Wayne Dyer on the Most Common Meme: I Can’t Change.

Wayne Dyer and Ray Hemachandra

 

What’s the most common meme people hold?

A minister in Maui told me about a boy who was five years old, and his mom came home with a brand new baby. He was a rambunctious five year old, and his parents were afraid that he might do some damage to the baby. They kept a close eye on him so he didn’t get too rough—kick the baby or think it was a doll to play with or something.

They were watching the boy talk to his little baby brother, who was just a few days old. And he said, “Would you please tell me what God is like? I think I’m forgetting.” This little five year old knew that the baby was a piece of God who hadn’t yet had a chance to forget.

I think the most common meme is that it’s too difficult to change. It’s too risky to change. My nature doesn’t allow me to change.

Eckhart Tolle on Goal Setting and Being One with the Present Moment

Ray Hemachandra and Eckhart Tolle

Ray: Eckhart, the practice of being in the moment by definition is not goal-oriented, correct?

Eckhart: Correct. You are not seeking to attain some future state.

That is the fallacy of many spiritual seekers. They have an image of some state — enlightenment, or whatever they call it — they want to achieve.

But it does not work like that. The future is only a thought form.

Work with the present moment. Be with what is.

Sakyong Mipham on Your Practice and Life

Sakyong Mipham with Ray Hemachandra

Ray: Your first book, Turning the Mind Into an Ally, serves as a guide for training the mind with meditation practice.

Your second book, Ruling Your World, is more broadly philosophical. At the same time, it seems designed to help people make their practice practical and relevant to day-to-day life.

I already am using one of the tools you recommend, counting breaths when focused on breathing in meditation, which has brought me into the breath in a deeper way.

What was your purpose in writing the second book, and how do you envision it being used by Shambhalians and others?

Mipham: I hope it is used! (He laughs.)

We have this deep tradition of teachings about how to be better people. The point is to bring the understandings into experience.

Part of my inspiration was to say — to Shambhalians and other people who have been practicing meditation for years — has your life improved? Are there signs of your development? There should be signs.

Your life and your practice should not be separate. You bring your practice into experience. You bring it about.

Byron Katie on the Mind Waking Up to Itself

Byron Katie

Ray: When you describe your moment of realization—the cockroach moment—about not believing your thoughts, it sounds almost revelational. Do most people doing inquiry have revelations like that, or is it usually steady work in making the understandings become second nature?

Katie: Steady work, and making the understandings become second nature—or first nature.

People don’t need sudden revelations. They get what they need when they need it, thought by thought by thought. It’s a constant thing when the mind starts to wake up to itself.

Mind is infinitely creative. And when it’s not stuck, oh my goodness, that’s where the joy comes from. Something happens, and the way we think about it, understand it, see it, is actually hilarious, whereas before it used to depress us.

Doreen Virtue describes specific archangels

Doreen Virtue

Ray: Would you talk about some of the specific archangels and what they do?

Doreen: Absolutely! Archangel Michael is the angel to call on for physical protection of yourself, your loved ones, and your home, vehicle, and possessions. He can help you have more courage and strength if you are going through any sort of change — the kind you know you must make but are intimidated about.

Call on Archangel Raphael for any sort of health issue — for yourself, your loved ones, your clients, or your pets. Raphael also helps people who want to do healings for others, whether you want to do it on a one-shot basis for a loved one or you would like a career in healing.

Archangel Gabriel is wonderful to call on for two major categories. She helps anyone wanting to have a baby — whether you are looking to conceive a baby or to adopt — and helps with the pregnancy and the birth of the baby.

Gabriel, who is known as the messenger of God, helps with messenger work, naturally. Gabriel assists writers, teachers, and communicators, especially journalists. If you want to complete a book project, call on Gabriel. This angel is what I affectionately call a “nudging angel,” and she will push you along to get your book done.

Archangel Jophiel [pronounced Jo-fee-el], whose name means “beauty of God,” has a feminine energy, and she helps you beautify your thoughts.

Rabbi David Zeller on What Makes a Good Spiritual Teacher

Rabbi David Zeller

Ray: Rabbi, what makes a rabbi, priest, or guru a good teacher or guide to God? And what are the warning signs for followers or flock that someone is off the mark?

