs and the messages, and as you do, you allow yourself to be guided on the path
that the universe has planned for you, so you can express and shine your unique light, in the
way that only you can.

BEYOND PAST LIVES

How did your journey begin?

I grew up in communist Bulgaria, so during my childhood there was no spirituality, no

conversations about God or reincarnation. But then the political system changed and
communism disappeared. All of a sudden there was a huge influx of spiritual and
metaphysical information. People were really hungry for it, as they had been starved of
spirituality for so many years, and they were looking for a connection with the divine. At
the age of 13, I discovered Brian Weiss’ book Through Time into Healing, and I was
amazed by its stories of people who were able to let go of life-long phobias, physical
challenges and emotional issues by undergoing an emotional catharsis of something
they experienced in their minds.

Using the book, I created my first past life regression recording, so I could take myself
through the process. I had a very vivid and powerful experience, seeing and becoming
another person in a past life, and it helped me know that I am an eternal being. I was
able to totally let go of any fear of dying, as I could see that the soul continues after
death.

After this experience, I continued as an ordinary teenager, being busy growing up, so I
did not do any more past life regressions. At the age of 18 I moved to America to study
Law and after graduation was working as an attorney in New York. After a visit to the
dentist for a routine filling, I developed an extreme pain in my left TMJ (temporo-
 mandibular joint, which is the jaw). I had problems opening my mouth, as the pain was
excruciating. Nothing my dentist did seemed to help and he finally offered just two
options: to learn to live with chronic pain for the rest of my life, or to have an operation
which involved breaking my jaw and wiring it back together. At this point I recalled my
previous past life experience and decided to seek out a therapist who could guide me
through another regression.

What did you experience during that regression?

I saw myself as a very strong, tall black man who was a slave. I had a huge metal collar
around my neck, ankles and wrists so I could be chained. The collar around my neck did
not fit me very well and kept rubbing against my left jaw. I was physically very powerful,
but at the same time I felt so helpless and powerless, and my spirit was completely
broken. This man felt so grateful to his masters for feeding him and keeping him alive. I
could not at first understand why he didn’t try to escape, but he had such loyalty to his
masters, as if he was chained to them not only physically but also energetically.

Following the regression, I spent the rest of the day in tears, trying to make sense of
what I had experienced, allowing myself to completely release all the emotions
connected with this event. The following day my jaw pain was completely gone, and it
has never returned since.

Why do you think your jaw pain was triggered in your current lifetime?

I believe we connect with other lifetimes that are sharing themes that we have in our
current life, so we are able to see the bigger picture and learn from this widened
perspective.

At that time in my life, I was working as an attorney in a law firm and I felt disempowered
like a slave, working long hours and unable to improve my standing. Whatever little I
asked for was always refused. I did not feel respected or part of the team; instead I felt I
was just there to work, as a worker-bee.
 Through my regression I could feel how powerful I really am, and that I could make a
different decision at any moment, and I realised that the feeling of being equal was
something I could not get from the outside, but had to develop within myself.

How does past life regression work?

Past life regression allows us to connect with other lifetimes we have lived so we can
receive the insights we need to heal physical and emotional challenges in our present
lives.

We can use regression for any issue we currently face—such as relationship problems,
anxiety, financial and health concerns—because during a regression we tend to
experience another existence that has a similar theme to our current life, and when we
explore our problem from a different perspective we gain new levels of understanding.
This helps us become more empowered so we can create the best possible current life
there is for us.

The healing that occurs during a regression happens because

we expand our consciousness making it easier can see the
bigger picture.

Our energy changes with this newfound perspective, which naturally leads us to relate to
the world differently.

In your book you describe how some of your clients went back to past lives

that were running parallel to each other. How does that work?

What I have discovered through my work is that many clients connect with lifetimes that
are unfolding presently in this moment, or with lifetimes that happened simultaneously,
as well as with future lifetimes. This is because time is simultaneous, and during
regression we can dive into other timestreams and take a peek at what our soul is
creating in other lifetimes as we are then not bound by the conventional restraints of
time.
You describe how we can have an Oversoul, who incarnates with different

facets of itself in simultaneous lifetimes. What do you mean by that?

An Oversoul is the next level of oneness, and an Oversoul will decide to learn a specific
theme and lesson, such as the lesson of love. You of course learn about love by being in
a loving relationship, but you don’t really understand the full spectrum of love if you only
create very loving, kind, passionate and fulfilling relationships. We also learn about love
through the experience of abandonment, or by raising our own children to feel what that
feels like. We learn about love by abandoning someone else, by betraying or through
being betrayed. We learn about love by caring for our parents as they get older.

All these different facets help us learn more deeply about love.

Our Oversoul exists in a dimension unlimited by space and time enabling it to create
lifetimes in any timestream to find the experience it needs in order to grow and learn.

With the Oversoul dividing into different aspects, how is that different or

similar to when you meet someone and you feel an instant connection?

It makes you wonder, doesn’t it? You can look at it and think that you must have shared
other lifetimes with this person, or it might be that you even come from the same
Oversoul. There is a level of reality where we are all one, so although here on earth we
feel ourselves to be individuals, that individuation becomes smaller and smaller the
higher up we go, where there is a bigger merging of souls and awareness, until we
connect with the energy we call God, where we are all one.

What is the Higher Self?

Our Higher Self is part of us, and part of our soul. It looks after our bigger picture, our
highest potential in this lifetime, by holding the blueprint of that which we can
accomplish. We connect with our Higher Self by acknowledging that there is a greater
inner knowing within us which gives us a sense of expansion; and as we tune into this
knowing we naturally connect with our Higher Self.
What have been your own greatest learnings?

The realisation of how loved we are and how supported we are. One client described to
me during her regression how souls are created; she said every soul was created by an
awareness stemming from within the All That Is that it no longer felt complete. Instead
there was a need within it for a certain type of expression, a specific way of creating
reality. So it senses within itself that it no longer is All That Is, and it creates a new soul
to fill the space needed to once again be All That Is.

This client helped me realise that we are so loved and treasured, valued for being the
extraordinary beings that we are, and we all have a unique expression that is needed.
But here in our physical form we forget how extraordinary we are and instead we feel we
are not good enough, smart enough, handsome enough, and we are filled with feelings
of unworthiness. And yet, I have come to understand more and more, that in reality
every one of us is seen as perfect and divine and extraordinary, and our skills and
abilities were valued even before we came into existence.

All we have to do is believe that we are loved, because the

universe already loves us and supports us.

Because we are created with free will, we have the option to create any life experiences
we may choose, and the divine will support us in whatever we decide. Imagine how the
divine is rushing to support you, and that you have so much to give to the world simply
by being who you are.

When we start trusting that, we receive the nourishment and fulfilment we are looking
for, because we are able to express who we truly are into the world, which is what All
That Is wanted to experience in order for it to feel complete. This means that you are
needed, wanted, loved, valued, cherished and treasured because your unique
expression of the divine completes All That Is.

BECOMING CONSCIOUS CO-CREATORS WITH

THE DIVINE
Connecting with your essence

‘Almost everybody has higher insights, whether it be from their higher self or the God
self, a Christ self, or an intuitive self, and often we project these higher insights outside
of ourselves, to some higher entity or higher presence. I realised that I was always
writing down the guidance from this higher presence and then I was trying to do it with
my local self. Gradually I just made a simple decision, which was to meditate on the
feeling of receiving this higher guidance – not on the guidance itself and not on what I
needed to do about it – but just on the feeling of that frequency that would come in, and
by meditating on that feeling it started to resonate inside my heart.

My local self was always outside, separated, concerned about something, whereas this
deeper self was the essence of my being. Then I could notice when the local self began
to act and get too critical and concerned, that the eye that was noticing this was my own
essence. So I could go to the authority within me, which is essence, and respond from
my own essence to my own local self, and in this way my local self could get educated
by my essence.’

The compass of joy

‘I read a very important book called “Essence” by A H Almaas, who said that essence
has substance. In other words it’s substantial, so when you put your attention and your
feeling on essence it’s a vibrational field that actually creates some experience at a
vibrational level within your own body. So gradually essence begins to substantiate, or
become more physical, and you can actually notice through the feeling tone in your body
whether you are in essence or in local self.

The minute you go into local self, there is tension, a little bit of concern or anxiety.
Whereas when you are placing your attention on, in and as essence you feel relaxed,
you feel at ease, you feel a certain happiness and joy. I call this the compass of joy,
because you have a biofeedback system when you are in essence and the biofeedback
is pleasure, joy, and relaxation, whilst when you’re “trapped” by a local self issue you are
tense and you can actually feel that. When you get good at this, then the minute you feel
the tension you can just put your attention back on to essence.’
The sacred chamber of union

‘One spiritual practice that helps you develop this skill is to be the director of your own
attention. You need to go into a meditative space, which I call a sacred chamber of
union, where your human part and your divine part meet, until you feel imbibed with this
essence. It is important to give yourself time when you start this.

It shouldn’t be just a few minutes here or there, because it is like a major birthing of your
deep self; you have to give it time. You can’t say, ‘I don’t have time to be born.’ It
actually takes attention and you need to have commitment, and once you get the feel of
it you have to say “This is my choice to incarnate and be born fully as my own essential
self.” I think of it as a vow almost, to a discipleship of that divine self.’

Connecting with the Christ frequency

‘Once you have become your own essence you take your higher self in, because that’s
who you are, and then you can go up to the Christ self – and the Christ frequency is both
beyond you, and incarnated within you – so you can go to other great masters or
teachers, and you can invite them in.

When I was writing on the New Testament I put my attention to the scriptures and then I
asked, ‘What does this mean for us?’ At this stage I was thinking of us as a highly
evolved, high technology species, and about how we can do all these things; we do
virgin births, we heal, we send signals at the speed of light; we do almost all the miracles
of Jesus.

As I was reading the scriptures, I realised that I am the essence and that the Christ
consciousness is in me as well, but the Christ capacity that was considered miraculous
in his time were actually things that we have learned to do. Jesus said, “You will do the
works that I do and greater works will you do in the fullness of time.” So I thought, ‘Oh
my God that’s true. This is the fullness of time because we have become a very high
technology species.’

We can do all these things, with nanotech, biotech and artificial intelligence, and then I
saw in the writing of the New Testament that if we combine our new capacities with
 Christ’s love – loving one another, loving your neighbour as yourself – if you combine the
genius God-like powers that we have invented through technological and scientific
capability with the love of one another and God above all else, then you have the new
species.’

Evolution by choice

‘We are at the moment in what I call conscious evolution, which is evolution by choice,
not chance. If you look at evolutionary history there were five mass extinctions before we
got here, and we’re entering into one now, a fixed mass extinction of other species – but
with a difference, because with this one we know we are doing it. So since we’ve
become conscious of our effect on evolution, we’ve realised we also have a chance of
changing our behaviour consciously, which we can see with the recent climate change
conference in Paris where there really was a change. They weren’t able to do this six
years ago. So I would say that in the last five to six years, enough people have become
aware of climate change and other crises. Whilst previously, to change behaviour even
just a little bit was asking a lot, even though it was pretty obvious to the scientists how
important it was, now the time is different, and here we are – with the Christ
consciousness and the Christ capacities, becoming our own essential selves with the
powers of God – and this is when we can become conscious co-creators with the divine.’

Conscious co-creators with the divine

‘There is a creative force in the universe, you can call it God, creator, the divine or
source, and that creative intelligence is a superb genius beyond mystery, an intelligence
that creates an entire universe from nothing at all. That creator is inherent in everyone’s
creativity.

You and I are the creation of that creative intelligence of the

universe.
 So when we become the slightest bit creative, innovative, loving, or caring – for each
other – like a mother for a child – in deep love and deep desire to fulfil our potential –
whatever it is, wherever it is – we actually turn on the creative force inside us and we
become a co-creator with that.

What I’m finding for myself now at the age of 86 is that I’ve had five children, eight
grandchildren and one great-grandchild – so I have had all of that wonder of the family –
but it wasn’t until I found my purpose and vocation after having my five children that I
actually became my full potential self. Because, love them as I did, it was not my
vocation to reproduce the species and be a loving and good mother. And I didn’t know
what was wrong with me; it was considered neurotic that somebody with five children
and a husband she loves could feel that something so much more was coming. What
could that be? What’s wrong with her?

Well, I’m an evolutionary woman and what I discovered through Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin and from reading the New Testament was that evolution is progressing to ever
higher consciousness, ever greater freedom and ever greater order.

When Teilhard de Chardin saw the thinking layer of earth, which is now the global media
and social media of humanity, getting its collective eyes – so that it is seeing and feeling
together – which we are almost doing with our new nervous system (the media sector of
today), he predicted we would turn on love, and he called it the Christification of the
earth (he was a Jesuit).

We can call it a planetary awakening in love, which can happen when enough of us are
connected through our hearts and through our creativity using the nervous system of the
planet. And then you might say humanity itself becomes co-creative with the divine.’

About God’s will and our own will

‘When it’s God’s will, or divine intent, the feeling is different than when it’s my will. The
difference in the feeling when I’m doing what I would call divine will or deep vocation of
destiny, is that the doing of it is so nourishing, so self-rewarding, as if you are in love
when you do it and you are just completely expressing yourself, which is the joy of your
life. That is how you are doing God’s will. It may be hard, it’s certainly not all easy. I
 mean, a lot of things in life can be challenging, but when it’s challenging and you think
it’s for that deeper purpose, what you then find is that the crisis actually activates more
potential in you. It strengthens you and the problems become evolutionary drivers,
because you’re going to a higher purpose all the time.

It’s like an unstoppable force and if you try to suppress it you’ll get depressed and you
can get sick, but when you say yes to it, it is so healing; more than that – it is
regenerating. I feel very certain that I’m regenerating at 86.’

How to see through our spiritual eyes

‘To see through my spiritual eyes I have to firstly be fully my own essence. I cannot do it
with my local separated self or with my ego self. I have to be in essence, and that
essence is love expressed as a pure uniqueness.

You are a unique evolutionary self, which is an expression of

the uniqueness of the whole process of creation as you.

Every one of us is that. So when you express as that, when you are one with the
process of creation within you, then you and God are one. Not God as the eternal father,
a separated God, but as the creative force in the universe, expressing through you, as
you. What Jesus could do was that he could see so clearly the other person as that,
enabling the other person to become more conscious of it too. When you can see it in
another, you can help the other person express it: so the way to love another is to see
that potential and embrace it.

We can also see the things that are not their highest potential, but we can feel
compassion, understanding that the person has not known how to reach it. It is difficult
at times, and we are still Homo sapiens sapiens, which is a self-conscious species, and
as a species we have suffered from an illusion of separation; from nature, from spirit,
from each other and even from our own source of being. This has been our fundamental
problem, that we believe in this illusion that we are separate.

In the Catholic world they talk about original sin, but I would never call it original sin,
because I don’t think we did it consciously. I think it’s an original challenge.
 If a baby is born with a problem in the nervous system you don’t say that baby has
original sin, you say okay there is a problem. But we didn’t notice the problem, because
everybody had the problem. If you read human history you see that the minute we got
agriculture and we got to use power over each other, we started dominating and
controlling all the way through until we hit the atomic bomb. When we dropped the
bombs on Japan I was 15 years old, and I could see that this amount of power in the
hands of a self-centred species could destroy the world.

Therefore, I asked myself, ‘What could be the meaning of this power that is good? If
we’ve got this power, and God gave us this intelligence, then surely there must be the
God-given capacity to use it for the good of humanity?’ The answer I came up with was
that our current crisis is the birth of a co-creative humanity, where we are meant to be
co-creators with the creative force of the universe, so we can become co-evolutionary
with God.’

Barbara’s daily spiritual practice

I get up very early in the morning with my journal on my lap. I then contemplate the
experience of my essential self. I then ask my essential self to give me the full meaning
of where my life is going and where it is in this moment. So by the writing, the listening,
the asking, the acting on what I ask, I have learned to be deeply in touch with the deeper
impulse of creation within me, so that it and I have become one.

Barbara on the ego and the local self

The local self is like a whole cluster of elements of your being, from very innocuous little
upset ones to wounded warriors. You can have local selves that act out, but you quickly
notice if you are being reactive, so you then choose to stop. The ego identity of
uniqueness only occurs when it is separated from essence. But if the ego, which is your
own personal uniqueness, is one with that creative impulse within you, it becomes your
essence.
ACCESS YOUR AKASHIC RECORDS

How did your journey into understanding the Akashic Records begin?

I had tried so hard to get it right in life, and then at the age of 24, I had a remarkable
moment of spiritual awareness where I felt at one with everyone and everything and I
understood that I was deeply loved and appreciated. This was such a defining point for
me which sent me on a spiritual quest for the next 16 years, exploring with great
enthusiasm and depth of all sorts of self-help and spiritualities.

In 1994 when I was 40, I realised I wanted to find a simple way to experience that sense
of being known and loved and cherished. Shortly after that insight, I participated on a
shamanistic panel with a woman was talking about the Akashic Records, and what she
said resonated deeply with me. I attended one of her classes afterwards to learn how to
access the records, and when I opened them for the first time I had a similar spiritual
experience to my earlier defining moment aged 24.

I started working regularly with the Akashic Records and found that it was a safe and
simple, yet highly effective way to connect with a sacred space we can visit in order to
receive some guidance.

What are the Akashic Records?

Akasha is a Sanskrit word meaning primary substance, and identifies the ingredient
making up the Records. It is the presence of life itself before we impact on it with our
thoughts and feelings—in other words, it’s the raw material of the life force.

It is a vibrational archive of every soul in its journey. It is the soul-level dimension of

awareness, and we are invited to use the Records as a spiritual resource so we can
more easily express our truth in everyday living.

The Records are woven into the soul-level dimension of consciousness, and are like
energetic connective tissue between the soul and the Source holding us steady as we
awaken to our oneness. There are two parts to every set of records. The first part could
be described as a blueprint of the soul—our divine potential—and this is permanent,
from the inception of the soul through time; it is who we are becoming.

The second part which travels along with that is a catalogue of

the lifetimes we live, through which we awaken to our
potential—our soullevel blueprint.

I call the Records the Cosmic Chronicles of You, because they contain all the lifetimes
we have lived so we can awaken to who we are—our essential goodness and oneness
with all of creation. This awakening is a progression; some lifetimes give us more
expansion and alignment, whilst others may be a bit slower.

There is a four-step progression of awakening, where the first step is awareness, after
which we move into acceptance; the third step is aligning with our soul and higher
purpose; and in the fourth step we take appropriate action—where we make our soul
real in this world through our actions.

We are more active in this progression in some lifetimes than others, and we are living in
incredible times right now as so many people have awakened and are living their truth,
which provides us with a great opportunity to be spiritually-awakened and effective
contributors in the world.

What distinguishes an ordinary life from an extraordinary life, and how

can we make the shift so we can live extraordinary lives?

The distinction is the quality of our experience. An extraordinary life looks a lot like an
ordinary life, where we have families, relationships, pets, jobs and mortgages, but in an
ordinary life we find only some of these things are satisfying whilst others are not, so we
may not fully engage in all areas of our lives. When we shift into an extraordinary
relationship with life, a quality of aliveness becomes available, where we reach an
awareness that every human endeavour is an opportunity to seek and find light and
goodness in ourselves and others—so there is an enhanced feeling of being alive. We
can keep working at the same job, but now it becomes a sacred quest as we approach
our lives in a totally different way.

When we do this, the aliveness in us connects with the

aliveness in others, and we naturally find the light and the good
in everyone around us.

We make the shift from ordinary to extraordinary by going through the four stages of
awareness, appreciation, acceptance and appropriate action.

There are also some fundamental pillars of consciousness we

need to realize in order to be effective in the world and facilitate
this shift from ordinary to extraordinary.

The first one is incarnation and the idea here is that, until we come to terms with, and
accept, the life we are currently living, we will not be able to shine. Any judgement we
have of ourselves and others will inhibit our ability to shine.

Another pillar is responsibility, where we have to really make peace with our lives and
come to understand our soul-level responsibilities, so we can let our light shine through.

A third and very important pillar is the ability to show commitment, because as we are
committed to our path—in good and bad times—the life force and gifts that are
embedded in our path can be unleashed. This is because when we commit to our path,
the path returns to us everything that we need for awakening.

In shifting from ordinary to extraordinary living there is a fusion of consciousness so,

instead of living our lives as either spirit or human, we live in fusion with our soul, and
the light of our being moves through our human self, and our humanity becomes the
vehicle for the light of our soul in the earth plane.

As we do that, is this then how we can manifest the highest divine potential

that exists within our Akashic Records?

Yes, and here our inner triangle—mind, body and will—is the key. We know that the
mind and the heart are connected, but we also need to include our will, and then we find
balance. The more stable we are as human beings, the more light we can
accommodate.

So how can we then become so stable that we can shine? We do this by taking stock of
different issues in our lives—for example, our relationships, problems at work, or our
health—and examining them from the different perspectives of our inner triangle, such
as: How do we feel about it (heart); What do we think about it (mind); and Are we ready
to take action upon it (will)? On the earth plane, action is the dimension of expression,
and when our heart, mind and will are in alignment we can more easily express and
expand our inner light. That is why the more stable we are, the more we are able to
shine.