David: Sense of humor is important. Humility is also very important, but real humility. There is a tremendous amount of phony humility.

I think that the sexuality issue is a major red flag. I’ve seen rabbis and swamis and Zen masters all take the fall. They all think they know what they’re doing, and they all think it’s different in this case or whatever, and they’re all wrong.

The ego takes over and says, “I know what I’m doing,” and it doesn’t have the faintest idea.

In my book The Soul of the Story, I write about Kennett Roshi, a Zen master. She used to say that the most important mantra that she taught her Zen priests in training was the mantra, “I could be wrong.”

I could be wrong? I could be wrong. I could be wrong. I could be wrong? And so on, with all the subtleties and variations.

For teachers, if you can’t say “I could be wrong,” you’re in the wrong business.

Marianne Williamson on Taking a Moral Inventory

Marianne Williamson

Ray: You write about the importance in midlife of doing “the rigorous work of taking a fearless moral inventory”—about facing your pain and even facing places of self-loathing. Where do you begin that work?

Marianne: Sometimes it’s late at night—it’s 3 o’clock in the morning—and for whatever reason, you can’t stop thinking about something you did wrong in 1978. It’s just come up for you, and you can’t stop it.

Why do we have such an epidemic use of antidepressants? I don’t mean among people who are clinically depressed. I mean among people who are not clinically depressed, but they just don’t know what to do with all their psychic pain.

Maybe they turn to sleeping pills, but listen: Sometimes you’re awake for a reason.

Computer problems …

… at home have prevented me from blogging for the past few days. I apologize and hope to have it resolved quickly. Thanks for your patience, and please enjoy roaming through earlier posts while I get things straightened out! Or visit www.hemachandra.com to read a few of my full interviews. Best, Ray

Brian Froud on Pink Fairies

 

Brian Froud

 

Ray: Have you encountered blocks to your work because of the subject matter of fairies?

Brian: I get it all the time. People just go blank when you say “fairies.”

I’ve been touring for years, coming out with books about fairies, and my wife, Wendy Froud, who is a doll maker, also did a book about fairies called A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale.

We can never get any press coverage, because when you say the word “fairy,” everybody has a preconceived idea of what that is. What it is is some sort of shallow, sparkly, tinselly, pink thing that has no power.

This is because we’ve relegated fairies to the nursery, and fairies were never there.

Fairies were always in the real world.

Louise Hay: Love yourself. Share. And keep it simple.

Louise Hay with Ray Hemachandra in Tampa, Florida

Louise, what advice do you have for somebody who wants to begin doing healing work?

Louise: Learn to love yourself. And share.

You know, I’m a high-school dropout. I don’t know how I got here. Life unfolded doorways for me, and I guess I walked through them.

Everything is simple. And the simple things work best.

When I read books that are really complicated, I think, “Oh, God, there’s so much work! Why would I want to do this?”

I’m not even interested in it—although some people may be attracted to that approach and find it stimulating for them, for one reason or another, to make it as complicated as you can. I just don’t feel that way.

*Read a lengthy excerpt from this 2008 interview with Louise here on Hemachandra.com. Also, read a full interview, conducted for New Age Retailer magazine in 2005, on Louise Hay’s website.

Doreen Virtue on earthbound spirits

 

Doreen Virtue

 

Ray: Are there negative beings that correlate to angels? Do they exist?

Doreen: Certain spirits can cause havoc in people — definitely yes. The main category is called earthbound spirits.

These are people who have passed on while in the full throngs of active addiction. The addictions could be to substances, behaviors, or things.

These spirits don’t want to go to the light. They want to stay on Earth and continue to try and get the same body thrills they got while they were living.

Earthbound spirits include certain people who were abusive when they were living. When they die, they say, “I’m going to make it up to the person I abused,” but they try to do so without going through the formal training a spirit guide goes through.

Earthbound spirits have what I call a “wet-blanket effect.” I’ve counseled a lot of people I would have called depressed when I was a practicing psychologist. I now often find that what they actually have is a spirit attachment.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer on Feeling Good

 

 

Wayne Dyer and Ray Hemachandra

Ray: Is feeling good a significant spiritual goal?

Wayne: The No. 1 principle in the universe is “I intend to feel good.” Feeling good is what you should be doing every day of your life.

A friend of mine visited Swami Muktananda back in the 1970s in India. As my friend was going into the ashram, Muktananda stopped him and said, “Do you know the difference between good and God?” and my friend said, “Zero.” Muktananda held up a zero and said, “That’s right. When you look at God and good, the only difference between them is one little zero.”

Eckhart Tolle: You Are the Now

 

Ray Hemachandra and Eckhart Tolle

 

Ray: What can help people better understand the now — what the present moment really is, and what they really are?

Eckhart: Most people equate the now, the present moment, with what happens in the now.

They think there are many different moments, thousands of moments every day, because different things are happening every day, one thing after another. Thoughts, external things, and internal things happen.

But those things really are not what the present moment is. Life always is now, but the form the now takes changes continuously. Most people equate the form the now takes with the now itself, and so they believe there are many different moments.

If you look more deeply, though, you realize there only ever is this moment.

Dr. Judith Orloff on What to Do if You Are an Energy Vampire

 

Dr. Judith Orloff

 

Ray: What if you are an energy vampire? Can you change?

Judith: In my talks, I talk about energy vampires, and yes, some people come up to me and say, “I think I am one. What can I do about it?”

It’s so wonderful and touching. They’re honest, and I think that’s beautiful.

I also have patients who come in who are energy vampires. I help them plug up the hole basically.

Sometimes it’s a trauma from the past, so you have to get to the bottom of it. Sometimes it just takes a good meditation practice to solidify inside and that changes the energy.

Marianne Williamson on How Our Lessons Are the Same

 

Marianne Williamson

 

Ray: As you talk to people around the country, what’s surprising you about what other people are and aren’t concerned about in themselves?

Marianne: I wouldn’t say that anything is surprising me.

It’s fundamental to the body of information and knowledge that I’ve dealt with my entire adult life that there’s really only one of us here. We’re all going through the same stuff.

Rabbi David Zeller on the core of Judaism

Rabbi David Zeller

Ray: What does Judaism have to teach first and foremost? What is its most basic spiritual lesson? And what are its core ideas?

David: Well, I remember my teacher Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said, “You know, our goal is not to make the whole world Jewish. Our goal is to let the whole world know there really is one God.”

So, it comes back to this idea that there is an over-all, unifying consciousness-being-loving-intention in the universe. I would say that is one of the primary special things about Judaism.

Like many other people, we are not missionary. Our self-esteem isn’t based on whether we can convince everybody to be like us. We just want to serve God in the way that we were put here to serve God.

You know, I learned that from American Indians. I have learned that from many people who have said, “We have our particular path.”

I also think that in Judaism, in particular, we are the guardians of sacred time. It is our particular commandment, which is a bad translation of the word mitzvah, which really means “that which joins you to.” It’s like these are actions we do that make us one with God.

There are people all over the world who meditate. I wish Jews would meditate more! Yet we have a particular, actual mitzvah, saying, “I enjoin you, I command you, you must take time out.”

Byron Katie on starting to do The Work

Byron Katie

Ray: You say when people start to do The Work and ask whether their thoughts are true, it’s best to do it on paper. Why?

Katie: Because the mind is tricky. If you don’t write down your stressful thought, the mind will slip and slide around it.

The mind is very clever. It will start defending its sacred concepts. It will qualify and justify and soon you won’t be able to give simple answers to the questions.

The mind will outsmart you, so that it can keep all of its concepts intact.

But if you identify the stressful thought that you’re believing and put it on paper, there it is, in black and white. It’s stopped.

It’s mind on paper. Your fearful mind never has been stopped before. It’s brought into the world and stabilized in the world—on paper.

Dean and Dudley Evenson on the New Age Musical Community’s Evolution

Dean Evenson and Dudley Evenson of Soundings of the Planet

Ray: How has the New Age musical community evolved? It seems that New Age is more widely accepted in the mainstream. But maybe there’s a little less focus and purposefulness, too, in some parts of what’s called New Age music.

Dudley: People really have discovered this music’s benefit, especially in the areas of health and wellness. As we get older, we become more aware of how important it is to take care of ourselves. People are tending to want to use holistic approaches to their wellness. And even when they become ill, they want to do as much as they can to take care of themselves.