We know of course that light is radiant, but equally it is

magnetic, so as the light shines through us, as us, the light will
naturally draw to us that which is ours.

Everything we need in order to bring forth our soul’s purpose and manifest our destiny is
available; all the resources are here, and what draws them to us is this magnetism. We
don’t have to send light in order to manifest it—all we have to do is be in alignment and
check for balance. Our light will be naturally expressed when we are in alignment and in
balance.

It is in the nature of Grace to bring to us that which we desire. Of course we also have to
take action, but in terms of determining what is ours to have, Grace will do that. Grace
will bring to us the perfect opportunities, the perfect conditions, the perfect people—but
we have to be awake in order to notice that.

How can we read our Akashic Records?

I use the Pathway Prayer to connect with the Records (see box). It is very simple and
effective. What is distinct about it is that we are conscious when we are visiting the
Records. Edgar Cayce, who introduced awareness of the Akashic Records to the West,
was unconscious when he opened the door for the first time. Now we are able to access
the Records while we are fully conscious, allowing us to receive the insights we need for
our soul’s path.

Some people are able to access the Records as soon as they read the prayer; but
others may need to practice for a while before they are able to open them whilst being
fully conscious and aware.

It is a spiritual practice.

When working in the Records, we have to be very clear of our intention of opening them.
We also have to understand that we have stepped into a realm of infinite kindness,
compassion and respect, that is both within us and around us, and that we are in a
sacred reverent space of spiritual awareness in which we can feel safe.

In this safe space it is easier to look at our life issues and explore them, so we can find
out what the issues are actually about and what the possible solutions are. Working in
the Records is relational—we start to have a relationship with the divine—and in them it
becomes easier to recognise the next right step, the highest potential of any situation.

In this space we can explore our questions and wait for the answers.

The Records are about purpose and path, and the identification
and expression of the light of our soul in the world.

One of the primary ideas embedded in the Akasha is that we are good: at the level of our
soul, we are perfect and complete, and the purpose of our soul’s lifetimes is to awaken
us to our own goodness and the goodness of all others, and the goodness of the whole
of creation, in spite of contrary evidence that we are painfully imperfect.

I remember a time in my life when I really needed to visit the Records: my father was
dying, my son was young, and there was a lot going on. I would go into my Record and I
would say things like: I was so short with my son today, and I don’t think I am being a
good enough mother and daughter. I would take my ordinary concerns into the Record
and the response I would get was: It’s okay. You are doing your best. But I am the type
that wants to fix things, and always look at how I could improve, so I ended up having an
argument with the Records, saying: No, no I could have done so much better. And the
response was: It’s okay, you are doing just fine.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was being given a healing session. I felt so safe and
completely loved, and this allowed me to bring up anything I needed to look at and heal.
There was nothing I could say or do that would cause this Presence to judge me; I was
met with complete unconditional love.

I started to express all my judgemental thoughts while I was in

the Records, only to be met with pure love.

In response to this, I relinquished my need to harshly criticise myself which, amazingly,

led me to being much more effective in my life. I understood then that we were all doing
our best. No one wakes up and says: I am going to be the worst person in the world
today. It became very clear to me that every person, at the core, has an ideal to improve
life as they know it. We all attempt to experience greater love, and we all have different
ideas about how to achieve it.

Often, the challenge is being able to love ourselves even when we feel resentful,
judgemental, bitter or filled with guilt. This negativity is like glue, and if we want to free
ourselves from a particularly negative pattern, the challenge is to love and accept
ourselves in spite of it. Working in the Records helps us to do this, because when we are
in this space the negativity just dissolves as we are received with so much love and
acceptance for being where we are at this moment in life, because there is no
condemnation of us as human beings.

Our spiritual journey can be a real conundrum for many people, because on one hand
we can feel we are eternal, spiritual beings filled with light and love, and then we look in
the mirror and notice we are mere mortals—limited, flawed and finite. So the great
awakening is to realise that the light can shine through us even though we are imperfect.
We can still be useful—our usefulness is not dependant on our abilities to fix ourselves
and be perfect.
While we are visiting the Records we are assisted by beings of light that work together in
groups. They don’t identify themselves personally—so it is very different from working
with spirit guides and angels who do (and who have certain traits and characteristics)—
but in the Records there is instead a group of consciousness, a collective of light beings,
and visiting the Records is about being in the space of awareness and being held steady
long enough to get the insights we need so we can make use of them within ourselves. It
is not like being met by the Lords of the Records: rather, you are provided with an
infusion of light and awareness which you as a human being can bring into your life in a
way that is true for you, given who you are in this incarnation.

So are they like a collective consciousness and because they don’t have a

certain characteristic, you have to own the insights you receive yourself,

because you have been infused with this new awareness through your own

connection with this higher light consciousness?

That is exactly how it is. One of the distinguishing features of the New Age is the
understanding of personal responsibilities. It is no longer about receiving guidance from
an outside source; instead it is about a path of awareness which, through our actions,
each one of us has the opportunity follow to the best of our ability towards our destiny.

When we step into the Records we are met with pure

unconditional love, allowing us to heal the judgements we have
had about our own humanity whilst waking up to our divine
perfection.

There is a spiritual urgency in our time, a movement of soul-level awareness afoot, and
the Records are a very effective way of moving into that so we can be effective,
participatory human beings. When each one of us awakens to our own truth and
honours our soul’s path, then as we are one unit everything will come to its fruition, as
we all step into our own awakening, and let our light shine freely.

Pathway Prayer Process

Opening Prayer

And so we do acknowledge the Forces of Light

Asking for guidance, direction, and courage to know the Truth

As it is revealed for our highest good and the highest good of

Everyone connected to us.

Oh Holy Spirit of God,

Protect me from all forms of self-centredness

And direct my attention to the work at hand.

Help me to know (myself) in the Light of the Akashic Records,

To see (myself) through the eyes of the Lords of the Records,

And enable me to share the wisdom and compassion that the Masters, Teachers, and
Loved Ones of (me) have for (me).

The Records are now open.

This is the process for opening your own Records.

When it is time to close your Records, read the Closing Prayer aloud once:

Closing Prayer

I would like to thank the Masters, Teachers, and Loved Ones for their love and
compassion.

I would like to thank the Lords of the Akashic Records for their point of view.
And I would like to thank the Holy Spirit of Light for all knowledge and healing.

The Records are now closed. Amen.

The Records are now closed. Amen.

The Records are now closed. Amen.

FREE YOUR MIND WITH THE WORK

From this new-found bliss she discovered a process that had

the potential to help others find this inner happiness too.

She called this process The Work — four simple questions that have the power to free
us from our illusions, and for the past two decades she has taught these questions to
thousands of people, as well as sharing her insights in her bestselling books Loving
What Is, A Thousand Names for Joy, and I Need Your Love — Is That True? Here she
tells us her story.

Can you tell us about your own awakening?

One February morning in 1986, I suddenly realised that when I believed my thoughts I
suffered, and when I did not believe them, the suffering stopped. This insight came to
me after I had been in the grip of a deep depression for over 10 years, a horrible
darkness like a black hole into which I had fallen deeper and deeper.

What finally gave you the insight you needed to get out of this darkness?

A cockroach crawled over my foot! I was lying on the floor, next to my bed – I hated
myself so much that I didn’t feel I deserved to sleep in a bed – and this cockroach
crawled over my foot and woke me up. As I opened my eyes I realised everything had
changed. It was as if I had awakened from my sleep into a whole new reality, and I could
see how my thoughts shaped my world. I completely changed in that moment, and the
old Byron Katie was forever gone. Instead I was a totally new being.
At the beginning there was nothing, and out of this nothingness
I could observe how things were born into this world the
moment I identified them.

I started laughing because I was struck how all those things did not exist until I named
them, and it was as if I could see clearly for the first time in my life. I recognised that my
being had nothing to do with my thinking, but that I could also create a ME with the
thoughts I chose to have. Out of these insights The Work was born.

All the questions we use in The Work take us to this same insight I had in that moment
of awakening – an insight that leads us to the place where all wisdom exists.

My wisdom is everyone’s wisdom and your wisdom belongs to

all of us too.

Wisdom is available to every human being and these questions take us back to the
place where we realise we are all connected because we are all one.

You see, we experience others the way we experience ourselves, which means that we
love, or hate, our neighbour as ourselves. We always see the world as we are, because
everything is a mirror. So if I don’t like what I see, then it is useful to investigate which
thoughts and beliefs are causing me to perceive the world in a certain way, and as I
change these thoughts and beliefs my experience of the world will change. We all have
the power to come to the realisation that we live in a friendly universe, a universe that is
here to help us – without exception – but sometimes, in order to arrive at this insight, we
may have to let go of some negative thoughts and beliefs.

Did it feel as if you were ‘detoxing’ all of your thoughts after your

awakening?

Absolutely, and it took me two to three years to rid myself of my ‘dream world’, and
investigate every negative thought I noticed I had, by using the questions from The
Work. It is one thing to come to the realisation that the world you believed was real does
not exist – because you have now awakened to a totally new way of seeing reality – and
a totally different thing to truly be healed and done, at a deep cellular level, so you can
fully embrace this new reality. You know your work is done when you are able to accept
someone else’s criticism, and with an open heart welcome this opportunity for you to
practice how to also appreciate this experience.

You then realise that there is no separation – that everything is

just a reflection of you – and that we all are one.

It was such a liberating moment when I realised that everyone loves me – it is just that
not all of them are aware of it yet.

When we question our thoughts and beliefs, then what previously used to cause us
stress, anxiety and irritation loses its power over us. This is because when you do The
Work and ask yourself the questions, you eventually arrive at a place where there is
nowhere else for the mind to go other than straight into freedom, and in this freedom is
heaven; this is how we are liberated.

How did your own family react when you transformed after your

awakening?

My kids could not believe it (they were then 16, 18 and 22 years of age). They got their
mum’s body back, but all her anger had disappeared. It took a long time for them to trust
that I truly had changed, because I had been so angry before, so full of hatred and self-
loathing – all of that was now gone. My children were afraid that their “real” mum was
going to return – they sincerely hoped she wouldn’t! – but after a while they started to
trust that my change was permanent.

Do some people think you became enlightened when you experienced your

awakening?
I am often asked if I am enlightened and my answer is always the same: How would I
know? If I walk around with the thought that I am now enlightened, then I also have to
ask myself: Is that true? Can I be 100% sure that this is true? To be able to answer that
question I would have to take into account a past and a future, and that way of thinking
always arises from the mind.

The concept of time is an illusion, whilst within us exists a

place, where there is no past or future, only the eternal now.

Also, if I get caught in the thought – I am enlightened – then that becomes an identity,
which is the complete opposite to enlightenment. And who cares really? All that really
matters is the here and now, and how we can serve others.

What do you believe is the biggest cause of our suffering?

That we believe our thoughts, because when we believe our thoughts are true, we
create images in our minds, to which we then attach concepts and stories, and from
these we then form our view of the world. However, when we let go of these thoughts,
images and stories, then what we are left with is paradise. It is only when we believe our
thoughts, and the stories we create as a result of these thoughts, that we become
stressed, worried, anxious, irritable and ill. This is because we create what we believe,
the very moment we believe it.

Have you noticed a change in our human consciousness recently?

I see everyone as awake, but that they are not aware of it yet. Instead they are trying
their utmost to believe that all their negative thoughts are real, by creating stories out of
these thoughts, which they then try to make into their reality.

But when you examine one of your negative beliefs and ask yourself the question: Is this
true? then that can be a really powerful question for those that are open to change their
view of reality. For the ego, however, it is the mark of death, because that question
causes the ego to lose its hold on the mind, and not everyone is ready for that. However,
more of us are becoming ready, and I have noticed that the ego is starting to lose its
hold on our human consciousness.

When you work with prisoners you often thank them for what they have

done so our children won’t have to go through the same suffering. Can you

explain what you mean with this?

One way to explain this is the following: If I believe something with all my heart, and this
belief is causing me a lot of suffering and stress, and I then do The Work and question
these beliefs, a change will occur in me, at a very deep cellular level. So if I carry the
thought ‘No one cares about me’, and then release this through my enquiry, and I then
find a new thought, such as ‘Everyone cares about me’ – and also find proof for why this
thought is true – then a real shift occurs.

Every time someone goes through this shift, they wake up to

their inner truth, which causes the ego to lose its hold on that
person’s consciousness.

This in turn helps the next child being born – since at a deeper level we are all
connected, we are all one consciousness, although we appear to have separate bodies
– so this child won’t get caught in the grip of the ego as easily as we have been. This is
why the work we do to ourselves benefits everyone else. When you heal your inner pain,
you also help all future generations.

What advice can you give to those who feel they have caused others harm

so they can now forgive themselves?

Do The Work by questioning your thoughts so you allow yourself to be liberated from all
your illusions and negative beliefs. Then start all over again and create a new life from
this new-found inner freedom.
I once worked with a prisoner who had murdered his wife, and he offered lots of reasons
for why he had murdered her: she did not love him; she never did anything for him; and
so on. We wrote it all down and then we went through The Work questions. In doing this
process he discovered that what he had believed was true, was as far away from reality
as he could get. Instead he remembered so many examples of how she had loved him,
how she had cared for him and had always been there for him, but because he had
closed his mind he had been unable to see this.

After the process, he realised that the woman he had murdered had never existed,
except in his own mind. He could now see the truth; that the woman he had been
married to had truly loved him and that insight changed him completely. This enabled
him to easily be able to forgive her as he could see that he had wrongly accused her,
and he once again fell in love with his wife.

How did he manage to forgive himself?

That happens automatically as you come to realise that what you did, you did because
you believed something that was not real. So what are you then guilty of? You believed
that a thought was true. And that is the only thing anyone of us will ever be guilty of. We
either believe our thoughts, or we question them. When we can see this, then it is easy
to see the purity and innocence in others, because the only thing we can ever be guilty
of is believing our thoughts, and when we question the reason for our suffering and in
this way free our minds, what we are left with is love, because that is the truth of who we
are.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR SELF BETTER WITH

AYURVEDA

Thousands of years before modern medicine provided scientific evidence for the mind–
body connection, the sages of India developed Ayurveda, an ancient system with its
roots in the Vedic culture.
 Ayurveda means the science of life and it offers a body of
wisdom designed to help people stay vibrant and healthy while
realising their full potential.

What is Ayurveda?

It is an ancient tradition of natural healing that has its roots in India. Ayurveda is a living,
dynamic knowledge that is designed to shift and change according to our needs, and
hence it has adapted to also suit today’s society. After all, there is quite a big difference
between how people lived in ancient India and how we live in our modern high-tech
world, but the universal principles are the same now as they were then, so in this way
Ayurveda is a timeless wisdom.

According to Ayurveda we all have an innate potential for

health and it is important to stimulate this potential for wellbeing
by addressing any imbalances.

When we are out of balance we lose our ability to express our fullest potential, instead
using only a fraction of what we are capable of physically, mentally and spiritually.

Ayurveda views health as a personal state of being where the key that opens the door to
wellbeing is self-awareness. Many of us know we can become ill when we are out of
balance and Ayurveda can teach us more self-awareness so we can see how we are
affected by the world around us, and one of the reasons we fall ill is because we have
lost the connection with ourselves, with life and with nature. And what this world needs
most is to reconnect us with life again – both inside us and around us.

How have we lost this connection?

We are living in a time where we have forgotten what wellbeing really means. No one is
perfect, so we can’t expect this world to be perfect either, and this is the kind of rule we
have to live by, that no one can create the absolute perfect environment. But somewhere
inside of us we have a deep longing – an inner awareness – that life could be so much
better if we could only connect more with our inner light, a light that helps us live in
wisdom and love.

According to Ayurveda, we have lost our connection with this

inner light, because our intellect made the mistake of identifying
us with the richness of our outer world – with our material
possessions and our outer achievements – and not with our
inner richness.

And our disconnection with this inner richness has been widening with each generation,
until now. Because at this very moment in time a giant awakening is taking place where
we are starting to turn away from our identification with the outside world, and we are
learning to connect again with our light and truly appreciate the richness of our divinity.
We have stepped into a new era.

I think many of us feel that we have this inner light, but still we live in a

world of separation where we easily lose our connection with it, resulting

in us spreading more fear and negativity to others. What advice has

Ayurveda for this?

It’s true that many of us live in disharmony, but somewhere inside we know intuitively
that we can feel so much better, that we are so much more than what we live out
through our personality. However we may experience an inner conflict, because
although we may want to live more in accordance with our inner truth, the world around
us may want us to be a certain way, and so we may feel afraid of how it would affect
others if we were to live in alignment with our inner light.
 That is why we need to be firmly rooted in ourselves, so we
have the strength and courage needed to truly live our spiritual
truth.

Not everyone may be there yet, and so we talk instead about what seems true for us, so
we can intellectually engage in our truth, but we feel this inner conflict because we are
not living our truth.

Do the body and mind therefore begin to signal this inner conflict by

starting to display a variety of symptoms?

Absolutely, and we often wonder about that ourselves: Can our neck pain be due to our
current stress levels, or is our high blood pressure a sign that we feel under pressure at
work? The first question a practitioner should ask a patient is why they have a particular
symptom, because many of us know intuitively why we have developed pain and
discomfort.

When we allow ourselves to connect with our innate wisdom, we find our inner compass
that can steer us in the right direction. Unfortunately, we have often learned that
knowledge comes from an outside source and come to rely on others to tell us why we
feel ill, but with the help of Ayurveda we can connect with our own intuition that can
guide us through life.

How can Ayurveda help us connect with our intuition?

We all have different personalities that we are born with, where we have different
qualities and dharma – life purpose – which means we are good at different things. In
Ayurveda we have three different personality types: vata, pitta and kapha, and they need
to be seen as a whole, because all living beings carry these three doshas in their own
unique combination.

While we all have our own unique arrangement of these three doshas, where we
physically may be very much vata, but emotionally kapha and mentally pitta – we are
also quite complex. But this is a reflection of life, in all its richness of variety, and our
own unique combination means we have different ways of finding our inner wellbeing.

Characteristics of Vata

Vata is fast, lively, talkative, changeable and enthusiastic, with a strong element of air
and space. In our society this fast energy is often dominant, and you can easily get
carried away on the high that this energy brings. A person with a lot of vata may be very
vigorous, resulting in their energy eventually running out, when they crash.

Symptoms of imbalance

When vata gets out of balance, a person may initially feel as if they are on a high, until
they crash. Then they can fall ill, feel restless, have problems with sleeping, indigestion
and with chronic fatigue. Emotionally they may swing between hope and despair.

Stimulate wellbeing

What vata needs is also what it hates the most – routines. Vata types find routines so
boring, since they love change. This is part of vata’s journey into developing wisdom,
learning to understand how important routines are for their wellbeing: going to bed at the
same time every night, eating at the same time, and having daily moments of stillness. If
vata can actually do this, then they will connect with the deeper part of them – their inner
stillness – and in that place they find their spiritual self, their dharma and their highest
potential, which will lead them to their life purpose. And this can happen very quickly,
where first they totally crash but then become “re-born”, reconnecting with their inner
light and discovering their true purpose. At this point they suddenly get flashes of insight
and divine inspiration, which come directly from their soul and have nothing to do with
their intellect. This is when they can create a life in alignment with their soul.

When that happens, is there then not a risk that the vata increases again,

as the person regains access to their enthusiastic energy, and may feel

once more as if they are on a high?

That is always the risk with vata, and initially the person may fall into this “high–crash–
high” pattern, until they learn to handle their vata energy, where they structure a daily
routine into their lives that will keep them balanced.

It is also important for vata to be aware that they have an inner

conflict between longing to feel free, and still needing a routine.

Here the body can be of assistance, because it will signal with pain and discomfort when
vata is going out of balance.

How is pitta?

Pitta is passionate, fiery, focused, intense, decisive, very disciplined and with a very
sharp intellect. Pitta can burn out as the pitta energy in the mind is much stronger than
what the body can actually cope with. Many with high levels of pitta can also view the
body as a tool, so if one day that tool suddenly does not function, the pitta personality
may find it hard to realise where they have gone wrong.

Out of balance

When pitta is out of balance their anger and fire surface, and they can become very
critical of themselves and others, be very controlling, competitive and easily frustrated
when things don’t go according to plan. Then they see everything in black and white,
and find it difficult to pick up the nuances in between, and it’s hard for them to see their
own shortcomings. Once the pitta personality realises they are out of balance they can
develop an obsession about becoming healthy, aggravating their pitta imbalance even
more.

Stimulate wellbeing

It is important for pitta to learn to see the different shades of gray, and all the colours,
and not just see everything in black and white. They also have to learn to let go of their
must dos and should dos, and rip up their to-do list, instead allowing themselves to chill
out and have a life. They have to learn that they have value in just being, and not from
doing. They have learned to get things done through sheer willpower, and they have an
inner fear that if they don’t produce results then they lose their value, and this makes it
hard for them to relax. But relaxing is key, as this helps them develop balance, and when
a pitta person is in balance they truly shine and can then create miracles. Famous pitta
leaders are Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Eckhart Tolle and Mother Teresa.

Pitta needs to discover the richness in being present in the here

and now.

Often a pitta person feels they are lacking in something, so they search for it outside of
themselves, but if instead they turn their focus inwards through meditation, mindfulness
and restorative yoga, they will find their inner balance.

Pitta personalities usually prefer to do Ashtanga or Bikram yoga, as they find that more
fun and challenging, but they actually need calming Hatha yoga – which they often find
boring, since nothing is “happening”. But this is actually what they need to become
balanced.

How is kapha?

Kapha is calm, stable, thoughtful, relaxed and they often just go with the flow. They
radiate a loving and compassionate energy. They are slower than vata and pitta, and
hence they can feel a bit pushed to the side by society, as in our modern world we often
value speed and discipline. In school, the kapha pupils may still ponder on the answer to
a question, when the vata and pitta children have already answered it and moved on to
the next question. Our educational system is built more for pitta children, who
immediately understand what the teacher is saying, whilst the vata children may not be
paying attention, and the kapha children have not finished digesting what the teacher
has said yet.

Out of balance
When kapha is out of balance their energy stagnates, and they start to feel heavy, slow,
helpless and low, which can result in them being pulled down into a dark pit of despair.

Stimulate wellbeing

It is important that kapha learn to accept themselves and feel it is okay to be a bit slower
than others, because their slower energy is what our fast-paced society needs in order
to create a more stable world.

Kapha is what is actually missing in our world, because both

vata and pitta need to bring more kapha into their lives in order
to be healthy.

However much kapha would love for others to take care of them, their lesson is to learn
to take care of themselves, and for this they need to be active. Just as vata does not
understand the importance of having a routine, and pitta does not understand the
importance of moderation, kapha does not understand the importance of activity and
decisiveness. But that is exactly what they need – physical activity and decisive action.
For kapha it is also important to change their diet, by eating easily digestable meals, with
hot spices, as this helps to increase their metabolism.

Kapha also need to develop self-awareness so they can understand how to get
themselves out of the hole they are in, by exercising, changing their diet, being more
focused and taking action. They need to move every day, in order not to stagnate. When
they do, they are able to blossom and spread so much love, empathy and
resourcefulness, allowing the world to become transformed through kapha’s natural
ability to love.

Tips for vata

Develop a daily structure of routines to create more balance

Eat warm, home-cooked meals

Have regular massages with warm sesame oil

Meditate everyday to relax the mind

Do restorative and calming yoga

See the value in being mellow, relaxed and doing things slowly

Go to bed early

Tips for pitta

Avoid spicy, salty and sour foods, which can increase pitta

See the value in taking time out to do nothing

Go at a slower pace through life

Understand you get more things done when you are calm and relaxed

Meditate everyday and just rest in the now

Do calming and restorative yoga, without any pressure to perform

Let go of being competitive

Tips for kapha

Move every day

Get up early in the morning

Eat spicy food to activate inner energy

Avoid heavy and fatty food

Practice dynamic yoga, such as Ashtanga

Have regular dry massages

Accept yourself exactly as you are

EATING SEASONAL HEALING FOODS TO MOVE

WITH THE CHANGES OF LIFE
What is macrobiotics?

Macrobiotics is the philosophy that stems from traditional Chinese medicine. It originally
comes from Japan where, similar to Chinese medicine, there is a belief system that
everything in the universe, including food, is based of energy – chi – and this energy is
either yin or yang.

Although I’m a qualified macrobiotics nutritionist, I don’t think today’s world is about
following a rigid philosophy, but rather knowing how to use this understanding so we can
bring ourselves back into balance.

Everything in life changes, including our health, and by using

macrobiotics we can learn to see what is needed to create
balance.

The Five Elements Theory

This is based on Chinese medicine, on yin and yang, and here we have five different
elements which all have different energies, correlating with different seasons, different
organs in the body and different emotions. Altogether, these five elements create unity
and wholeness. Each one flows into the next, just like the cycle of the seasons.

Tree energy: spring

Spring is the tree element, which is when the trees move into spring, a time that is all
about waking up, new beginnings, new creations and coming up with new ideas. We all
sort of naturally feel this energy during spring, as we come out of winter, and we are
waking up, just like the plants are shooting out of the ground. So this is a really good
time for cleansing, letting go, detoxing and making space for new ideas and new
creativities.
If we’re feeling really heavy and sluggish after the winter, which most of us do because
we eat heavier foods to get us through the cold weather, then that takes its toll on the
liver. So when we move into warmer weather and the sun is coming, if we continue to
keep eating those heavy foods, we’re going to start feeling stuck and we’ll probably find
it hard to feel our creative energy and to come up with new ideas and to feel like we’re
waking up. Instead we need leafy greens, juices, and things like exercise to help the liver
detox and clean out all the salt and heavier food we ate during the colder months.
Lemon is also great, and the tree element is all about the sour taste, so hot water and
lemon in the morning is a great aid in helping the body detox.

However, we’re not quite ready yet for completely raw food, which would be more the
fire element that comes in the summer. But if you look at the vegetables that grow in
spring, things like wild garlic, spring onions and leeks, they literally grow shooting
straight up out of the ground and they are filled with this new energy of spring and chi.

Fire energy: summer

Summertime is the element of fire, and this element is all about stimulating the heart.
Without even knowing anything about the elements, you notice that in summertime we’re
much more social, joyful and we want to connect more with each other.

That’s because our fire energy is much more alive during the
summertime, because we have the heat of the sun, and it’s
very fiery and stimulates our heart a lot.

Great food in the summer is fresh fruits, fresh raw salads with vegetables and the taste
for fire is about the bitter taste, so things like cocoa, walnuts, radicchio leaves and
lettuce. This is the best time of year to eat mostly raw, because that really keeps the
heart and the fire energy light and open and flowing well. Eating really heavy foods
during the summer will put a toll on the heart energy.

Earth energy: late summer and early autumn

Here we move into the earth energy, and you can really feel when the seasons change.
It starts getting softer, less warm, and a little bit of a chill is coming in.

The earth season is all about the sweet taste, about nourishing
our stomach and our spleen, about comfort, self-love and self-
care.

This is why the earth element can be out of balance if we are not taking care of
ourselves well enough, causing us to get really strong cravings for sweet things. So at
this time of year we need to start to slow down and look after ourselves.

Earth foods are those that are naturally sweet in flavour, such as pumpkins, sweet
potatoes and naturally sweet desserts; foods that are sweet, creamy and comforting.

Metal energy: late autumn

Metal is late autumn, moving into early winter, and this time is all about the lungs, so
here we have to get our lung energy strong so that by the time we get to the winter
season we’re not going to get all those colds and coughs that usually happen at that
time of year.

Metal is about concentration, focus, organisation and structure, and the lungs are really
about the boundary between the outside world and the inside, as we take in the air from
the outside and bring it into our bodies.

We want to be staying away from too many fire foods during

this time of year, which really weaken the lung health – things
 like sugar and alcohol, as they can weaken the lung energy,
leading to a lowered immune system.

Things like wholegrains, particularly short grain brown rice, are very strengthening for
the lungs. Lentils, roasted carrots and parsnips are also good.

Water energy: winter

Water season is all tied in with our kidneys. In Chinese medicine, they call the kidney
energy the house of our zen energy, or the house of our life force. Every single one of us
is born with a certain amount of kidney energy and we inherit it from our ancestors. The
kidney energy is that deep life force that we all have, which will slowly, slowly start to
deplete as we get older. There are other ways to deplete the kidneys, such as pushing
yourself too hard, eating lots of sugar, alcohol, pharmaceutical drugs and recreational
drugs, as well as emotional trauma and high levels of fear.

The wintertime is a season for slowing right down and really a

time for reflection, which is what nourishes the kidneys, so try
things like meditation, and don’t push yourself too much during
the colder months.

Foods that nourish the kidneys are things like black beans, sea vegetables, fish, and
miso soup. It’s really important that we can nourish and contain this energy through the
winter so that by the time spring comes we’re ready to go.

Trusting your intuition

There is no right or wrong way. No diet is the perfect diet for everyone, and I don’t
believe there is the perfect diet for one person throughout their whole life. I have
changed my own diet so much over the last six years, from training in school, to working
in a full time job, to getting pregnant, breastfeeding my daughter and now to being a
mother and teaching.
 As my life has changed, my diet and my needs have had to
completely change too.

It’s really important to have that freedom and flexibility so you can keep creating
balance, and that is what macrobiotics is all about – creating balance.

Yin and yang

Yin and yang are two opposing energies that attract each other and together they create
balance – just like light and dark, or black and white. They are a real partnership and we
never get to a place when we’re in perfect complete balance.

Most of the time we’re flicking from one to the other, but as they are opposing energies,
we often intuitively eat more yang foods when we become too yin, and vice versa. We
are always trying to come back into balance.

About macrobiotics

The word macrobiotic comes from “macro”, which means big or great, and “bios”, which
means “life”. So to practise macrobiotics is to practise the art of a great life.

Macrobiotics is seen through the lens of yin and yang. Yang creates a contracting and
inward movement, whilst yin creates expansion and an outward movement. All dualities
can be seen through this lens, such as hard and soft, hot and cold, as well as the
changes in the seasons.

In macrobiotics, foods are eaten that are produced locally, organically and in season, as
these foods are designed for us living in that area, and this helps our bodies have the
perfect balance of yin and yang. When we instead eat foods that are not in season (or
not produced locally), we create an imbalance.

YOU ARE THE PLACEBO

 Joe decided not to have the operation that the doctors
suggested. Instead he focused on strengthening his inner
healing mechanism; he meditated and visualised himself as
fully healed, noticing that stressful thoughts made his physical
health decline while his body started to feel better when he
envisaged a positive future.

After nine weeks Joe was walking again. Since this event, he has dedicated his life to
researching the mind–body connection, and how we can switch our genes on and off
depending on our thoughts and emotions. He is the author of Evolve Your Brain,
Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, and You are the Placebo. Here he talks to Cissi
Williams about using the power of the mind to heal our bodies.

How can we control our genetics?

When the DNA molecule was discovered, many came to the conclusion that our genes
govern our destiny, but we have come to realise that this is not the case. Our genes are
more like a library of possibilities, and only 1.5 % of our DNA is actually expressed. A
gene needs a signal to turn it on or off, and these signals come from our thoughts,
feelings and actions.

Thinking the same thoughts every day will create recurring emotions and behaviours that
keep certain genes switched on and cause others to be turned off. These repetitive
thoughts push a genetic button that directs us towards our genetic destiny, which we
usually believe is caused by simply having the genes. When we think new thoughts, we
create new synapses in the brain, and a gene has to be signalled each time we make a
new connection (synapse).

Therefore, new thoughts, learning new things, and

demonstrating new behaviours that create new emotions will
turn on new genes.
Because our genes also create protein—and protein is responsible for the structure and
functioning of our body—it also follows that when we think new thoughts and embrace
new behaviours we will form new protein, and in this way we are changing the very
structure and function of our bodies—as well as our genetic “destiny”.

Many of us may have unconsciously taken on our parents’ thought patterns and
behaviours, so not only do we have our own negative thoughts, we may also have
downloaded negative “programming” from our childhood. How can we change this?

Within our nervous system we have what are called mirror neurons which create a
representation in our own bodies of what we see others doing, as if these mirror neurons
were trying to prepare us for carrying out the same act as the person we are observing.
This is actually how children learn; they model—or mirror—their behaviour on the adults
around them. Unconsciously modelling the behaviour of others creates similar types of
emotions and thought patterns within them, as are present within the person they
copied.

Children are constantly mirroring and because children have a different brainwave
pattern from adults —they are in a delta state, which means their brainwaves are at such
a level they are constantly in a state of trance—they can’t analyse and logically
understand what is happening around them. Instead, everything they experience
becomes encoded in their subconscious mind, which starts to form the foundation for
how they think, feel and act. Later, when the child grows older, their brainwaves change,
and they can “close” the door to the subconscious mind— because what separates the
conscious mind from the subconscious mind is the analytical mind.

However, everything that has already been absorbed into the subconscious is still there,
and it is usually a traumatic event of some kind that leads most people to decide to
change what is encoded in their subconscious mind. Fortunately, we can change our
encoding without having to experience a trauma, and this is thanks to our highly
developed frontal lobe, which allows us to observe and pay attention to how we think—
that is, we can start to notice how our thoughts affect our feelings and our behaviours.
All this helps us become more conscious and aware of our subconscious programming
so we can start to modify our behaviour.
Meditation is a useful modification tool because meditation helps us step outside the
constraints of time, so we can more easily recognise our thoughts and behaviour, which
helps us notice who we are being in our lives.

Is it also that when we are in stillness in meditation our conscious mind

relaxes, so we can connect more easily with our subconscious; and that the

seat for our higher consciousness—the prefrontal cortex in our brain—

actually becomes thicker, and meditation helps to create a bridge between

our conscious mind, our subconscious and our higher consciousness, and

this improves the way they work together?

Exactly. When we meditate we need to be present and focused, and with practice these
skills are enhanced, causing more connections to be formed in the brain. Since nerve
cells that fire together wire together, this results in the prefrontal cortex becoming
thicker. This allows us to be able to pay even more attention, observe and stay present
with our thoughts, and to control our emotional impulses, and when we know how to
control our emotional reactions, we develop emotional intelligence. This is a really useful
skill to have, especially as we typically experience a lot of stress in our modern lives, and
the chemicals of stress affect our behaviour, causing us to be more prone to reacting in
ways that we later regret.

There is always a gap between the way things appear and the
way things really are, and if we react during that gap-period, we
will most likely take action that we later regret, such as sending
an angry email, or speaking harshly to someone.

Meditation helps us go beyond our reactive mind, emotional addictions and habitual
thoughts. This enables us to calm our bodies and still the mind so we can step out of the
daily stresses we experience in linear time, and instead connect with a sense of
timelessness. And that is the moment when the brain becomes highly organised, where
the different parts of the brain starts talking to each other and become more integrated;
because the hormones of stress divide the compartments of the brain, since the brain is
not designed to live in an emergency mode for an extended period of time. This
compartmentalisation of the brain creates an incoherent function of the brain, and this is
when we start to get out of balance.

However, meditation creates significant coherence in the brain, and our ability to stay
present is enhanced as the frontal lobe develops even more. This leads to enhancement
of the prefrontal cortex, which causes our brain to function better, and we are able to
function in a more harmonious way—we feel better and are more consciously aware of
our emotional reactions and behaviours. We become more trusting, more giving, more
loving and much happier, which is how we should be when our brain is healthy and in
balance. So, not only does meditation create a thickening of the prefrontal cortex, it also
creates more coherence in the brain, and when the brain is coherent, we are more
coherent.

When meditating, is it easier to step into this space of timelessness where

we connect easily with our inner being, where we just exist, instead of

constantly being preoccupied with everything that needs doing?

Exactly, and we don’t have to go on a retreat to do this. It is enough to just close our
eyes, calm the body and allow ourselves to let go of our thoughts. As soon as we do this
we step into this timelessness. Meditation is not about becoming somebody; instead it is
about becoming pure consciousness. When we do this, something remarkable happens,
because in that moment we have the potential to change our thoughts and life situation. I
know from my research that a brain never changes a brain, a personality never changes
a personality, and the ego never changes the ego; only by becoming pure
consciousness do we begin to have the ability to change.

What actually is the placebo effect?

It is an interesting concept that someone can be given a sugar pill, or a saline injection,
and still get better. It seems as if a certain percentage of people who actually believe
that they are taking a proven treatment, will begin to make a pharmacy of chemicals in
their own body that matches the chemicals of the drug they think they are taking. It is as
if they are programming their automatic nervous system into healing, by thought alone.

For example, if a depressed person is offered a sugar pill that they believe to be an
antidepressant, they will start to embrace emotions of excitement, inspiration and
gratitude, and it is this combination of a clear intention and elevated emotion that begins
to change their biology, creating an internal chemical reaction where the body starts to
produce what it needs in order to match these inner positive emotions—and the patient’s
mood improves. Is it the sugar pill that is doing this, or is there an internal mechanism,
that we all possess, that allows us to heal ourselves just by believing that we can?

When we started researching the placebo effect, we looked at whether it was possible to
enhance this inner healing mechanism and came to the conclusion that it was. All that
was required was enough belief in this inner healing ability, and that you allowed
yourself to embrace the positive emotions this belief created, and this in turn created
something similar to the placebo effect.

In other words, you can change the chemical reaction in the body with the

thoughts and feelings you have in order to trigger a healing response.

Likewise in a similar way, can we damage the body by focusing on negative

thoughts which create negative emotions?

Absolutely, because the long-term effect of stress, negative thoughts and emotions
activate certain genes which create the foundation for ill-health and disease. Research
has found that long-term stress creates illness, and once you have developed an illness
this creates even more stress. This leads to a negative downward spiral into even more
ill health. A single thought can trigger a stress response similar to that of being chased
by a lion. So, the hormones of stress and our thoughts can make us sick, but can our
thoughts also make us healthy?
This was a question I really wanted to investigate, and what I realised was that in order
to be able to think yourself well, it wasn’t enough to just think positively. You also had to
become conscious of all the thoughts you had been thinking and begin to pay attention
to them, and no longer allow them to slip into the seams of your awareness where they
would become unconscious again. You had to notice your behaviours and actions and
even how you talked, so you became wise to your own subconscious programming. And
you also had to become aware of your unconscious emotions and realise it was these
emotions you were really addicted to, and it is those that were creating your disease.
This awareness is called pulling the body out of the past, because when you think in the
past, you continue to behave and think as you have always done, but the moment you
begin to think in the present you free yourself to be fully in the here and now, and then
you can create a new future, and also see a great biological change.

When some people start to think positively, they may assume that they

have to be positive all the time, and if they should experience normal

negative human emotions, such as worry, fear and doubt, they start to

beat themselves up because they believe they always have to be happy and

positive. What is your advice here?

I think it is unrealistic to expect yourself to always be positive, and you will probably end
up experiencing various degrees of negativity, or even depression, as you can’t keep
that up for an extended period of time.

I feel it is really important to understand that we don’t have to be positive all the time,
and when we step into this river of change it is also going to feel uncomfortable. It’s
going to feel unfamiliar and uncertain, because we are no longer being our old self. The
hardest part of change is that you are no longer making the same choices you made
before, and the moment you are no longer thinking or acting as you did before, you are
in that river of change. And you then feel you are not being yourself, and what some
people do here is to return to making the old choices and performing the same
behaviours they used to do, because that’s what feels “right”. But this is not “right”, it is
just familiar. When people begin to understand that there is a gap when we step away
from the old self and move to the new self, and that is the biological, neurological,
chemical and even genetic death of the old self, they will begin to understand that, yes,
they are in the unknown, in that void, but the best way to create their future is not from
the known but from the unknown—and it is from this unknown that we can create some
pretty unusual and amazing futures.

How did your journey towards this research begin?

It started when I was 23, and taking part in a triathlon. I had just finished my swim and
was riding my bike full speed ahead. I came to a bend and a police officer was waving at
me to turn right, which I did. I never saw the big, red four-wheel-drive vehicle that drove
straight into me. I flew through the air and landed on my back. The old lady that drove
the car didn’t have time to stop, so her vehicle quickly caught up with me. I managed to
hold on to the front of her car so I wasn’t pulled underneath it, but I was dragged along
for several metres until she finally managed to stop. I broke six spinal vertebrae and the
doctors wanted to put steel rods in my spine because some bone fragments were
pushing against my spinal cord. They were worried I would never be able to walk again.

I was a chiropractor so I understood the risks involved with this operation as well as the
risks involved in not doing it. I decided against the surgery. I think my decision was
based on a mixture of youth and ignorance, and an inner belief that I could heal myself if
I connected with the innate healing intelligence I knew existed within my body. This inner
healing mechanism is present in all living tissue. Before my accident, I had theoretical
knowledge of how the body could heal itself, but now I had to really find out how it
worked in practice. I meditated a lot and I noticed how I would frequently focus on what I
didn’t want and how these negative thoughts affected my body. Instead, I started to
visualise what I truly wanted. This stimulated my inner healing power and it didn’t take
long before I could walk again.

I made a deal with myself that if I could ever walk again, I would spend the rest of my life
studying the mind–body connection, and I have kept this promise ever since.

So this event caused you to find your life purpose?

Absolutely, I would never have worked with what I do today if I had not had this
experience, so now with hindsight I can see that this was a gift.

It’s amazing how some events seem to be predetermined in order for us to

find the path we are meant to take so we can be of the greatest service.

I honestly believe that. Now as I look back at my life, I see how instrumental my accident
was, and I often say to people that perhaps the worst thing that ever happens to you is
the best think that ever happens. I think that in order for us to wake up we sometimes
need a wake-up call, and I certainly had mine in 1986.

INTUITIVE HEALTH

How can we learn to listen to our body and interpret its messages?

Think of your body like the dashboard in your car. When you get a new car the array of
buttons and symbols on the dashboard can be quite overwhelming; you may well drive
the car around without really knowing what they all mean and if something starts flashing
you might ignore it until the car stops! And so eventually you have to pull the car over to
figure out what that light is telling you.