We didn’t start out making healing music per se. We didn’t say, “We’re going to make healing music, and we’re going to study all the science of it.”

We started out making music that reflected the planet and that was about peace. Mainly because of our Native American connection and what we’d been learning about Mother Earth, we just felt a desperate need to get out and do something to communicate this voice of the planet. As a result, we created music that reflected our motto, “Peace Through Music.”

Brian Froud on Sticking with the Fairies

Brian Froud

Ray: Given the resistance to the subject matter of fairies, it must have taken some endurance and perseverance to stick with it.

Brian: Looking back, it seems like it was an incredibly brave act for me to do.

But once you step onto the fairy path, it’s almost like there’s no way off. You have to keep going.

However, in certain periods of doing that, the world was just saying, “You’re mad. Do something else. Why don’t you paint dragons?”

The world wasn’t supporting me in terms of finances, because nobody wanted this stuff.

George Winston on Why His Music and Life Are Keyed to the Seasons

George Winston

Ray: So you interpret everything through the model of the seasons?

George: Everything. Not just music, but also everything else.

Like if I was thinking of the Andromeda galaxy, I’d still think of a season.

Ray: Would it be winter?

George: God, I don’t know. Outer space is probably winter, you know, almost absolute zero, so probably.

It’s just me going back to my roots. If I was in outer space, I’m sure I would think of Earth.

My roots don’t chain me, but they’re a convenient starting place. If they weren’t, if I had terrible roots I hated, I’d delete them and get something else.

R. Carlos Nakai on Moving People with His Music

One of my favorite albums: the beautiful Canyon Trilogy from R. Carlos Nakai

Ray: Given your wide playing range of so many mu­si­cal styles, what informs your choic­es when it comes down to re­cord­ing any particular album?

R. Carlos: Oh, that’s an easy one. Much of what I do is playing not from my disciplined, schooled background — say that I can play a series of 60 fourth notes all in tune in a space of time say at 60 or 70 or 90 or 120 beats a minute — that’s something, a technical facility, but it really doesn’t have any pur­pose.

In my music, my in­ten­tion is to move people. So I’m more in­ter­est­ed in making sure that I get the best sound practicable, with the skills that I have, in order to move someone beside me.

When I was at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, N.Y., a musician told a whole group of us that you know you’ve become someone who knows how to play their instrument — and someone who plays from their heart — when you can make the old ladies in the front row cry.

Lisa Nichols on Beauty and the Color of Your Skin

Lisa Nichols

Ray: Lisa, you said you struggled to love the skin God placed you in. How common is that struggle among African Americans, even today?

Lisa: I think it is very common when we are younger. People of other cultures may go through various things in their teen and young-adult years, but that is one of our particular struggles, among African American women especially.

In the popular culture, you are bombarded with, “Blondes have more fun.” I won’t ever make a great-looking blonde, Ray.

Small and thin is in. I know that at my best shape I won’t be small, because that is not who I am. I may be shapely, but it won’t be in a size-2 frame. That is not how I am made up.

Doreen Virtue on developing relationships with angels

Doreen Virtue

Ray: Doreen, you said when we are born angels are assigned to us. How do we develop relationships with these angels?

Doreen: The first thing is to ask their names. When you are feeling really relaxed — say you’re outdoors in nature — close your eyes and pose the request to your angels: “Please tell me your names.”

Everyone has at least two angels. A lot of people have more than two. Have a pad of paper handy, because you are going to hear, feel, see, or think names.

Some of the names may be recognizable. You might hear “Michael,” and it is Archangel Michael. He can be with everyone who calls on him, simultaneously, with all of the people having unique individual experiences.

Sakyong Mipham on the Shambhala Buddhism community

Sakyong Mipham and Ray Hemachandra

Ray: Rinpoche, what is your intention for the Shambhala community?

Mipham: Right now the main theme is how Shambhala can be relevant in terms of what is going on in the world. A lot of these centers started with people just getting together and meditating.

I think Shambhala can be a very strong force as a social example of how you can try to live a life balanced in terms of both the spiritual and the secular. Not all people will do it, but at least we can strive for everyone to do it. Then we can ask, “How do we as a culture find that balance?”