Your body also has similar buttons which will let you know if you need to adapt to the
changes in your life. As we learn how our body is wired, we figure out what we need to
pay attention to in our life. In the body, one button (root chakra) is the centre which deals
with your immune system, bones and joints. This centre will let you know when you don’t
feel safe, and when the people around you are not safe. This is like the panic button in
your car or your hazard warning lights.

Another button in your car indicates a problem with the oil. Likewise, the second centre
in your body is related to relationships and money, as these are the ‘oil’ in your life. This
centre will let you know when there is a problem in these areas: when you either have
too little or too much emphasis on money or a relationship or when there are problems
with your hormones, uterus, prostate or lower back.
In your car another button will go off when you have a problem with your battery; this is
akin to your energy. If the battery is low you will see it. You might ignore it, until the next
thing you know your car won’t start in the morning; if you keep the car engine running,
you will exhaust the battery. Similarly, the third centre in your body signals when you
push yourself too much, when you stay up all night and when you work too hard. This
centre is the balance of self versus responsibility to others, and this is the area that deals
with your digestion, weight, adrenal gland, hormones and cortisol. It will let you know
when you are having trouble balancing your needs against those of others, against work
or even against an addiction. You will experience issues with your digestion, problems
with your weight and fatigue – telling you that you are either not driving yourself hard
enough or you are driving yourself too hard.

Similar to the car’s engine, your fourth centre – the heart, breast and lungs – is an area
housing the crucial pipelines of your body; these are the pathways for motion and
nurturance. If they don’t enable flow, due to an imbalance of what you have put in versus
what you put out, you will stop. You will either get a heart attack, be unable to breathe,
or have problems with your breast.

Fifth centre, communication, is like the radio and satellite navigation in your car, and
when they don’t work it is just annoying. When you are having trouble with
communication then your thyroid and neck may play up.

Sixth centre is the brain, eyes and ears, and in the car this is the computer system. It is
this ambiguous area in the car that somehow coordinates everything – fuel injection,
spark plugs, engine… Just as in the body, your brain connects everything, so when it
doesn’t work, everything is affected – your thoughts, how you see and think about the
world (your perception) and how the rest of your body works. This centre will let you
know when there is something wrong with the way you are seeing the world and with
how you are growing, developing and changing. Your body will let you know this through
your eyes, ears and sense organs, as well as your brain.

The seventh centre is your whole body. And this warning light says ‘urgent service’ when
we have a life-threatening illness. To pre-empt that, we don’t have just a check-up with
our doctor, we have a check-in with spirit and with ourselves. This centre is concerned
with our purpose in life, but also our connection to spirit and whether we are on the right
path.

What are the various intuitive messages behind our emotions?

We have a right brain, a left brain and a body. The right brain is where the emotion is.
You have five basic emotions – fear, anger, sadness, love and joy – all based on
emotional biology. This means that each emotion in your right brain has a response in
your body.

So sadness makes muscles droop, anger makes muscles tight,

and fear makes muscles twitch. Joy makes muscles active, and
love relaxes us.

If you get angry, your blood vessels will tighten, causing them to narrow, resulting in
hypertension. And hostility, which is a flavour of anger, has been shown to be associated
with hypertension.

You have to be able to take those emotions to your left brain and do the following three
things: (A) Identify the emotion with your left brain; (B) figure out the correct response;
and then (C) release the emotion. When we don’t release the emotion we get stuck Chi
(life force in Chinese medicine). So for example, anger lets us know when our rights are
being violated, but if you can’t take an emotion, bring it to your left brain, name it and
then have the correct response, you can’t release it.

And then will it be stored in the body instead?

Yes, and with whom do we get angry if we can’t get angry in the appropriate way? We
get angry with ourselves; we turn the anger inwards and it goes into our body and we get
depressed. You have to learn how to bring the emotion, which is part of your intuition
from your right brain, to your left brain, name it, respond effectively and release it.

Many people who are very intuitive lack boundaries between

their emotions and someone else’s.
So you could be standing there in a good mood, but then someone near you is angry or
sad, and since the myelin sheaths, or the boundaries, between their pathways and yours
are leaky, their sadness, or their anger, literally leaks into your synapses and the next
thing you know you feel their emotion; so if they are angry you get anxious, and if they
are sad you are sad. And if you don’t do something to help them you either feel anxious
or guilty.

Is that why very intuitive people can feel more anxious or feel more guilt?

Bingo! They can’t name it, so when someone they are near gets angry, they get anxious
themselves, and they feel, ‘I must do something because if I watch that person suffer
when I could have done something, then it is my fault.’ Or they get so intuitively keyed
into that person’s suffering it resonates with them. If you have had pain and suffering in
your life, especially abuse, and you are near someone who is suffering abuse, you feel
for them; you might even say ‘Oh my god my heart feels for you,’ and literally it does.
You feel their pain, you feel their anxiety, but you are not able with your left brain to
name it, respond effectively and release it.

What happens next is that your anxiety and their pain goes down to your third centre; it
goes to your adrenal gland and your adrenal gland takes whatever body fat you may
have, and ends up making too much cortisol and too much oestrogen. The cortisol then
goes to the nearby pancreas and messes up your blood sugar. Thus some people who
are intuitive gain weight.

The cortisol then goes down to the first centre because you don’t feel safe and secure
because you probably have a family that was like that too, and now you resonate with
their history of not feeling safe and the cortisol goes to the immune system and you
might get problems with viruses and chronic fatigue, all because you feel their pain. As a
result you might get fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Epstein Barr virus, Lyme’s disease or
autoimmune problems. And that is because your adrenal gland is working overtime,
being stimulated by your intuition and your anxiety and guilt, leading to adrenal fatigue.
Not to mention the fact that your right brain – with its emotional porousness and lack of
boundary – takes that pain and anxiety and guilt and brings it to your adrenal gland,
where the adrenal medulla releases epinephrine, making every muscle in your body
spasm, because it is in fear and anxiety, and causing you to feel exhaustion.

How can we change that? How can we heal so that we come back into

balance again and learn to have better boundaries around us?

Step one – it is like ballroom dancing. When you do ballroom dancing you have to keep
the frame. There is a space in between where the steps occur. Otherwise, if you have
spaghetti arms and you don’t hold the frame, you have no space for the steps. You can’t
dance. There is no function. So you cannot have a relationship if there is no space
between you and them, if there is no boundary.

Step two is that you learn how to name your emotions with your left brain, and notice
that they are not the same. If they are always the same then chances are that you are
not holding the frame. And, therefore, you don’t have a relationship, instead you have
fusion.

Is that why with certain people there can be a very close, unhealthy and

unconscious bond, and you sometimes have to create space?

A close and unhealthy bond is an enmeshment, like conjoined twins. When they are
born they are so enmeshed that it is not healthy because eventually the organs steal
energy from each other. One person’s heart does not get enough energy and the other
person’s heart gets hypertrophied.

So one person might receive all the nurturance and the other
person do all the giving of it.

Some conjoined twins have to be separated for them to live, survive and thrive. Or one
of them is going to live and the other one is going to die. And that is true with people
where one is co-dependent and the other one is narcissistic.
This makes so much sense because if you are growing up in an abusive

environment, then often you are getting into all sorts of weird unhealthy

patterns.

This happens because there is no boundary in your right brain and Salvador Minuichin
made great progress in understanding this. He showed that in every family there is a
sensitive one, who almost always has third centre problems – problems with digestion,
body image, eating and weight, and low immune function.

He would put the whole family in a room with a mirror. He gets the mother, the father,
the kids and the sensitive one, and he instructs them just to talk. So they talk about the
problems they see with their appearances in the mirror, and as they do he measures
their cortisol. The mother’s cortisol might be two, the father’s cortisol might be two but
this sensitive child’s cortisol might be eight, leading Minuichin to conclude that this child
is hyper-reactive to the problems that everybody else has because they are talking about
them. So he instructs them not to talk about their problems, instead just to eat and have
a nice time. Minuichin watches behind the glass mirror and then he measures the
family’s cortisol level (their stress hormone). The mother’s goes down to one, the father’s
goes down to one, everybody’s goes down. But what about that sensitive kid? The one
that is emotionally porous?

It would go up. If you thought that, this tells me you are that sensitive person. If you are
not that person you will say it goes down, because you aren’t that person so you won’t
get it. But it may feel like you can intuitively put yourself at that table and you know it
makes you want to hurl and throw up. And you will also know that within ten days you
will be exhausted, sick as a dog and have some immune system problem. But the net
cortisol level did not go up, instead it stayed the same in the family; it just got diverted
into the body of the sensitive one. And Minuichin said that the conflicts in the family get
diverted into this person’s body and it gets immortalised in cortisol levels, which then
gets expressed in the form of illnesses, such as obesity, ulcerative colitis, anorexia,
diabetes and so on.
As these sensitive ones heal, they often become social workers and healers, because
their childhood was an early clinical training ground. They developed a huge pathway
between the right brain and their body for medical intuition, and through cortisol and
epinephrine, they developed right brain circuits for emotional sensitivity and it enlarged
their amygdala capacity for irritability, anxiety, moodiness and intuition, which primed
them for medical intuition.

YOUR MIND CAN HEAL YOUR BODY

What has inspired you to do the work you do?

Two things really. Firstly, when I was six years old my mum had postnatal depression
after the birth of my youngest sister. I felt so much compassion for my mum and kept
wondering how I could help. Then a few years later, on a school visit to a public library, a
book (and I know this sounds corny, but it’s true) just fell off the shelf. It was called The
Magic Power of Your Mind. I got it for my mum and it helped her a lot. Afterwards my
mum would often say those words ‘the power of the mind’ and I guess hearing them so
often made the soil for my future fertile for working in this field.

The second thing was when I started working in the pharmaceutical industry and
learning about the results of medical trials for new drugs. I was already interested in the
power of the mind and the placebo effect, but working in the drug industry actually gave
me greater insight into the mind’s healing powers. Results of drug trials showed people’s
conditions improving while taking a placebo – a dummy drug – because they believed
they were receiving real medicine. From a teenager, I had a growing desire inside myself
to write books that would help others in their lives and I now knew that I could include
information about how the mind could heal the body.
What do you think is the real power within the mind? How can we tap into

that?

I think that we are much more powerful than we imagine. Recent evidence from
neuroscientific research shows us that our thoughts actually impact upon the physical
structure of the brain.

If we think the same thought regularly we can actually cause

structural changes to our brain.

Not only that, but thoughts and emotions cause the release of chemicals known as
neuropeptides, which impact upon cells throughout our bodies. So our thoughts, and
emotions, affect the brain and the body. We now know this as fact. The real power of the
mind is that it can, in a sense, shape the health and function of the body.

I’ve been researching how to tap into this and have collected stories from around the
world where people defied the odds by getting better when they were not expected to, or
where they recovered much faster than predicted. I discovered that many of these
people shared one thing in common – what they did with their minds. In addition to the
therapy or drug treatment they were receiving, they would practice visualising
themselves as healed. Not in the sense that they imagined themselves running and
dancing, but they imagined that they were like little surgeons inside their own bodies
carrying out any healing or reconstruction that was needed. People with tumours, for
example, imagined them melting as if they were ice or imagined pouring acid over them
and watching them dissolve. They practiced these thoughts over and over and over
again, every day for many days. It was the one thing that they all did.

How is science viewing the body, mind and spirit connection these days?

Science is now beginning to fully accept that the mind and body are connected, although
when I say ‘science’ I mean those working in the field: neuroscientists, many biologists,
many pharmacologists, psychologists etc, even many physicians. Those working in other
areas tend to be a little behind in that they are not familiar with the pace at which the
new research is confirming that our thoughts and emotions can impact our bodies; so
many still believe that this is ‘woo woo’ stuff. But the new research is published in top
level scientific journals in the biology, pharmacology and medical fields, like Nature,
Science, and The Journal of Neuroscience.

I think that many scientists still don’t embrace the spiritual connection to the mind and
body, although many have deep spiritual beliefs; some of my ex-colleagues in the
pharmaceutical industry were deeply spiritual or religious people. But I would say that
science, in general, doesn’t accept the existence of ‘spirit’. Personally, I do and I believe
that it flows into the body.

The brain and heart are, in a sense, like radio receivers that
receive the transmission of the spirit.

That’s my personal view, although there is no science to back it up but I think this is an
area that science will never confirm. So we are left with having faith or not, and it’s really
down to a personal choice. But I don’t think science has a right to tell people that their
beliefs are nonsense just because they can’t prove that they are correct.

How is science able to clarify what esoteric and alternative therapies have

known intuitively?

By confirming that the mind and body are connected, science is beginning to clarify
some of what esoteric and alternative therapies have expounded for many years.
Fabrizio Benedetti, of the University of Turin Neuroscience Department and member of
the ‘Placebo Study Group’ at Harvard, recently wrote that “the placebo effect has
evolved from being thought of as a nuisance in clinical pharmacological research to a
biological phenomenon worthy of research in its own right.” He and many other
researchers in the field are showing that people heal when they have the right thoughts,
or beliefs or attitudes.

We also know that states like hostility can damage the heart and that love, gratitude,
forgiveness and compassion can repair much of the damage. Esoteric traditions and
alternative therapies have talked about the healing power of faith and love for years. So
science is now confirming that they were right all along. Actually, this is something that I
find in the talks and workshops that I give around the world. When I share scientific
information on the power of the mind to heal, I am not telling people much that is new to
them, but I am, instead, giving them faith in themselves and their own abilities by sharing
the scientific evidence.

Would you consider yourself to be alternative, scientific or both?

I would consider myself to be both alternative and scientific. I see many benefits from
both and one approach or the other might work better for different individuals. I would
like to see a fusing of both approaches so that, one day, medicine takes a very broad
holistic view. The current talk in genetics, that drugs will be tailored for an individual’s
genome, is based on the fact that we are all unique. So the same holds true for
alternative and conventional medicine. We are all different and some people have a
better response to alternative therapies than they do to drugs, and vice versa. A broad,
holistic, view would embrace our similarities and our differences.

What do you think is the most important thing people can do to keep

healthy?

It’s twofold. Firstly, eating well and thinking well. It is highly important to learn about
nutrition because eating the right food can help us to repair ourselves when we are sick
and to an extent protect us from future illness. Conversely, eating too much of certain
foods often isn’t good for us.

Secondly, and mostly overlooked, is the importance of attitude. A positive attitude is

actually the best defence against many common illnesses. One scientific study showed
that people with a negative attitude are hit harder by colds and flu than those who
maintain a positive attitude. Scientists gave nasal drops containing the cold or flu virus to
a sample of several hundred people and observed how sick they became and for how
long they were symptomatic. Those who were previously labelled as having the most
positive attitudes (through psychological testing) recovered much faster than those with
more negative attitudes.
 One simple way to develop a more positive attitude is to count
your blessings every day.

Keep a daily journal and list five things that you are grateful for that happen each day. It
might be people you meet, their words or actions, or events. It’s very simple, yet
extremely effective.

Have you got a favourite, real-life, inspiring story you would like to share

with us?

A favourite, real-life, inspiring story … I have a friend (Drew Pryde) who was seriously ill
with myasthenia gravis, which is considered incurable. He was attending a vibrational
medicine workshop when he took a very serious turn for the worse. The physician
running the course (Dr Helen Petrow) was a specialist in vibrational medicine. She told
Drew that he was too ill to travel home and he would have to come to her house for
treatment. He stayed at her home for three months receiving regular vibrational medicine
therapy. This is an example of genuine kindness and care.

Under Dr Petrow’s supervision, my friend began to improve. He then decided to try some
visualization exercises. Myasthenia gravis is an autoimmune disease where antibodies
of the immune system attack a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine in the brain. So
Drew imagined himself inside his brain with a toy popgun, and every time he saw one of
the antibodies about to attack an acetylcholine transmitter, he shot it and watched it
disintegrate. He did this many, many times, every day for a few months, and got better
and better.

Through this combination of vibrational medicine and visualisation, Drew was eventually
discharged from Ninewells Hospital in Dundee (Scotland) and his consultant said: “Mr
Pryde, you are the only person I have ever heard of who has completely recovered from
Myasthenia Gravis.”

I am deeply inspired by Drew’s story. It gives people hope that they, too, can recover
from medical conditions where they are given little hope.
UNLEASH YOUR INNER GODDESS

What inspired you to write this book?

I found myself as a divorced single woman, with both my children having gone off to
college and my former husband remarried with another baby, and I thought, okay, what
about me? How am I going to negotiate this second half of my life? So I set out on a
path to reinvent myself and become the kind of woman that the kind of man I was
interested in would be attracted to. This was my initial intention.

What happened as a result is I put myself in situations that were extremely challenging,
such as walking into an Argentine tango dance class as a single woman. At this class
they didn’t care that I was a New York Times best-selling author, or that I was really
good at sitting with a woman in labour – none of that counted for anything.

This was about me finding myself and understanding the physiology of what happens
when you become a bitter old woman. We’ve all seen those, where life has been one
disappointment after another, and I refused to let that happen to me. So when my girls
left for college I realised I had to get a life.

Around this time I was also having sessions with Dr Doris E Cohen, a clinical
psychologist who also works with guides and angels, so not only is she a very astute
clinician, but she also has this additional spiritual awareness.

I was moaning to her about my age and that I was too old to
find the love of my life, and she then said: My dear, goddesses
never age, and you have a great deal of goddess energy within
you.

I could feel how my mind grasped at this idea, how I wanted it to be the truth; and now it
has become the truth.
I would imagine that in order for that to become your truth you may have

had to experience a lot of pain and a cleansing of negative emotions in

order to connect with that goddess energy again?

Absolutely. Tremendous pain. I had bouts of chest pains – angina basically –which
started the year I was going through a divorce, when my youngest was 16. I had picked
her up from camp and I was really looking forward to us spending some time together,
but she fell asleep in the car and as we got home she ran into the house and started
calling her friends. She was not interested in spending time with me, instead she wanted
to be with her friends, and I felt utterly and completely alone and tossed aside.

That was the first time I had a bout of chest pains. And, as you know, I’m a doctor; I
know what cardiac pain is described as, and I knew what it was. I also have a big family
history of heart disease, so I could have thought, Oh well, heart disease runs in my
family and after the age of 50 it is the number one killer of women, and then left it at that,
thinking that this was my fate, because this is what happens in my family.

But I know that what happens in your family is the behaviour and lifestyle that are the
result of a particular belief system, and a belief system can be changed. The beauty is I
have a mother who has transcended a pattern she inherited from her family. Her own
mother died at age 68 of a heart attack, but my mother, by following her own heart and
allowing herself to go on wild adventurous trips, has transcended this pattern, and she is
still a very healthy woman who trekked to Mount Everest Base Camp at age 84.

As you started to develop these chest pains, what did you do to heal the

emotions that were lying underneath the pain?

When I would feel an overwhelming emotional pain I’d step out on the lawn and I would
just weep into the earth. The first step towards truly healing my heart was acknowledging
the truth of what I was feeling, with no judgement and no attempt to cover it up. In my
book I have a chapter entitled Goddesses grieve, rage and move on, and it is about
allowing ourselves to feel our anger and the hurt that lies underneath it. I had a lot of
cleaning up to do of my own inner emotional basement, and it took me five years to do it.

I also started a meditation practice where I learned how to connect with Divine Love
(God). And I danced tango, which was very confronting as I was trying to “do it right”. But
now, when I dance with a man, I see myself as a gift to him and my presence is my
present – I simply respond to his heart. There is no age; there is no anything – just
presence, where two strangers connect at the heart and move as one; and for me, when
I allowed my body to do that, I was literally rewiring my heart.

But the final piece of healing my heart, was when I was working with the wonderful
therapist Bob Cooley, as he was trying to shred the dense fascia in my heart meridian,
when Bob suddenly asked:

“Did you ever have a pony?”

“Yes, we had a Shetland pony when I was about five.”

“Did you have a sister who died?”

“Yes, I had a sister who died when she was 23.”

“No, earlier?”

And then of course I remembered my little sister who died when I was five. Her name
was Bonnie and she lived six months. My mother was sick with viral pneumonia
throughout this pregnancy, and Bonnie died in a neonatal nursery.

And then Bob did a stretch on my heart, and said that it was at this time that I
abandoned myself. What I had done was to go out of my own self to heal my mother and
her grief. That was also the moment my dream of becoming an obstetrician
gynaecologist was born, but it was so unconscious, I had no idea that this was the
driving force, and I never realised I abandoned myself in response to looking after my
mother.

Bob explained how I had been overextending ever since, trying to heal my mother.
 Something happened to me with that final shredding of this
shell around my heart, it literally opened my heart.

And I knew that was the end of the chest pains; that this was the final release that I
needed in order to fully heal.

During my time of healing I also had my heart broken by a man I was deeply in love with,
who could not commit to me. I refused to let that be my downfall, because I knew that at
the end of the day my goal was to feel whole, complete and lacking in nothing. However,
the fuel that initially drove me to heal was that I would transform so much that I could
finally meet the love of my life – outside of myself. But my soul had a much bigger plan!
She led me to indeed meet the love of my life – and she is inside me.

It took my whole life to get to this point. Now, when I am at home on my own, I’m not
alone: I am here. I have actually just met a part of me that’s never really been present
before, but I am fully here now.

What a wonderful healing journey for you, to come to that final piece of

the jigsaw puzzle, so that you could come back home to yourself again. So

now that you’ve done that, what has changed for you since?

I now have enormous contentment and faith in my future. Before it was always about this
thing of I’m going to be alone for the rest of my life, but now it’s an absolute knowledge
that that is really not the case and all is well; all will be well, because I’ve finally come
home, inside of myself.

What advice can you give for how we can connect with our inner goddess?

First of all, remember that your physical body has enormous capacity for regeneration
and renewal – no matter your age – and when you feed it new thoughts and information,
the biology will respond, and just knowing that is enormously empowering. I now look
and feel much younger than I did five years ago, because I have changed my thought
patterns and healed my emotions.

It is also important to realise that you cannot bypass difficult emotions with affirmations
or gratitude or loving kindness; you just can’t do that. A difficult emotion – such as anger,
sadness, grief, rage or resentment – needs to be addressed. Dr Mario Martinez talks
about the causes of health, and one of the causes of health is righteous anger.

Righteous anger is the anger you feel when your innocence, or the innocence of
another, has been threatened. We’ve been taught as women to make it all better, to
smooth things over, and to never express our anger; but we must love ourselves enough
to walk away from, or discourage, poor treatment of ourselves.

But you see, here’s the thing: we are so afraid that we will be left alone, that no one will
love us, that we put up with all kinds of ill-treatments, which will lead us to suppress our
anger – something that leads to many symptoms such as depression and ill health. I
would encourage women to use righteous anger to heal themselves.

Women have been ill-treated for a very long time, so can it be that some of

the pain we may feel as women may have been passed down to us, through

our genetic history?

Yes, it is passed down, and this is a great point, that the work you do on yourself also
heals future generations.

So can we use this righteous anger as a fuel to give us the drive we need to

put down our boundaries and step into our divine power – our goddess

energy – so we can start the healing process?

Yes, and the questions here are: How am I going to use that anger? What is the need
that I’m having that is not being met? As you listen to the answer, the anger will
dissipate.
When we don’t listen to our anger, we can develop symptoms that are associated with
repressed anger, such as depression, and what many women do then is expect to get a
prescription for their depression, but the type of prescription I am talking about here
requires a lot of courage. Because if you really want to tap into this glorious, life-giving,
pleasurable goddess energy that creates the life of your dreams, you’ve got to walk
through hell for a while in order to reach the place within you where you can find her.

Yes, I can feel the truth in that, because femininity has been suppressed

for so long, and there is a lot of healing we need to do before the feminine

goddess energy can reclaim her power again.

That’s right, and I think that’s what’s happening now all over the planet and in so many
ways; so it’s not going to be nearly as hard as it was in the past. The moment is here
now, and we also have each other. Another thing that I would say to women is do not
attempt to do this alone. We have this attitude in the West that we should be able to
figure these things out by ourselves, but we can’t. I have had the wonder of people like
Bob Cooley and Dr Doris Cohen working with me, and I have many friends who support
me where we text and email each other every single day, to lift each other up. We need
this; no one can do it alone.

How can we live a divinely inspired life?

I love the work of Tosha Silver, who was influenced by Florence Scovel who in 1925
wrote a book called The Game of Life and How to Play It. Her idea was that there is a
divine design for your life and your job is to align with it, and you can do this through
elevated cognition. Dr Mario Martinez talks about the causes of health, one of these
being righteous anger, and another is this elevated cognition when you assume that
there is a reason why something is happening, that there is a divine design for your life
that requires you to align with it so that it can be expressed.
Tosha Silver came up with these wonderful Change Me prayers, that help to bypass the
intellect, so we can align with this divine design, and they go something like this: Change
me divine beloved, into one who trusts. Change me into one who can easily let go. Just
change me, because I don’t have a clue how to do this. You know, I’ve thought my
brains out, and my heart still aches. Change me into someone who sees the benefit of
what’s going on.

We all need a torch when we’re in the dark night of the soul,
and these prayers help us find that torch so we can easier
connect with the divine design that is there for our lives.

CREATING HEAVEN ON EARTH

Bruce Lipton, a former medical school professor, wanted to research how our beliefs can
influence our lives, and this resulted in his international bestseller The Biology of Belief.
Having achieved professional success, he wondered if he could apply some of the same
principles he had captured in his bestseller to have a more rewarding personal life. He
decided to study how to keep the feeling of being in love alive—even after the initial
honeymoon.

He discovered that there is a science behind why and how we fall in love, noticing that
when we fall in love we usually experience:

Enhanced physical wellbeing

Increased energy and vitality

A longing to experience another day in this state of bliss and love.

He found that when we are infused with the magical feeling of being in love we tend to
feel as if we are living in paradise, but after a while the magic faded; but could it be
possible to experience the honeymoon effect all the time and, if so, how? Isn’t it a fact
that all infatuation eventually ends? Bruce Lipton suggests that this does not have to be
the case. He says that we do not fall in love by accident; instead we create the feeling of
being in love, and we can use the same principles to re-create this feeling over and over
again.

Why do we enter into relationships?

The answer is very simple: we survive better when we are join forces with someone else
as it is easier to provide food and a roof over our head; we fulfil our emotional and
biological needs to be in a community with other people; and nature has provided us
with a strong drive to reproduce, to make sure humanity survives.

These factors combined create an incredible motivating force to seek out a partner with
whom we can have children. What makes us humans unique is that our children stay
with us for a very long time. A frog does not need as much “relationship intelligence” in
order to reproduce as tadpoles are pretty self-sufficient. Human children on the other
hand need their parents for at least 13 years (or more) before they can survive on their
own. This means we, as parents, have to develop a much higher “relationship
intelligence”, learning how to stay together long enough to ensure our children’s
wellbeing and to help us accomplish this, nature has made sure we feel incredibly good
when we are in love.

Why do relationships end?

According to Bruce Lipton, some relationships may end because of our inner energy.
The more energy we have, the better we feel, and the easier and more harmonious our
relationships will be.

Energy provides the power to create the type of life we want for
ourselves; energy is the creative substance of the Universe;
and we impact the world around us with our energy. In contrast,
the less energy we have, the more difficult everything becomes.

Good vibes – bad vibes

According to Bruce Lipton, we give and receive energy all the time, and when we are
close to like-minded people, with similar energy to ourselves, we feel good. We raise
each other’s energy levels and we experience “good vibes” (constructive interference in
scientific language).

In contrast, being out of tune with those closest to us causes us to lose energy and we
end up feeling empty and low. We would say we experience “bad vibes” (destructive
interference in scientific language).

So what are these “bad vibes”? Basically, it’s when the energy around us is not in
harmony with the energy within us; our “bad vibes” warn us that we are near danger. All
animals have this warning system using vibration as a means of communication—they
feel each other’s energy and know whether it creates good or bad vibes for them. A
gazelle does not have to walk up to a lion to check if they can be friends; the gazelle will
automatically experience a case of “bad vibes” and keep its distance.

We humans are also animals who can instinctively feel when a relationship is good for
us, or not, but many of us have forgotten to trust this inner compass. We listen to what
the person is saying, rather than how this person makes us feel.

Bruce Lipton says this is a big mistake, because how a person makes us feel
energetically is our best guidance system; ignoring this information and only listening to
the actual words we hear can lead to pain and suffering. Just like if the gazelle believed
that the lion could be its romantic partner—whatever beautiful words of true love the lion
might say to the gazelle, its energy system would be signalling danger very loudly, and
there would be no happy ending for the gazelle that chose not to listen to the warning
bells!

Therefore, a feeling of positive vibes between two people is a very important criterion for
a harmonious relationship, and when the relationship feels right, it makes us feel good.
Our heart simply tells us that there is a healthy foundation to build upon, because the
energies are in harmony with each other.

Our inner vibrational energy

When it comes to creating a harmonious relationship, something else that is useful to

know is that our inner vibrational energy is very specific and it can only affect the outer
environment that is in resonance with our particular vibration.

This means that if our inner energy is negative it will affect the exact same type of
negative energy outside of us. In a similar way our inner positive energy vibration will
affect the exact same positive energy outside of us. According to Bruce Lipton, our
thoughts have particular energy vibrations which are broadcast, a bit like sound waves
from a radio station. Only that specific energy that is in harmony with our vibration will be
able to pick up on our broadcasting signal.

If we have negative thoughts such as that we are unworthy of love and that we always
attract the “wrong” partner, then guess what we will tune into outside of us and in this
way attract into our reality – a partner who reflects our inner thoughts back to us, and in
this way delivers proof that our beliefs are “true”.

However, if we believe instead that we are worthy of love and each day broadcast these
thoughts, like radio waves of love, peace and happiness, then we will activate this type
of energy outside of us and attract into our reality relationships that mirror these positive
thoughts back to us.

Maintaining a strong inner energy is important to protect us from ‘attack’ by others;

because those who attack usually select victims who are easiest to overpower. Just like
the lion, who will not choose any gazelle in the herd but focus on the one with the
weakest vibration.

We are constantly interpreting each other’s energies, and we

can intuitively feel if a person is good for us or not.
When we trust in this, it is easier for us to choose the right partner, and the more positive
energy we have within us, the more easily we will attract a healthy relationship for
ourselves.

How we can affect our health

How can we then make sure we are filled with positive, health-giving energy? Does it
depend upon our genetics? Bruce Lipton offers an interesting answer. He suggests that
research within epigenetics has shown that rather than the gene itself, it is the
environment surrounding the gene that controls the fate of our cells, and that we switch
our genes on or off depending on the environment we create with our thoughts, feelings
and lifestyle choices (both our inside and outside environments).

This means we do not have to feel like victims of heredity; instead we can actively
choose to change our thoughts, feelings and our life choices to create the most
favourable environment.

Bruce Lipton’s research showed that stem cells developed into different type of cells
(muscle, nerve, skeleton) depending on their environment; so the outside environment
had a causal effect on the genetic expression within the stem cell. He also found that if
sick cells were moved to a healthy controlled laboratory environment, then these cells
became healthy again.

So how can we affect our environment so that genes are activated for optimum health in
real life? Because we consist of cells which are floating around in fluid (we consist of
70% fluid) and these cells are nourished through the blood (thus forming the
environment for the cell), we can affect the health and genetic expression of our cells by
providing them with good quality blood, with a high nutrient content and a strong
chemical composition. This is why it is important to eat nourishing food. Blood is also
affected by our hormones and the amount of ‘poison’ we have in our bodies.

Cells naturally move towards that which is healthy and

nourishing, because that causes them to grow, and they move
away from toxins, in an attempt to protect themselves.
In a similar way we move towards positive energy (such as love) that causes us to grow
and we move away from negative energy. All cells move in response to their
environment.

How we can change our brain chemistry

The more developed we are, the more we need optimal-functioning brain chemistry in
order that we can create harmonious relationships. But how do we ensure good brain
chemistry? This is where it gets interesting. Our brain interprets the world and then
makes a decision about it, and from that decision it creates the chemistry that supports
the decision.

For example, if I love spicy food, but my friend hates it, we will have totally different
experiences of the same food. Our brains simply perceive the food differently, and hence
the spicy food will have a different effect on our hormone levels, such as dopamine,
oxytocin (the feel-good hormone), stress hormones and growth factors that are all
secreted into the blood. My brain will support my decision of loving spicy food, whilst my
friend’s brain will support her decision of hating it.

Therefore, our brain chemistry changes depending on how our

brain reads the world; it is as if the brain is the chemist and our
perceptions are translated into chemistry.

Fear-based perceptions cause the brain to secrete more stress hormones, with the
result that our cells shut down in order to protect themselves, whilst loving perceptions
create a brain chemistry that helps us feel happier and healthier.

The importance of the mind

What affects the brain chemistry process? Our mind. If our mind is filled with happy
thoughts and positive beliefs, it perceives the world through positive filters, creating a
healthier brain chemistry that makes us feel happier, healthier and more open. This
helps us create harmonious relationships with others, as well as attract more positive
experiences into our lives that are in resonance with our inner positive vibration. In this
way we gain proof that our positive thoughts and beliefs are “true”.

On the other hand, when our mind is filled with negative thoughts and limiting beliefs, we
perceive the world through negative filters, causing a secretion of stress hormones that
make us feel drained and low in vitality, with a need to shut ourselves away from others
to feel protected. Thus, our inner negative vibration attracts more of a similar energy and
consequently draws even more negativity into our experience. Thereby we have proof
that our negative thoughts and limiting beliefs are “true”.

Our inner programming

Where do our negative and positive beliefs come from? Many of them stem from
childhood experiences that we could not consciously analyse, so instead our
observations sank straight into our subconscious mind, as an inner programming.

For example, if a baby elephant has a rope tied around its leg and this rope is then tied
to a stake anchored in the ground, the elephant soon learns that it cannot move when
the rope is around its leg. After a while the elephant is released, but the handler can still
control the elephant just by tying the rope around its leg–but not attaching the rope to a
stake. The elephant has been “programmed” to believe that when the rope is there it
cannot move.

Many of us have “ropes” that keep us tied, blocking us from moving forward in life.
These “ropes” are the subconscious programming we received during our childhood,
when we learned how to behave by copying those around us. Our brain simply
downloaded everything we observed and these downloads became our “programming”,
which have now become habits and automatic behaviours. This is the function of the
subconscious: it creates habits and automatic behaviours, so we don’t have to think
about how to do things. The problem is that our subconscious programming came from
other people, as we recorded everything they did.

Up to the age of seven, subconscious programming happens without any kind of filter
because the brain is in delta state (sleeping, resting) when we are very little, and then
after a while the brain goes into theta state (imagination). Both of these states are
 hypnotic states, and it is not until the age of six or seven that the brain moves into alpha,
which is consciousness. At this point the child develops a conscious mind and can start
to select which experiences it wants to “download”.

Our conscious mind is the seat of our personality, the part of us that looks after our own
wishes, whilst our subconscious mind looks after other people’s wishes, behaviours and
beliefs—so not our own.

Our conscious mind is not limited by time and space; it can move backwards and
forwards in time, in our thoughts. But as soon as we do that, our conscious mind is not
available to us in the present moment, and the part that remains to look after us in the
present is our subconscious mind. This means that as soon as we are thinking, our
conscious mind can no longer guide us—because it is preoccupied with thinking—and
therefore the task of creating our lives falls upon our subconscious mind. Not so good.

We are often not aware of it when we act from our subconscious mind. That is why we
repeat our parents’ behaviours without knowing it—even though it is so obvious to
everyone else—until one day we realise we are doing the exact thing our mother used to
do which we promised ourselves we never would! And then we realise we are not
actually living our own lives, but instead we have manifested the life of our subconscious
programming.

The importance of our conscious mind

Is it possible to change these inner programmes? Well, nature has helped us through our
evolution by making sure we have a very well developed prefrontal cortex, which is the seat
of our consciousness.

Our conscious mind is creative and it learns quickly. When our conscious mind reads an
article or a book about how we can change our thoughts, it learns immediately. But the
subconscious mind learns through repetition, practice and regular positive affirmations, and
without these there will be no lasting change. To read a book once does not make a habit,
but by repeating the process of reading the same information every day, we can form a habit
and create change. The subconscious mind also learns when it is in a state of trance, just as
when we were children.

The best way to change the subconscious mind is to do something practical, and to engage
the mind in the process. There are many therapeutic tools (such as NLP, Psych K, CBT,
EFT, hypnosis, shamanism and energy medicine) that can help us to create new
programmes in the subconscious that match the wishes of our conscious mind, making it
easier for us to create the life we want. As Bruce Lipton says: “You are creating your life—
the good and the bad—and you have the power to re-create it.”

Bruce Lipton’s research has also found that when we are in a state of love, our conscious
mind stays in the present moment, which means that when we are in a state of love we act
from our consciousness, from our own wishes and dreams.

We can then choose to view others with more love, and our brain chemistry rewards us by
making us feel better, causing our inner vibration to become even more positive, which
causes us to attract even more positive experiences into our lives. This is the true gift of our
consciousness and when we choose to use it fully, when we are totally present—in love —
we create Heaven on Earth.

YOU ARE A DIVINE CREATOR

What inspired you to write this book?

This question is a bit tricky to answer because most people want a supernatural answer
and few people realise that by our very nature we are all supernatural. The information in
the book is not channelled from a higher divine source, but is instead a combination of
intuition, intellect and a little bit of ordinary sixth sense – something we all have. Using
these, I was able to come up with what I feel is what dead people would want to tell us.
And why would they want to tell us this? Because now, being on the other side they
have clarity; they know the truth, because they see why we are here in this time and
space and they understand that thoughts can become things. They also realise that they
did not need to be so hard on themselves, and more than anything else they want to
shout out to those who are still on earth, to all their loved ones, to enjoy this beautiful
and phenomenal supernatural adventure we call life.

If we consider, as do all quantum physicists, that space, time and matter are illusionary,
that matter is simply whirling energy, and if we believe as do 92 per cent of people
polled, that we survive the demise of our physical body, then we can calmly understand
that death is not an ending: it is a beginning for those that have gone on to where they
now have a heightened perspective and elevated view on reality – not just on the
adventures before them but also on the life they have just lived.

And because they love us, they want to share with us those
elevated perspectives.

Intellectually and intuitively I could feel that the dead wanted to reach out and tell us that
they are okay, and to enjoy the rest of our time here. They also wanted to share some
fundamental truths, because life is knowable – we can know the truth. Of course, we
cannot know all things, but we can know at least enough to have confidence to feel the
love, move forward on our journey and to live deliberately.

There may be an infinite number of roads to Rome, but not one of those roads changes
Rome, and in this metaphor Rome is the truth. There are not an infinite number of truths,
but there are an infinite number of ways to the truth – but none of those changes the
truth: that we are divine creators and that we are here by choice.

It is as if we are being pushed on to greatness every single day.

The truth is that we are inclined to succeed; our positive thoughts are more powerful
than our negative thoughts and all of our thoughts strive to become the things and
events in our lives. The truth is also always empowering and loving.
 The truth is that we are all powerful. Yes, some people give their power away, but that
still does not change the fact that we are powerful divine creators. That is also why it is
so important to ask questions, because life is knowable – there are always answers to
our questions. The answer may not always come with a smiley face, but once we know
the truth we can navigate more easily through what is happening in our lives and this
empowers us. It is when we are confused, when we don’t know, that we give our power
away. Knowing the truth empowers us.

What is it that causes people to trap themselves in turmoil, trauma and pain,

and how can we get “un-stuck” from our own personal hell so we can be free

again?

Understanding the truth is perhaps the single most empowering thing that can happen to
an individual. And also to truly trust that the truth is knowable, because if we don’t trust
that then we are going to be skidding along the whole journey of creation, instead of
having a direction.

The truth frees us, because the truth is everything.

To the degree that we misunderstand the absolute truth that creates reality in time and
space, we experience pain and discomfort because there is misunderstanding, and it
can be absolutely excruciating. It can lead to an early transition and a premature death.
That is what misunderstanding can do to us.

The religious teachings and doctrines about being good should perhaps be switched to
being true, because truth will always lead us to the right behaviour: that is, an ideal
behaviour in alignment with our truth.
In the light of truth we see ourselves in everyone. In the light of
truth we understand that we are all doing our best and that we
are eternal sparks of God.

In truth we would want to rehabilitate those that have done wrong, not condemn them,
torture them or seek punishment against them. In truth we want to do the same for
ourselves. In truth there are always second chances. In truth there is more than enough
for everyone. In truth thoughts become things and we can all live the life of our dreams.

This is what truth offers and when we miss truth we risk going
into a spiral of confusion, mistakes and unhappiness.

We want to avoid all of those things as much as we want to avoid a devil or hell. Instead
we have to trust that we have massive motivation to do good, to be wise, because that
will always lead us to love – and love is the way, as truth is the path – and to lead a
more balanced life, whereas if we miss the truth we skid out of control, into fear and
confusion.

We are all doing our best even though we are still in the Stone Age spiritually-speaking.
However, we are waking up and starting to accept our spiritual responsibility and asking
more questions, which is causing us to change and evolve.

Many of us know that love is the truth because we are beings of love, but still we can
become confused and fearful wondering if we are on the right track.

How can we come back to knowing what is our truth even when
times are challenging and our lives may be changing at a fast
pace?

This is part and parcel of the adventure of life, because life is not about being selfless
and find a way to serve others so we one day can live in heaven. Instead it is more like:
Go to the wild, wild West, this great frontier, and follow your heart and go where you
most yearn to be. And as you follow your bliss you will be led to your greatest self-
discovery, where you will be a light to others and through following your heart you will be
of the most service. And there is no single right way, or one path, or one answer. There
is not only one soulmate for everyone. To think that life is a test we have to pass and
that we have to make the right decisions just creates so much pressure.

The truth instead will tell us that we are eternal beings and we
are only here temporarily, and we are not here to save the
world.

Instead, we are here to have a great time, and contrary to mass thinking that this will
lead to decadence, it will instead lead to love, discovery and creating; because we are
spiritual beings, and when we live our lives, live our adventures from our truth, we create
heaven on earth.

The more we discover the truth, the more we realise that there is such lenience in the
Universe, there is such latitude, meaning that we can make a number of choices and
they will all lead us into the right one.

This is because we are naturally wired to succeed; we are supernatural and life helps us
through its incredible lenience, so we will still meet that perfect business partner, or that
perfect romantic partner who is ready to meet us because our two vibrations were in
alignment. That is how allowing, permissive and forgiving life truly is, and we then realise
life is just one big love fest. And many of us can feel how this resonates within us, how it
lights us up, because deep within our hearts we can feel that this is the truth.

You cannot make the wrong choice, so choose what you want.

As I look back on my own life I can see that some of my choices appeared to create
setbacks and disappointments, but in hindsight I can see that they all set me up for
something even greater and bigger than I even knew to dream of.
What advice would you give to someone who is just about to set off on their

journey in life, like a teenager leaving home, or someone who has just made a

big change in life?

Dream! Dream big because dreams do come true. Know that you are more powerful
than you could possibly imagine, but recognise that power comes with immense
responsibility and with great responsibility comes great power. One feeds off the other
and your power will remain in check and serve you as long as you are always aware of it
and its consequences. This is not meant to be scary, but anything that will ever happen
to you is a result of your power, how you handle this responsibility and your choices.
However mind-boggling that may seem, that is the truth.

As you now are ready to set off on a great adventure in the

jungle through time and space, accept this responsibility and
use this great power to make all your dreams come true.

After you have chosen your dreams wisely, with great responsibility, then know that they
still cannot come true unless you are doing something about them. You don’t have to
figure out how they will come true, but you still have to focus and do something, pretty
much every day so you move closer to the fulfilment of your dreams – so you move in
the direction of your soulmate, abundance, or joy-filled work or whatever it is that your
dream consists of.

So until your dream manifests, just keep busy, keep showing

up and keep being aligned with the truth.

Know that you are a divine creator wired to succeed and that the Universe is on your side.

FOCUSING YOUR DREAMS INTO BEING

 Spring brings with it new life, new growth and a perfect
reminder of the importance of finding out what we can let go of
and which seeds we want to plant for this coming season.

Whatever we let go of helps create more room for something new to be born, and
whatever we plant, and then focus our attention on, grows. That is because we are
divine creators and as such we are able to create new thoughts, ideas and dreams and
bring them into being, by first making room for them to grow, then planting them with
love and care, and finally allowing them to thrive by focusing our attention in such a way
they can blossom into their fullest potential.

Which signal are you broadcasting?

Your creative ability is always active, which is why when you focus on the problems in
your life everything seems to get worse (because you are giving more energy to the
negatives) whilst when you focus on the positive solutions – or on just feeling happy –
then somehow what appeared to be a problem starts to loosen its hold on you. Why?
Because your inner energy is powerful.

How does this work then? Well, when you feel anxious about something in the future, or
upset about something in the past, you lose your connection with the present moment,
which is where your inner peace, happiness and joy exist. And since your mind is busy
focusing on anxiety, stress and the various reasons to be upset, your feelings will
change accordingly, and you actually start to emit a negative energy, like a signal.

Since you – and all other living beings – are connected to the
universe energetically, this signal will be picked up by the
universe, as if you are broadcasting on a negative channel.

The universe will respond by sending more of that negative energy your way, because
like attracts like. Suddenly you seem to be drawn to events, situations and people that
 cause you to feel even more stressed, anxious and worried, resulting in your inner
negative energy increasing.

How can you change this?

It is quite simple really. You just have to change the signal you are broadcasting, by
changing your inner energy. The hard bit is to be disciplined enough to do it, but it is well
worth the time spent harnessing the mental muscles needed to change your inner state,
as it will allow the magical creative divine intelligence of the universe to bring you more
of the good stuff – more abundance, joy, happiness, love, creativity, friendship, fun and
enjoyment.

All of this already exists for you – it is just waiting for you to tap into it – but just like you
can’t receive the broadcast from a particular radio station until you tune into its correct
frequency, you can’t receive all these goodies the universe has in store for you until you
tune into the correct (positive) frequency. So change your tune, and it will change your
life.

Nine steps for tuning into a higher frequency

1. Before you get out of bed in the morning, take one minute to think about all the
things you appreciate in life. Give thanks for your loved ones, your life, and that you
have been given another glorious new day.

2. Spend five minutes every day in meditation and prayer connecting with the divine.
Finish this sacred time by saying, ‘I now give this day to you (God, Universe, Spirit,
Angels, whichever name works for you). May you be in charge. Let me be a conduit of
your love, sharing your light, wisdom and joy wherever I go and with whomever I meet.’

3. Engage in some form of physical activity, so move your body, dance, go for a
walk; do something that helps you feel energised.

4. Trust that there is a higher power that knows more than you do. By having faith and
trust in this higher intelligence it’s easier for you to relax, and the more you relax, the
better you’ll feel.
5. Practise focusing on the highest thought available in each moment.

6. If you feel tense, say to yourself, ‘I can choose peace instead of this.’ If you feel
unsure of what to do, say, ‘If love could speak to me now, what would love have me do?’

7. Focus on seeing the good in others, and on seeing the good in yourself.

8. Focus on all that is right with your life.

9. Focus on what you want, and trust that although some of it may not have
manifested yet, it is on its way, and it will arrive into your reality at the perfect time, and
in the perfect form, that is for the highest good of all. In this way you trust that the Divine
knows what is best for you, and everyone else, and that only that which is for the highest
good will manifest.

Planting new seeds

Once you have mastered the art of feeling good and tuning into a higher frequency, you
can start planting new seeds, as you have prepared the ground for them to take root.

But which seeds will you plant? In order to find the dreams you long to harvest, let’s first
think outside the box – give yourself permission to dream big.

Think outside the box

As you answer the following questions, let yourself dream, and just write down
the first answers that pop into your mind.

● If you had a magic wand and waved it in the air, so you could create your life
exactly as you wanted it, how would you be, what would you do, where would you
live, and how would you spend your days, weeks and months?
● What do you love doing?
● What do you need in your life in order for you to feel happy, peaceful and
content? (such as nature, exercise, music, connecting with loved ones, time to
yourself).
 ● Which ideas and dreams do you want to manifest?

What can you let go of?

What activities, commitments or time-wasting habits do you currently engage in that you
can now let go of?

In order to give birth to something new you also have to create room for it, and the way
you do that is to free up space in your days, weeks and months.

Which action do you need to take?

No dream can manifest without action. So take a look at what you want in your life, what
is important to you and the dreams and ideas you long to manifest. Which action can
you take these next coming six months to move in the direction of this? What can you do
this month? This week? And which action can you take today?

The universe is on your side

You are a natural divine creator. The same divine intelligence that created our universe
is coursing through your veins; you cannot not create. With every breath you take, with
every thought you focus on, you are engaging in the creative force of the universe.
Everything you have in your life, you have placed there, through your focus of attention.
Imagine how much you can create when you do it consciously. And the way to do that is
by following these simple rules:

Make it a priority to feel good

● Always focus on the highest thought available in each moment.

● Know that you always have a choice – you can view your life through negative
eyes, causing you to tune into a lower frequency channel, or you can view your
life through positive eyes, causing you to tune into a higher frequency channel.
The choice is yours.
● Free up time and space by letting go of what you no longer need.
● Focus your thoughts on what you want.
 ● Take action in the direction of your dreams.
● Surrender the control of how your dreams will manifest to the universe. It knows
how to make it happen, because it is infinitely intelligent. Trust it!

GRATITUDE IS THE KEY TO A HAPPY AND

ABUNDANT LIFE

Denise Linn is of Native American heritage and although she was not raised in a
traditional way she feels called to connect with the old practices.

Her spiritual journey began as a teenager when she had a

near‑death experience after being shot by an unknown
gunman.

The insights she received while on “the other side” gave her the ability to heal her
wounds and this was the beginning of her path as a healer, writer and teacher. She has
written several self‑help books, many of which have become international bestsellers,
and she has been a guest on Oprah, Lifetime and the BBC. Here she talks to us about
her journey, and how she has discovered that gratitude is the key to a happy and
abundant life.

When did you open up spiritually?

The pivotal event was when I was 17 and living in a farming area in the United States. I
was riding my little motorbike and unbeknown to me I was being followed by someone
who had already killed a number of people. On an isolated part of the road he hit the gas
and ran into my motorbike, throwing me off to the side of the road. I could not believe
that I had been hit.

As I lay at the side of the road I saw him turn the car around and thought he would come
and help me. Instead he rolled down the window, pulled out a gun and shot me.

When I was eventually found and taken to the hospital there was a moment when the
doctors thought I had died, and during that moment I had a very vivid experience –
people would call this a near-death experience.

In this experience I left my body, and I went to an incredibly

beautiful and peaceful place, which felt at the same time so
familiar.

It made everything that had happened to me in my life look like a dream, and instead it
was this place that was the “real” reality. It felt like this was the place where I belonged,
my true home. There was a river of light, and I knew I had to cross that river before I
could solidly return home. And halfway across the river I felt as if I had been roped.
(Both of my parents were scientists; however my mother is Cherokee-Indian and as a
child my parents were enrolled in the rodeo. I was used to being roped because my
cousins used to practice on me when we were kids.) So I felt I was being roped out of
the river, and there was a voice which said:

It is not your time. There are things you have to do.

My body was so damaged by the shooting and I still have holes through my spine from
the bullet. I lost my spleen; a kidney; an adrenal gland; part of a lung and a bit of my
stomach. The doctors used a seven-inch plastic tube to replace my aorta and they said
there was only a very small chance that I would live. But I did, and I healed very quickly.

I believe that on “the other side” there was an activation of a cell memory that
remembered where we have come from, and just those few moments I spent there was
enough to activate the healing force that we all have inside of us.
After this experience I started to see colours around people and objects and I could hear
sounds that other people could not hear. Not only does everything have its own light, but
it also has its own sound that vibrates at a certain frequency. To begin with I did not
know of anyone who had experienced these colours and sounds; only later did I find out
that lots of people can see auras and hear these sounds of the universe. So this is how
my spiritual journey started.

Before that event, I wanted to become a scientist like my parents, but afterwards I
instead started on a journey to find out how I could get back to that place. Just as you
cannot hear a radio station until you tune the dial to the correct frequency, I knew there
was a way for me to tune the dial inside of me so I could be in this dimension which felt
like home.

There is one way to tell if you are close to it, and that is
synchronicity – when you think of something and it appears, or
you think of someone and they call you, or you need something
and it magically appears.

Those kinds of events, miracles even, are to me signs that we are close to this
dimension, this realm, which many of us would call heaven.

Have you found synchronistic events appear more often during times

when you are in a state closer to the divine source, and when you are

moving away from this source, synchronicity happens less?

Absolutely, and when you experience those kinds of events, those little magical
moments of so‑called coincidences, then these happy moments are signs that you are
going in the right direction. And even if circumstances around you are less than positive,
if you keep having those signs, then that is the right way to go. It could also be a sign
that you need to re-evaluate. The Universe is always whispering to us, and the more we
are able to listen the better we can read these signs.
When you see these signs how are you able to interpret them in a way that

you know is right for you?

One of my wonderful teachers was a Native American named Dancing Feathers, and
before he died he told me that wherever I go, wherever I was, he would be there. He
was a humble man and true to his word, and from that time, whenever a feather
appeared, I would stop, and sometimes the feather would say: You are going in the
wrong direction. And sometimes it would tell me I was on the right path.

There is a little trick question anyone can ask and that is: If I did
know what this meant, what would it be? And asking that
simple little question often brings forward a response that you
did indeed know.

Let me give you an example of how this works. I was going to buy a vehicle and I
wanted a big vehicle. As we were walking around some showrooms my husband said:
“What a nice Suburu”, and I replied that I wanted a big car, not a little one. As I opened
the door to the Suburu, there was a feather on the driver’s seat. A few weeks later we
still had not found a car to buy and we went to another dealership in a different town,
and as we were there my husband again wanted me to look at a Suburu. As I opened
the door, there on the driver’s seat was another feather. So I bought a Suburu! I just kind
of thought: OK, I give up! And that car was perfect for me. I did not know it at the time
but by being open to the signs I was able to be guided.

How are you able to connect with your soul in your daily life?

Nature. I just love nature. It nourishes my soul. I make sure I watch the sunset every
day, and I take my camera with me, taking the time to capture the way the sun comes
through the leaves, or the way the flowers unfold, or the way the frost has crystallized
across the leaves. Taking that photo, somehow everything stops in that moment; it’s like
capturing pictures of creation.
How are you able to release your own inner blocks?

I am a big believer in using the body. All our blocks are held in the body. You can look at
someone and see whether they are chronically sad or constantly angry just by the way
they are holding their body. So I allow my body the freedom of expression and
movement, and I find new ways of moving my body. I put some music on and I just let
my body express itself. The body always wants to be healed.

Sometimes we hold ourselves in chronic positions, so taking that time to express, and
stretch, or make a sound as we are dancing, we can release these inner blockages.

In your own life, you have been able to manifest many things. How have

you been able to do all of that? What is your secret?

The secret is gratitude. I am absolutely convinced that the key to my surviving all the
pain from my past is that I am blessed with being grateful. I wake up grateful, and I go to
sleep grateful. The secret of the power of gratitude is to love what is. If you are not
happy with where you are in the present, chances are you will not be happy in the future.
If you are angry and upset with where you are now, chances are you will be angry and
upset in the future. But if you can find what is great about what is, if you can find what
you are grateful for with what you have in this moment, then that will actually help to fuel
and propel you into a future for which you can be even more grateful.

I am convinced that the amount of blessings I have in my life

comes from me being grateful.

I am probably grateful about 800 times per day. I have been grateful for so many things
before I even brush my teeth in the morning: I am grateful that I have running water, I
can flush the toilet, I can move, I have legs…

It is a quality which we need to practice. We are kind of programmed into being victims,
and we are not programmed to step into this state of being grateful.
 Every moment in every day, there is always something to be
grateful for.

And what you focus on is what extends, so if you focus on what you are grateful for, then
that is what is going to extend in your life; and if you focus on what you hate, then that is
what is going to extend in your life.

How are able to balance a family life with your work?

I am convinced that one of the main reasons we are here on this planet is our
relationships. The best practice we can do to cultivate our relationships is to go inside
our heart and ask ourselves: What is important to my soul right now?

I have two friends who are dying of cancer. One of them told me last night: “Denise,
tonight go out and watch the stars in the sky. I only have so many days left where I can
smell the roses, where I can hug my husband and my children, where I can watch the
stars at night. Denise, make sure you take the time to do all that now.”

When someone is confronted with not being here, everything else pales. I have never
been with anyone who was dying who said: “Oh, I wish I had accomplished more in my
job!” I have never, ever heard that.

I have only heard: “I wish I had spent more time with my kids”,
“I wish I had told the people I love that I love them”, “I wish I
had given more of my love”.

I don’t think we are necessarily here on the planet to be famous, or make a difference to
the world, or impress friends, or share our wisdom, or even to be brilliant and
extraordinary.

I really believe life is about sharing our gifts each day with our
friends and our family. It might be sharing our gift with a
multitude of people.
Like when people say “I am here to serve the world or to make a difference”, of course
these things might be important, but I think a deeper truth is just being able to be present
and sharing our gifts with anyone. Sometimes sharing that gift might be like the butcher
who with kindness will hand you the chicken breasts. Sometimes the greatest saints are
not the ones who are on stage or out in public.

How are you able to dream your life into being?

It is a matter of knowing what it is you really want in your life, and then using your dream
state to call these energies into your life.

When an idea first starts to appear it is nearly as if it is initially

exists in the astral plane, and it is invisible before it becomes
visible, so in the dream state you can start to draw up a reality
around your idea.

For some people the reason they cannot manifest is because they don’t believe what
they desire could happen. But in your dream state you can dream that you have that life
you want to manifest, allowing it to feel real to you, and as you do that your unconscious
mind can easily believe it can happen, because the unconscious mind cannot tell the
difference between what is real and what is imagined. By doing this you are able to use
your dreams to re-programme your unconscious mind so it now believes that what you
want to manifest can indeed happen, because it has already happened in the dream.
and in this way you are then more able to dream your life into being.

What is your own Soul telling you about what is happening in the world

today?

I think it is such an exciting time to be alive; there is so much light around. And we are
not in survival mode in the western cultures, so we have so much more time to explore
our inner world. And we have the Internet! It is amazing: with just the tap of your finger
you can find any wisdom you want, in seconds. It is truly a blessing to be alive at this
time.

YOUR 3 BEST SUPER POWERS

The three super powers

We all have three super powers – meditation, imagination and intuition – and many have
already noticed how having access to one or maybe even two super powers has
changed and improved their lives tremendously. But when you put all three powers
together you will experience a substantial breakthrough in life, where things begin to
work at an incredibly effective level.

Meditation

Meditation is the ability to become detached and less reactive to your thoughts, so you
can recognise that they just run through your mind, but they are not who you are. This
gives you the power to choose, versus being controlled by your thoughts, so when you
learn to meditate you give yourself space and freedom to make choices that are in
alignment with who you really are, instead of just being reactive and emotionally fearful.

It helps to alleviate your stress and anxiety, and it gives you

back a sense of presence.

It is an enormous gift you give to yourself, and of course you will never stop thinking, but
you will stop letting your thoughts be so oppressive, so bullying. It just gives you a larger,
bigger, calmer, more stress-free life, pretty much right away.

On not having any expectations of your meditation practice

It is best not to go in expecting anything. Instead, just give yourself a few moments
where you have a little room to breathe, and know that those few moments can make a
big difference in the quality of your life and that you don’t need to have the big
breakthrough transcendental experience to make it a meaningful super power. Just give
yourself some moments where you have more time to breathe, more space and more
calm. Whether it is just three minutes at first, that is still better than not giving yourself
three minutes. And three minutes twice a day is better than no six minutes.

It trains your mind to be more available to that deeper

transcendental connection that is there, but don’t go in looking
for that, because your mind is already trying to control things.

Just go in with the only expectation being that you are going to give yourself a few
moments to relax, to breathe, to be calm, before you get going again.

Why imagination is important

If you look around you in the physical world, you will notice that everything you see was
born out of someone’s imagination, from the phone you are using, to the chair you are
sitting on, and the Internet that connects us all. Imagination is the magic that creates the
physical world – and it is also the magic that creates our inner world.

Our imagination dictates our experience, and it acts as a

magnet that will draw to us experiences that mirror our
imagination.

When we imagine our world to be positive and we imagine our world to be something we
can create and enjoy, we start to experience that.

Unfortunately, most of us have surrendered our power of imagination, so we give our

imagination to the news, we give our imagination to other people’s opinions, and by
doing so, we have given our power over to other people.
 When we instead use our imagination and we pour it into
beautiful ideas, curiosity, wonder, invention, humour and
exploration, then it starts to be mirrored back to us.

And this is why you can have two people from the same family and one has a beautiful
positive imagination and one has a very self-indulgent negative imagination, leading
them to have very different life experiences even though they are working with the same
raw materials.

I have witnessed that this is the superpower many have lost contact with the most. And
the one that is the easiest to reactivate, through games, through curiosity, through
actively filling up our imagination with good ideas, art, creativity, beauty, music, dance,
inspirational podcasts – all of that is all very accessible to us for free, and a beautiful way
to kick-start our imagination again.

I think one reason we have lost our imagination is that we have so little space in our lives
– we have become addicted to our phones, our texts and selfies, so where is the space
for imagination to come in?

So take a break from technology and take a walk in nature.

Listen to the birds, smell the flowers, look at the trees, see the
sky, feel the dirt under your feet.

Take some space, even if it is 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there. Give yourself the
space – a space you can then fill your imagination with. Don’t let your inner space be so
full of everybody else’s ideas that you have no space left over for what you want to fill it
up with.

On being told ‘it is just your fantasy’ when sharing your ideas

Many people have been told that their ideas are just a fantasy, and yet every invention
on this planet was someone’s fantasy first. Everything. It is the best use of your time. My
imagination is my magic, it is my mojo, it is my sex appeal, it is my quality of life, it
colours everything in my life. It influences and shapes everything. We cannot experience
what we cannot imagine, but when we imagine and believe in our imaginings, a
magnetic force is released that begins to pull these energies into our life.

How to know if something is from intuition or from fantasy

Intuition is not a thinking faculty; it is a feeling faculty, coming from our right brain. Our
left intellectual brain is not intuitive; instead, it is a literal and linear functioning faculty of
consciousness. So if it is used to being in control, then the voice from your left brain is
going to beat you up.

But if you realise that it is your left-brain that is challenging your

deeper intelligence, then instead of fighting it you can see the
left brain as a barking dog.

It is just trying to keep your attention off your deeper power. It is the thinking brain that is
trying to attack the feeling of intelligence, so you just say to yourself, ‘Oh, that is just my
left brain.’ If you are meditating you just say, ‘Oh, those are just thoughts. They have no
power. My intuition is a real experience I am having. I am feeling a real energy. And I am
going to allow for it.’

How to bring these superpowers together

They are all natural super powers. When you are a child you daydreamed – that is
meditating – which allowed you to just spin out and go into another world. Your
imagination was everywhere when you were little, and you did spontaneously follow your
intuition. So the first thing to know is that this is the way you are built to be; this is your
natural self.

You are designed to be this super powerful being.

Then approach it in bite sizes every day. A few minutes of meditation, a few minutes of
imagination and check in with your intuition before you make a decision by just asking
yourself, out loud, ‘What does my intuition say?’ And then answer it out loud.
 And feel what is going on in your body instead of what is
happening up in your head. Let it be a game, let it be fun, and
every day that you utilise these tools, say out loud, ‘Well done!
This is empowering me. This is good for me, this is a good
choice.’

Reaffirm, ‘I have super powers, I meditate, I use my imagination, I trust my intuition.’

Using your voice reaffirms to make those decisions. Then, every day at the end of the
day, take a few minutes, even two or three, and just write down your successes:
‘Meditated for two minutes, hooray. I used my imagination and thought about something
really positive today. I trusted my intuition and acted on it and it felt terrific.’

We don’t go from zero to a thousand, so take it step by step,

day by day, until it becomes a habit.

But you will feel so much better and things will kick in so much more quickly, that it will
become naturally very easy to do.

Have fun with this. Trust that even if you make a small effort every day, using these
three super powers, it will build strength over time. And not a very long time – as short
as a month. These super powers will pop up; they are like flowers that spring to life with
a little watering, so water your super powers daily and trust that they will grow.

Sonia on meditation

Meditation is simply the daily practice of quieting the mind and relaxing. It doesn’t stop
us from thinking, but it helps relieve us from being possessed or even enslaved by our
thoughts, and it eases our reactivity to the world, inside and out.
Sonia’s Four-Breath Meditation Jump Start

● Start by finding a quiet place to sit without disturbance for 5 to 10 minutes.

● Once settled, look around the room as you begin to take a few deep breaths.
● Once you feel relaxed, place your thumb and your forefinger together, and as you
exhale, allow your eyes to close.
● With eyes closed, inhale to the count of four. Hold to the count of four. Then
exhale to the count of four. Hold to the count of four. Repeat. Take your time as
you inhale, hold, exhale, and hold, to the count of four.
● As you do this, imagine the space behind your eyes relaxing. This can really help
you enter a deeper calm.
● Continue the practice 10 times, then slowly return to normal breathing and gently
open your eyes.
● Once you open your eyes, don’t rush to get up. It is important to ease back into
your surroundings. Taking a few more seconds will make a big difference to how
you feel.

This entire process takes only a few minutes yet calms your emotions and eases stress
and anxiety beautifully.

Sonia on imagination

Our imagination is very powerful and is working to create our lived experience all the
time, whether we know how to use it or not. That is why it is so important to take charge
of this super power, so we can use it to create our own beautiful life and not our own
personal hell.

Sonia’s Imagine This . . .Change the Conversation Booster

The next time you are out with friends for dinner, instead of talking about the same old
things you usually talk about, invite them to work their imagination muscles with you.
Bring up the following questions for discussion and let your imaginations run wild
together. Before you dive into the questions, make sure everyone understands that this
is an invitation to imagine the possible and not a time to be pessimistic or negative, as it
will ruin the fun – and defeat the purpose.

● What inspires you most?

● What delights you the most?
● How wonderful can you imagine your life will be?
● What has been your best creation to date?
● How much positive energy can you comfortably receive?
● What is your heart’s desire right now?
● What captures your imagination today?
● What do you wonder about?
● What new discovery have you made about someone you know well?

Sonia on intuition

Intuition is our natural GPS, our internal guide, our radar, our protection, our truth serum,
our connector, our inner light, and the voice of our Higher Self. It is our internal hotline to
our angels and spirit guides, and the divine Mother-Father God who loves us
unconditionally and forever. Intuition is the divine intelligence we all possess that helps
us to find our place and fulfil our purpose in this magnificent and holy Universe that we
live in.

Intuition is our greatest super power of all, yet it only becomes

consistently available to us through the exercise of our two
other super powers, meditation and imagination.

It completes the trilogy of divine powers we are gifted with in order to become masters of
our human journey.

Sonia’s Tune in to This . . .Intuitively Attracting Solutions Booster

Expecting your intuition to guide you may be a new habit you need to develop.

Here are some tips to help you:

 ● Be clear on what you need guidance on and say so out loud.
● Make a list of what you want help finding.
● Have absolute confidence it will show up.
● Before making any decision, stop and say out loud, ‘Let me check in with my
intuition. I’m sure it will guide me.’
● Ask a question of your intuition as you sit in meditation. Then wait for the answer
to come. It will.
● Listen with your whole body and expect it to tell you if something resonates as
true or not.
● Slow down. Pay attention to your gut. Check in with your heart. Notice the energy
you are presently feeling. Recognise it as your guide.
● Tell others you are intuitive, and make no apology for it.
● Ask your Higher Self for guidance. Then listen with your heart.
● Follow through on your hunches even if they make no sense.
● Don’t confuse others’ opinions with fact.

These little practices create the habit of expecting your intuition to guide you. The more
you expect it, the more you notice your intuition because you are looking for it to show
up.

THE MAGIC OF ORDINARY LIFE

Finding the magic in everyday life

“The whole idea of finding magic in ordinary life was born out of my own decision to slow
down and be home more. I had gone through a few pretty busy years of travelling after
writing the book You Can Create An Exceptional Life with Louise Hay. Although it was
an amazing experience, it left me in some ways disconnected from my home life, and so
I really wanted to reconnect.

As I began to say ‘no’ more and to eliminate many of the commitments that I had
previously been making, I found that everyday, ordinary life took on a kind of deeply
satisfying essence, and it got better and better over time.

I noticed that as I gave myself more space in my calendar and

stopped filling my schedule up, I was stepping into this in-
between place.

It was a bit uncomfortable at first, where there initially was this pull to continue doing
what I had been doing, which was saying ‘yes’ and travelling, writing and publishing, but
as I hung on and didn’t give into the kind of need in me to keep busy, I settled into a
more peaceful way of living. And, suddenly, things like a walk in nature or staring out of
the window watching the birds, or seeing the deer as they came to visit, or just enjoying
sitting down, stroking my cat, listening to him purr – all of these things began to take on
what felt like a magical quality. Now, the truth is, I think what was actually happening
was that I was becoming more present in my life, present with a capital P: I was present
when I was doing something, and not thinking about something that had happened in the
past or what I needed to do in the future. Instead, I was actually sitting with my cat,
stroking his fur and looking into his eyes; I was actually watching the hummingbirds feed
in the garden, and just being so incredibly enamoured with what was happening.

And that allowed me to make peace with the part of me that

thought I needed to stay so deeply engaged in the world, and
instead I began to find a deep peace and satisfaction in the
simple, everyday things.
I think all of us can find this when we slow down long enough to experience them, and
then we don’t feel so pulled in multiple directions.”

Our soul is here to experience life

“Our soul isn’t here to accomplish things, and to conquer life. Our soul is here to
experience life, whatever that experience might be. My soul had wanted to experience
travelling, writing the book with Louise, and had wanted to experience the contrast of not
being home and not being present in my body. But it also wants the other side, which is
being present and just being available to the everyday, ordinary experiences that we all
have in life.

As I get older I just appreciate life more and I’ve got enough experience under my belt to
know that fame and fortune are not what feeds the soul – presence is what feeds the
soul. So it is our ability to be present that feeds the soul, and I think the more present we
are, the more life takes on a magical quality, regardless of where you are and what you
are doing.”

Dealing with toxic people

“I would never in a million years allow myself to be around someone that is constantly
critical, blaming or shaming me, even if that person was a family member.

The way I would deal with this is that I would first educate this person, by saying: ‘I love
you, but I cannot be in your company if you’re going to speak to me that way, so if you
want to have a relationship with me you need to change the way you speak to me. Are
you willing to do that?’

I know that it’s not always easy, and the older the person is, the greater are the chances
that they are going to remain who they are, and the less likely it is they will ever change,
so you might need to limit the amount of time you spend with them.

If the person is really toxic you may need to say to them: ‘If you continue to treat me this
way, I won’t be able to see you.’ They may then turn their behaviour around and become
more appropriate for a little while, and then they may go back to the same old behaviour.
This is not uncommon, and in this case you’ll have to set the boundary again.
You can also look at how you are engaging with them. Are you fuelling the negativity, for
example are you gossiping with them about someone else, or are you listening to them
complain about their lives and looking for what isn’t working in your life? Can your own
behaviour change in that regard?”

Daily discipline for staying in truth with who you are

“A really simple exercise is to set the alarm on your phone for ten minutes, and during
those ten minutes just close your eyes and be present. To make it easy, choose a word
to focus on; I use the word peace because it’s the state that I want to create within
myself, and I just train myself to sit still for ten minutes, focusing on the word every time
my mind starts to spin out.

Another exercise I do has been inspired by Michael Singer, who wrote The Untethered
Soul, and it is to stop and say to myself:

Cheryl, you are the soul behind this thinking mind, you are the
soul behind these worried thoughts that you’re having,
remember who you are.

This has become a way of meditating for me throughout the day. Many times I will just
say to myself, as I am looking out the back yard at the beautiful fields: ‘Cheryl, you are
the soul behind the eyes that are looking at this field.’ Or I’ll be out for a walk and say to
myself: ‘Cheryl, you are the soul behind the woman who is walking right now.’ See the
world in front of you through the eyes of your soul, not through the eyes of your
personality. This connects you with the truth of who you are.

Another thing that I do, any time I feel tension about something, is I tell myself to open
my heart. I say to myself: ‘Cheryl, open your heart, and let the energy of this experience
just move through you.’

Just ten minutes of being present with yourself in the morning will begin to connect you
with your soul, and the more connected you are to your soul, the less attached you are
to whether or not you get something.
Goals and dreams

“This doesn’t mean you don’t have goals or dreams, or that you don’t set intentions,
because it is important to remember that intention, affirmation and action are what
manifests things in our lives.

So affirm that you are joyfully manifesting what matters most to you, but I would also
recommend using a prayer that has been inspired by Shakti Gawain, which goes:

Dear God, may this or something better occur.

This prayer has trained me not to be so attached to whether or not I got what I thought I
wanted. Instead I really trust that the universe will bring me what was in my highest and
best interests.”

BE MORE OF WHO YOU REALLY ARE

How can we be more of who we really are?

The fundamental thing that has to be seen in order for us to answer the question of,
“How can I be more of who I really am?” is obviously … well, who are we really? I
oversimplify it down to that there are two aspects to the self, where we are not human
beings having a spiritual experience; instead we are spiritual beings having a human
experience.

So there is the spiritual aspect to who we are, which is that formless, unconditioned part
of us that would be the same if we had been born in a different country, with different
parents, in a different socioeconomic structure – this spiritual aspect of us would still be
the same, regardless of our outside circumstances.

That is our essential self, our spiritual self, our true nature.

There is also a condition self, a learned self, a created self, a personality, an ego, a
separate self that is a fundamental product of our upbringing, our environment and our
thinking, and it’s not a problem that we have personalities, but the problem occurs when
we start to identify fully with the personality and dis-identify and even disown our spiritual
self.

The majority of people, such as in the personal development and the self-help
movement, are often about developing and helping this separate self, this ego-self, this
personality self, where they try to ‘improve’ and ‘choose’ how they want their personality
self to be according to ideas of what’s good, what’s bad, or what’s right, or what’s wrong.

What about being able to choose either fear or love? Can that help us

connect with our eternal essence so it is this essence that can be expressed

through us?

I’d like to give you a different take on that. If we are at the level of conversation where it
looks like you could choose between love and ego, so it looks like there is an actual
choice to make, then that choice is still being made from ego, because if you see that
your true nature is love, then you would no more choose ego than you would choose to
poke yourself in the eye with a burnt stick.

When I am in conflict with someone, and I then pause briefly and pray to

the Divine to help me choose love in that situation, I can feel how a

presence descends within me, causing the conflict to disappear. What is

that then that helps me make that choice?

I would say that at some level, based on what you just told me, is that in that moment in
the midst of being caught up in the swirl of mental thought and ego and noise, that part
of you that is already at a higher level of consciousness is already present within you.

You use this prayer to return to love, but actually it started the
moment you noticed it.
Somebody else might have a different way of getting back to themselves, of getting back
to love, of getting back to who they really are, but it is in the noticing that the apparent
choice appears, and that noticing is only possible when you are already touching that
place in you.

Because you then observe what’s going on, whilst when you are in the

conflict you haven’t got a clue, because you are caught in it?

And that’s the thing – when you are in it, it doesn’t feel like there is a choice. We then
feel the other person is just being a jerk, but as soon as I’ve noticed what is happening,
the choice has already been made – it is then a done deal.

We are already God within, we are already enlightened, we are

already all that, but we are not noticing it because the noise of
thought is so pervasive and invisible.

It doesn’t look like thought, it looks like, “No, I am dealing with real things that need to be
dealt with.” When I started to wake up to the nature of thought and how our thoughts get
projected out and how they then come back to us as if they are happening outside of us,
so we experience it as if it’s happening to us…

When I woke up to this realisation I started to see that they are

just thoughts, like noise.

My thoughts then started to look more like the television in the corner of the Palace of
Wisdom.

Imagine there is this television on in the corner and I may have spent most of my life
watching that TV thinking it was reality. Imagine for a few moments, for whatever reason
the TV went quiet and I started looking around and noticing how amazing it actually is in
this Palace of Wisdom, but then the TV comes back on and I am watching it again. Then
because we think the TV is reality, we spend an incredible amount of time and energy
trying to either upgrade the TV, or learn to keep it always tuned on a positive channel,
but it doesn’t matter what channel the TV is on or how high quality a TV it is, because it’s
only distracting us from the Palace of Wisdom that we are already in.

When we can see that our personal thinking is just noise in the
head, it is just background noise, then our brains can
automatically start to filter it out and leave us present to the
space that we are already in, a true nature of the space of
meditation, the space within.

That’s why when somebody starts to understand the nature of thought and the nature of
the mind, they wind up living a more meditative life, whether or not they ever meditate,
because quite simply if your thought doesn’t look like something you have to deal with
and fix and protect yourself against and improve, if it just becomes background noise
that is occasionally annoying, but mostly you don’t even notice it, then you are left in the
present moment, you are left in the here and now, you are left in a place of deep
connection with other people, because there is nothing between you and others, so you
hang out in this space of presence together.

You then have so much richer experiences of being alive, you

have so much more access to your natural wisdom, to your
innate health, to your innate wellbeing, and life just feels so
much richer.

And it is not that you never get caught up in thought, not that the TV never touches your
attention, but you start to get wise to it quicker and quicker. You spend more and more
time awake to this space within, awake to your true nature, being who you really are and
less and less time caught up with trying to live out whatever path of conditioning you kind
of accidentally picked up.
How can you use this inner space to help lessen any attachments that you

have had to your personality self?

The Buddhists call it ‘The Unconditioned Mind’, which is another way of talking about the
space within, which is like the ultimate medicine, because it diagnoses, prescribes and
heals all at once. It gives you exactly what you need, when you need it, so the more you
rest in The Unconditioned Mind, the more you rest in your true nature, the more you rest
in your space within.

It’s like hanging out in a healing bath and whatever problem

you are working on either dissolves or a solution becomes
apparent.

There is no question that the more time you spend in this space, the more time you
spend being who you really are, the more wonderful your life gets, but that doesn’t mean
bad things don’t still happen, because we live in a world of form where everything that is
born dies, but your experience of life is very different.

What triggered your own awakening into this presence?

It wasn’t an achievement, it wasn’t like, “Well, I have worked very hard and that is why I
finally got here.” It was just that I had a series of these insights – you could call them
epiphanies, you could call them mini-awakenings. The first one was in 2008, and I just
saw in one moment, while drinking beer and watching TV, that we are born happy, and
that our inner wellbeing is our true nature; everything else is learnt. Now, I don’t know
why I saw that so clearly, because the words I had heard before, but suddenly I saw it
and I saw it at a level where it was just unarguable to me.

That changed everything because all my work up until then was, “Well, we are basically
mildly messed up, but you know, with hard work and good mental practice, good mental
hygiene, we can live pretty good lives anyway.”
 Suddenly I could see that I was starting from the wrong point,
so everything I did was just a little bit off.

That was the first major insight, and the second really big one was when I saw that the
whole thing is made up of thoughts. I hadn’t seen before that most of what I thought was
real stuff was made of thought too. Things like health and death and life and love and all
these wonderful concepts – they are made up by the conceptual mind. They are
conceived, they are thought up and there is something real underneath, but it’s invisible
and you can’t put words to this invisible reality.

So everything comes from this invisible space of energy and when we focus

on it with our thoughts that is how it materialises into the physical world?

It’s the creative force, where thought is the missing link between the formless world of
spirit and the manifest world of form. Everything comes from nothing and thought is the
vehicle through which we create it.

When you had those kinds of epiphanies how did it change how you

worked?

Oh, so radically it kind of freaked me out. I first tried to integrate this new insight with
how I already did things and the way things had looked for me before, but at a certain
point it became apparent that it was just something fundamentally different, which is the
reason I called the first book about it, ‘The Inside Revolution’, because it was just so
different to how most people see things.
I say right at the beginning of the book Space Within that I am not enlightened and I
don’t particularly intend to be; I eat meat, I go to movies and get pissed off when people
are on their cellphones. It is just that living this way you start to see things more clearly.

You start to live with more clarity of mind. You start to live in a
better feeling.

You start to see things insightfully and have more wisdom in the moment, and your
creativity is much more at your fingertips and much less something you have to go on a
deep dive to try and find.

As soon as you just drop out of the conceptual mind and back
into love, back into your nature, all of that just starts happening.

The best bit I think for me, as a recovering intellectualist, is that I can feel it, and in fact
the feeling becomes a wonderful sort of a guide, because as I spend more time in the
world of deeper feeling, such as gratitude, love, compassion, wellbeing and bliss, I can
feel a spaciousness of being.

Until I get caught back up and I then start trying to be happy or trying to be less angry or
trying to be more of this or less of that, causing me to move back to the comparative
world of the conceptual mind and I end up struggling again, like we all do. It is not
personal, it just is. We all have bad weeks, it’s no big deal, it’s not front-page news, it
isn’t something indicative of a fundamental flaw in our character. We are human, but
being human is awesome. You don’t go to a movie to show how enlightened you are by
not reacting to it, you go to a movie to get caught up; you go to a movie to have the
experience.

We become human to have human experiences so the idea

that somehow the goal of spiritual seeking, the goal of personal
evolution, the goal of working on ourselves is to become less
human is just bizarre.
It would be like keeping on buying tickets to the movies so that you can stop enjoying
them.

Instead, accepting that you are human, and rest in this inner healing bliss, rest in your
true nature, is the key to pretty much everything, the key that helps you feel how you are
a spiritual being having a human experience, and as you feel that you allow yourself to
be more and more who you really are. And that is just awesome.

FINDING YOUR LIFE PURPOSE

Life is such a mystery. When you really think about how we just
arrive, it’s really quite something.

That we just arrive and there is very little explanation for why we have a life as a human
being. Why do we show up as humans and not as whales, for instance?

Joseph Campbell said something like “Life is rather like showing up in the middle of the
movie, having to find out what’s happened already and then also having to leave before
the end of the movie.” And I think that’s sort of how it is: we get dropped into our life and
there is such a great mystery to our lives and I think that the purpose on one level is to
try to make sense of our lives.

I think it is also the feeling of wanting to somehow make the

most of our life, to be able to do something precious with the
gift of having a life. How can we make the most of this
opportunity? How can we encounter the mystery where we can
somehow navigate our life and find a way to enjoy it?

There are so many ways into purpose. One of them is to begin to notice stirrings inside
yourself, where you begin to notice that there are times when you feel more alive than
others, and then to ask: What is that aliveness telling me about myself?

In some ways a purpose is to want to be the most alive that you can be in your life, not
just getting through the day and ending up tired and exhausted so that you have to sleep
at the end of the day, but more a feeling of being alive so that you encounter the day in
such a way that you are living it rather than trying to get through it.

If you then inquire into the heart, you can ask what brings you
great joy, and notice when you are at your happiest.

When do you genuinely feel like you are following your joy? Because sometimes
following your joy is not all that it is cracked up to be. There are plenty of artists that will
tell you they are following their joy when they are writing, when they are composing, but
the actual process of writing and composing can be very difficult and full of fear and
doubts and you often feel lost. But at the same time, it’s a joy, so it’s bigger than just a
happiness as such.

You can also notice when there is a feeling of ‘yes-ness’ – that

there is a yes that we look for in our lives and that this yes is
like a sacred yes that we follow.

When we were writing Life Loves You, Louise Hay said: “Look, I’m a yes person, and I
live in a yes universe: I believe the universe is saying yes to me and I pay attention to
when I want to say yes to something.”

So I think living a life of purpose is really opening up to being guided by a force that is
greater than the intellect, greater than our self-image; that is not to say that the self-
image and the intellect doesn’t play a part in the whole thing, but by living a life of
purpose, hopefully what it does is that it helps us to be very present in our lives. We are
actually conscious and present and in our life, we are not just going through the motions,
waiting for life to happen. We are instead making the most of the mystery that has been
presented to us.

What to do when feeling lost

Finding your purpose takes practice. It would be lovely if your purpose just arrived at
your house like an Amazon parcel, but it takes practice, and I personally ask for
guidance a lot. I live my life through prayer and meditation and I’m always saying:

“Please make it as obvious as possible, whatever guidance you are sending me. You
know who you are dealing with here so you know, don’t be subtle.”

If you are really starting from scratch in finding your purpose, then it can help to have a
conversation with somebody. It is an interesting paradox: purpose will ultimately
encourage you to be very authentic and in a sense only you can really know what your
purpose is and yet you can’t find your purpose by yourself. I think therefore it is very
good to be able to call upon help and learn from some of your favourite teachers.

I think another good idea is to be able to make it a prayer. One of the reasons why I’m
such a huge fan of St. Francis is because I feel that the St. Francis prayer gives us a
way to open up to our purpose by saying:

Please make me an instrument, you know I am available, I am

available to be used.

And St. Francis is a great example of somebody who scrabbled around in his teens,
looking for some sort of sense of pleasure but all of the pleasures weren’t enough, it
wasn’t deep enough for him. He then looked for a higher purpose and went to war and
he hoped that would satisfy something and clearly it was horrific and it also meant he
ended up in prison. But the opportunity that prison gave him was that it forced him to
stop and consider what felt true and meaningful to him and he was then guided and he
allowed himself to be guided.
Another example might be from A Course of Miracles, in which there is a lovely prayer I
call the guidance prayer, which is:

What would you have me do? Where would you have me go?
What would you have me say and to whom?

I think by saying prayers like this, it does open you up to some sort of guidance.

Now after that you can start to ask yourself some questions and in my work with
authentic success I focus on four types of intelligence: physical intelligence, emotional
intelligence, intellectual intelligence and spiritual intelligence. And so my four questions
that I would offer around purpose are for the PQ, the physical intelligence: When do I
feel most alive? I think aliveness is a very good indicator that you are on purpose.

The EQ one is fundamentally joy and love, so: What does following my

joy feel like? When am I literally enjoying myself?

The IQ one is as simple as what holds your interest, what is it that you can’t stop thinking
about.

The spiritual intelligence would be along the lines of when do I

feel most like me? When am I being me as opposed to being in
a role that suits everybody else? When am I doing something
just for me?

I think when you put those four things together it will give you a good indicator as to what
might be your purpose.

Being and doing

A lot of times I think the mistake we make is we think that our purpose isn’t what we are
doing now, it’s what we are going to do but I think purpose starts with being rather than
doing and it starts with the question:
 What sort of a person do I want to be?

Maybe the purpose of our life is actually just to be present in our lives and to be the man
or the woman that we most want to be and that has nothing to do with our business card,
our profession or the doing of the day; it has more to do with the way we are doing our
day.

So we are talking about being a presence in the world as opposed to just a busy
whirlwind in the world and if you follow that inquiry through, then at some point I would
say it is about being a light in the world.

When I’m talking about purpose there is this lovely little joke, a riddle, which is “Are you
the sort of person that lights up a room when you walk in or when you walk out?” And
the idea that we could light up a room when we walk in, that is a beautiful thought, and I
think that has all to do with the way we are as a person.

The ego’s purpose and our shared purpose

I think we end up in trouble when we try to come up with a unique purpose where
essentially our ego is using purpose to try to make itself real and significant.

Instead, I feel we have a shared purpose, as human beings. Now this shared purpose
can be expressed uniquely and that is great fun, but the purpose is fundamentally
shared and I would say if you are looking for a purpose and you have been looking for a
while and you haven’t found it yet, then I would recommend that you simply make love
your purpose.

And then the next question will normally be, “Well, how do I do that?” And that’s when
you say, “Well today, just make it a point of loving actions, loving kindness, make a point
of holding a door open for somebody, make a point of helping someone across the
road.”

I do think as a shared human purpose, if humanity doesn’t

choose love we are in trouble, so in a sense I believe that our
 shared purpose as humans is to choose love over fear so that
we can help the world evolve in a direction of love.

Now that to me seems very practical as well because the alternative to choosing love
isn’t just fear, it really is more war, economic collapse and it is the continuation of the
horrific way that we treat each other on this planet.

When you look at the United Nations and their mission – which is based around eight
goals including things like ending infant mortality and greater equality between boys and
girls and men and women – I can’t help but feel that love could handle all of that. If you
just got the leaders in the room together and said, “What is the most loving thing we
could be doing right now around ending child mortality?” then love would crack that.

I am a great believer in love being not just an emotion – it is intelligent and it is also
practical and therefore I have no hesitation in saying to people, “If you are still looking for
the purpose of your life, in the meantime choose love.”

The other thing that is so good about the inquiry into purpose is
that when you try to live a life of purpose it does encourage you
to grow in a way that you wouldn’t grow if you just had a job
and you just paid the mortgage.

By following this inquiry of a life of purpose, it somehow asks of you everything as it asks
that you are embodied, that you are physically in your life, that you give your heart to
what you do, and that you put your heart in your relationships. It asks you to engage
your best thinking in what it is that you are about and to spiritually be the real you versus
an edited you.

I also think that sometimes there is a big fear around purpose, which is the fear that I
won’t be able to do it. A lot of people tell me, “I feel like I’ve got a big purpose in my life;
it’s so big I don’t know how to start.”
 And that is why I think with purpose it is important to have a
spiritual component to your inquiry because, fundamentally,
fulfilling your purpose is more about soul than it is about ego,
as I think your purpose is something that comes from your soul.

If it tries to come from your self-image, it probably will be a decent effort but it won’t
ultimately satisfy you. But when it comes from a soul impulse then I think it’s a beautiful
thing and it’s something that we are called to follow.

The role of forgiveness

I am a student of A Course in Miracles and that makes it very clear that our function is
forgiveness. It actually says that the purpose of our life is forgiveness.

When I would read that over the years, my heart would sink, like why does my purpose
have to be forgiveness? But I believe it is true; because of our state of mind, things have
got so bad in the world that we have to bring love into the equation as best we can, and
one way we have to bring love into the equation is through this act of forgiveness.

Now in forgiving our past, in forgiving ourselves, in forgiving

somebody else, what that fundamentally does for us is it
liberates us from a wounded self-image and restores us to
more of the awareness of our true nature.

Then we are in line with ourselves again, our true selves, the self that existed before we
got wounded and if we are in touch with that self then we are in a position to be once
again aligned with grace and love and inspiration – and then we are on purpose. So
forgiveness gets us back on track.
 If we are not forgiving maybe it is because we are still in the
process of forgiving and forgiveness. I do think it is a process
and it takes some time. Maybe we haven’t forgiven yet because
we are still in the healing cycle of forgiving something.

That said, if we still haven’t forgiven something that happened a long time ago then that
is when we really have to take an honest look at ourselves and say: “Well you know, I
can’t keep holding onto a grievance and expect to shine my light in the world. I can’t hold
onto a resentment and access inspiration at the same time. I can’t be playing out dramas
and be my big self. I’m going to be playing a little part in my life if I’m just playing out
dramas.”

So at some point we choose forgiveness because we realise we are here not just for the
drama, but we are here for a bigger story than the drama we have become embroiled in.

Now it could be that the very wound you have experienced in

your life will actually be a doorway to your purpose, so this is
something else to consider: the idea that life doesn’t just
happen to you, it happens for you.

That maybe some of your grievances, some of your wounds, some of your
disappointments, some of your dark nights, some of your failures, they are there to
inform you about your purpose.

St Francis Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much

seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood as to understand;

to be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.

ANATOMY OF A CALLING

The ‘Squirrel Girl’

I was seven years old when my calling started to make itself known to me. My parents
had hired a chimney sweep to come and when they swept the chimney they found a
nest of baby squirrels there. My mother was very kind; she taught me about the cycle of
life, saying, “These babies will now die because they don’t have their mother.” But I was
having none of that so I pressured my parents to take me to the vet so that I could learn
how to be the mother to these little baby squirrels. Sadly all four of them ended up dying
and I was just heartbroken. But I had now gotten a reputation in the neighbourhood for
being the ‘squirrel girl’, so a few months later somebody showed up at my house with
another injured baby squirrel that was a little older and this one survived. Over the
course of my childhood I raised over 20 squirrels and it was almost as if that was my
training ground, where I was learning my healing skills so I could later practise on people
once I went to medical school.

I studied medicine because I wanted to be that person the patients could trust, the
person who would hold their hand as they were going through a healing journey or
through a pregnancy, a safe person who would support them through the potential
landmines of illness or life transitions, births and deaths, but when I started my job I was
expected to see 25 patients a day, which I thought was a lot, and by the time I left my job
I was expected to see 40 patients a day.

The change

What I came to realise is that by colluding with an untrustworthy system I had become
somebody who could not be trusted and the integrity violation of that, the feeling of being
out of alignment with my own soul, was so painful that I became both mentally and
physically sick. In the end I was taking seven medications for a whole host of chronic
health issues, mostly cardiac issues, and I was so depressed I was suicidal. The only
thing that saved me was that I was pregnant and I knew I couldn’t kill my baby.

That was at the end of 2005 and then in January 2006 I gave birth to my daughter. My
healthy young brother came out to be with me for my C-section and he wound up with
full-blown liver failure as a rare side effect of the antibiotics he was taking for a sinus
infection. And then my 16-year-old dog died and my beloved father died of a brain
tumour. All within two weeks.

And the combination of that feeling of being in violation of my

soul and the traumatic loss of my dog, my dad and my brother
being very ill was so destabilising to my sense of wellbeing that
it still took me another year to quit my job.

But I remember hearing this little voice when I was so lost, and I was not used to hearing
little voices, but this little voice said: “Sweetheart, you’re going to have to quit your job.”

And I had this deep sense of peace the minute I heard that, but then this voice of fear
started arguing: “You can’t quit your job, you’re the full-time provider for your husband
and your newborn. You’ve worked for 12 years to get this education, and you still owe
medical school debt – it would cost you $120,000 just to quit your job.” The arguments
started right away, but the voice said: “You don’t have to do it right now; you just have to
make peace with what’s true.”

And I knew that something was going to change. So I took some time to make peace
with that because it was terrifying. My husband didn’t work and I had no idea how we
were going to pay the bills and everybody thought I was crazy when I started talking
about the possibility of quitting my job.

I did in the end leave my job and people often ask me, “How did you have the courage to
take a leap of faith?” And I say, “You know, when the pain of staying put exceeds the
fear of the unknown, you leave,” so it doesn’t feel like courage, it feels like survival.

The reality is that it just keeps getting more and more painful, and of course you are
allowed to violate your soul, since you have free will, but it will eventually become
intolerable to most of us, so we get sick or depressed or anxious.

Finding your calling early in life

One of my mentors, Rachel Naomi Remen, runs workshops for doctors and I took one of
them back in 2008 right after I quit my job. One of the most profound things that I took
away from that workshop was when she asked this group of doctors: “How old were you
when you discovered that the life of another living being mattered?” She said: “Were you
over 25?” And nobody raised their hand.”20 to 25?” And nobody raised their hand. “15 to
20?” A few people raised their hands. “10 to 15?” A few more raised their hands. She
said: “Less than 10?” and the rest of the people in the room raised their hands.

Doctors, and healers of all kinds really, are often very young
when they first discover this. As a young girl, Rachel was the
one who would go out and rescue the worms from the puddles.

Rachel told me the story about how she was speaking at Harvard Law School with Jack
Kornfield, the Buddhist meditation teacher. She was repeating the same exercise with
the lawyers and nobody was raising their hand and she got very confused. Then Jack
leans over and says, “Rachel, try justice,” and she said: “How old were you when you
first discovered that the world was unjust?”

And it was the same breakdown and that was so profound for me to realise; first of all,
that every calling has its own seed, its own seed question almost – like, ask a group of
accountants, “How old were you when you first discovered that the world needed more
order?” Or ask a teacher, “How old were you when you discovered that the world
needed more patience and understanding?”

It is as if we all have our call early on where we see that

something in the world is calling for our love, in our own unique
expression, and to me that’s what the calling is, it’s any way in
which you can give your love to the world.

It doesn’t have to be this grand thing that people sometimes think their calling is. I think
your calling can be as simple as quitting your job to stay at home to take care of your
sick grandmother or just recognising where your love is needed when you are out and
about during the day, and you may find ten little ways that you can spread your love in
the world. You can just notice that the person in front of you in the line at the coffee shop
seems to be having a bad day so you buy them a cup of coffee, and sometimes those
small acts of love can save lives.

Going to Esalen

The first time I went to Esalen I was being guided there by this voice again that said,
“You need to go to Esalen, because you are supposed to meet somebody there.” I had
never heard of Esalen, so this was a very strange thing for me. I looked it up on the
internet and found that it is a beautiful retreat centre, but when I saw the type of
workshops they had there I thought, “This is where crazy people go; this is not for me. I
am a good, normal doctor.” But the voice would not go away, so I finally found a writing
workshop I felt I could do.
I showed up at Esalen and as I was sitting in the hot springs there I found myself sitting
next to a woman who asked me, “Why are you here?” And I said, “I have no idea, but I
think I’m supposed to meet somebody.” She looks at me square in the eye and says,
“You’re supposed to meet Rachel Naomi Remen.” I’d never heard of this person and I
said: “Well, is she here?” And she looks at me very mysteriously and she says, “No, but
she was.”

I then looked up Rachel on the internet and it turned out she was teaching this workshop
for doctors a month later, and Rachel has been my spiritual teacher and mentor ever
since. I can now trace about 15 people who are really important in my life back to that
first week at Esalen.

It was a very mystical experience for me, because it really

began to shatter the rational materialist worldview that I had
been really fully indoctrinated into.

So it was also very unsettling and very uncomfortable to start to experience things that
my mind couldn’t explain and that I didn’t think were possible.

The calling on the bridge

It was the last night at Esalen, and we had been spending all week together so people
had gotten pretty close. Most of the delegates in the group were alternative healthcare
providers, and I had never met people like this before, as they had all been completely
dismissed by my education and by my family. I couldn’t help noticing how happy they
seemed – and how I wasn’t. And here we were, sitting around in a circle and the women
started asking me, “You are a gynaecologist, can we ask you some questions?”

So they started asking me these very intimate questions and then they asked me if they
could ask me questions one on one. They were literally standing in line to ask me their
most intimate questions and I realised that this part of my job, the part of being in
community with women and being one on one with women, was the only part that I
missed. I didn’t miss surgery. I didn’t miss getting up at three in the morning to deliver
babies. I didn’t miss the paperwork, the charting, all the lab tests, all the pressure to
make sure that I didn’t miss something. But I really missed that intimacy of having a front
row seat on the most important experiences of a woman’s life.

Later, when I was standing on a bridge that this energy healer had told me to go to as it
was an energy vortex, I heard the voice again and this voice said: “You are needed back
in medicine.” And I said, “No, I can’t go back to the hospital.” The voice said: “You’ll be
shown where you are needed. Just pay attention.”

I remember being on my knees in this place and feeling that

call and feeling the fear and the resistance and at the same
time knowing I had to say yes.

It was the same call that had called me when I was seven, but I had somehow veered off
track and it was a calling to come back into impeccable alignment with my true calling.
And I didn’t know what that was. I had no idea what I was being asked to do, but I knew I
had to say yes to it.

The tests

I certainly experienced some tests along the way. I was blogging and writing

about my journey publicly in 2011, and then everything started to fall apart. Nothing was
going as planned. I had written a book, but I had lost my agent and my publisher, and I
was $200,000 in debt. I was getting all these recruiting letters from people who were
willing to pay me huge, six figure incomes to go back to the hospital, but I had this strong
sense that if I did my soul would suffer and it was very, very difficult because I had a lot
of inner pressure. I clearly wasn’t providing for my family any more and my husband
wasn’t working so all the pressure was on my shoulders.

And I had promised that I could make it work, but I had failed to do so, and nothing was
working. There was no amount of effort that was going to fix this as I had done
everything effort could possibly do.

I was at that place where it was out of my hands, and I needed a miracle, but you can’t
force a miracle to happen.
I was trained to think that if you put in enough effort you can get
anything you want, but what happens when you still don’t get
it?

I think this whole thing has become a lesson for me in learning how to live, learning to let
something much larger than me run my life. And at this time I had done everything my
ego knew how to do to get what it wanted, and yet nothing was working. And it was very
hard to tell in that moment if I was supposed to cave and just throw in the towel, or if this
was the time where I had to just trust, let go completely, surrender to something I don’t
understand and ask for guidance.

The miracle

What happened between January and June 2011 was quite magical. An astrologer from
the Astro Twins had been following me on Facebook. I didn’t know anything about
astrology as it all sounded very hocus pocus to me, but Ophira had been following me
on Facebook and she asked, “Can I offer you an astrology reading? I’ve been following
you and I know that you are suffering a lot, but I think you are going through exactly what
you are supposed to be going through, astrologically.” And I said, “Sure you can do a
reading,” and she tells me, “Everything’s going to turn around for you on June 6.”

So I tell my husband, who’s planning to move us from Orange County, because it’s too
expensive; he wants us to move to a little cabin in Southern California that’s going to be
much cheaper. I said: “Well, we are not allowed to make any big decisions until June 6,”
and he looks at me like I’ve really lost it now, since I’m going to plan whether or not we
move based on this astrology reading.

I told him: “Look, you can have the moving truck ready to go on June 7th but we’re going
to wait until June 6th.” So he set up a moving sale to sell all of our old art cheap and we
just announced it to my online community and people showed up and started buying
paintings, like 20 and 30 at a time, and at the end of the day we had made $50,000. It
was June 6, and because we made enough money through selling the art we didn’t have
to move.
 Just a few months later, in September, I got a six figure book
deal for ‘Mind Over Medicine’ and my TED talk got millions of
views, and everything just turned around.

It is as if I had this inner knowing that regardless of what was happening on the outside, I
was somehow going to land butter side up, but I had no evidence of that, it was blind
faith at the time. And since then I’ve had multiple experiences like that where I have faith
in something that I can’t explain and that I can’t offer proof of, but it comes to pass in a
way that seems almost miraculous, and at this point I’ve come to call it ‘evidence based
faith’.

Surrendering to the Divine

I am no longer interested in forcing my will on the world and I’m also not interested in
trying to manifest what my ego wants, because my ego has manifested anything an ego
can want in this lifetime. I’ve done a lot, I’ve achieved a lot and ultimately I don’t think
that’s what makes us happy.

We are always placing our sights on the next thing that is going to be the thing that
makes us happy; it’s X amount of money or it’s this achievement or it’s meeting the love
of our life or finally having a baby or getting the house of our dreams or whatever. But for
most people the minute they get that thing they thought was going to make them fulfilled
they are onto the next thing.

I have been deeply inspired by Tosha Silver’s work, which is all

about spiritual surrender.

She teaches about taking all of our unmet desires, all of those deepest longings of our
hurt, all of the problems that we think we have to solve, all of the decisions that we are
conflicted about, and taking all those desires and problems and decisions and offering
them to the Divine and asking for help. Because it is a partnership, a co-creation process
with the Divine, and she teaches a process that she calls ‘Change Me Prayers’.

I met Tosha right around the time of my divorce. The divorce process was a very difficult
test, and although we were really committed to trying to have a very conscious divorce,
things got ugly. Tosha came to me and she was like:

“Look, here’s the problem; you are thinking that these are ‘my
books’ and ‘my business’ and ‘my house’ and ‘my daughter’,
but you wouldn’t have shit if it weren’t for God’s largesse.
Instead call them God’s books, God’s business, God’s house,
God’s daughter and you give away whatever you are supposed
to give away.”

So I was like, “Okay, change me into somebody who can tell what’s most fair here,
what’s most right. What’s the path with the highest good for us all?” And my husband
and I then went into mediation – and we had been in mediation for months and nothing
had gotten resolved – and now we were done in 30 minutes.

And it was magical. The mediation attorney said, “Okay, I want you two to come in
separately and you sit down and you just write down a number, and let’s see if you are
even close.” And we sat down and we both wrote down our numbers and we wrote down
the exact same number and a month later I got a completely unexpected cheque in the
mail for the exact amount of what we had written down. I don’t know how to explain that.
And today we live next door to each other, and we don’t even have a custody agreement
– our daughter sees both of us every day.
 The more I surrender, the more I find I get guidance.

Like I was trying to make a decision about whether or not to go to Peru with my friend
Dennis, so I offered it to the Divine and asked for help. At that moment I was at the
airport, and straight after I had made my offering to the Divine and asked for a sign, I
walked into a coffee shop and there’s this woman with a tray with little cups on it and she
hands me a cup that says “Say yes to Peru.” That’s how quick a sign can come!