Having that balance adds to the ability of people to live together.

Louise Hay on the self-help audience and affirmations

Louise Hay with Ray Hemachandra in Tampa, Florida

Ray: Why do you think the American audience for self-help titles primarily is made up of women?

Louise: Because women are more open. They are more open, so they start. The audience is women, gays, and then men. We are getting some more men now. I also wonder if people like Anthony Robbins, who is a very manly man, attracts more men. I don’t know.

I’ll tell you something else that surprised me: A few years ago I was in Barcelona, Spain, and I spoke to a huge audience. Ninety-eight percent of them were couples — him and her. They came together, and I thought, “Oh, my, all these men!” It was very interesting.

Ray: When I read You Can Heal Your Life, I always am struck by how practical the information is. And that flies in the face of generalizations — the airy-fairy, pie-in-the-sky stereotype — about the work you and other self-help authors do. Such generalizations might contribute to the disinterest of many men.

Are there ways authors can project a better image of their work to the general public, so more people will be open to the material?

Louise: People have to be ready. Again, they say when the student is ready, the teacher appears — and not a moment before.

You can’t force this down people’s throats or their minds or their ears. You can’t force it. They have to be ready to make a step.

Eckhart Tolle on making money, alignment with life, and the present moment

Ray Hemachandra and Eckhart Tolle

Ray: How practical is the practice of alignment with the present moment? For example, is making money at odds with an enlightened mode of being?

Eckhart: If the main purpose of what you do is making money, then of course, yes. You are using what you do as a means to an end, which is not the awake way of living.

The end could be money, power, or some kind of mental image of what life should be — like, for example, the revolutionary and the terrorist have some image of what they want to achieve.

The present moment becomes a means toward an end. When you see the present moment itself and whatever you do in the present moment as means toward an end, that is unenlightened thinking and action. It creates further suffering no matter what the end is.

The energy that flows into what you do is not aligned with life, because you are not aligned with life. You are coming from egoic consciousness.

Money is a good example. An enlightened person or business is not concerned primarily with making money, because when you are concerned with making money you want the future more than the present.

Whenever you want the future more than you want the present, true intelligence cannot flow into what you do, because it can do so only when you are totally aligned with the present moment. So, instead, what you do is ego, or it comes from ego.

Wayne Dyer on changing societal memes

Wayne Dyer and Ray Hemachandra

Ray: Let’s talk about memes a little bit more. How do political and cultural shifts happen when there are collective memes, or seem to be—

Wayne: —oh, yes, there are millions of them­—

Ray: —and is there a tipping point at which you have enough people changing their thinking that a societal meme actually shifts?

Wayne: Oh, yes, and there are lots of examples. It wasn’t very long ago that when you called to make an airline reservation, you had to decide whether you wanted to sit in a smoking or nonsmoking section. It seems like ancient times, doesn’t it? But it was only two decades ago.

That’s a cultural meme that shifted in a positive direction. No one on an airplane ought to have to breathe in noxious fumes because other people decide that they have an addictive habit. But that wasn’t the case for many decades.

There was a tipping point: Enough people began to think that smoking on planes was unacceptable that it finally became unacceptable.

Byron Katie on the mind’s relationship with itself

Byron Katie

Ray: Some people may struggle to disengage the intellect. How do you undo thinking without thinking? Is inquiry not thought engaging itself or deconstructing another thought?

Katie: Actually, it’s mind seeing through itself and understanding itself.

I like to say that understanding is the power. The most important relationship is the mind’s relationship with itself. In other words, the ultimate—and, really, the only—relationship you have is the relationship with your own thoughts.

As far as intellect, what else is there? Without intellect, there’s no story and no world.

David Zeller on understanding the Holocaust

Rabbi David Zeller

Ray: Rabbi, spiritually, what lessons should we learn from the Shoah?

David: (Long pause and deep breath.)

The hardest thing, in a way, is that first and foremost we have to say, “I don’t know. I don’t understand.”

We can come up with a thousand theories to explain how could it happen, why did it happen, how could people do this, how could they act like this, how could they have been so lied to that they actually think they’re not dealing with humans, that it’s only animals.

All of that experience does need to humble us tremendously — us being all of humanity. It almost is incomprehensible that something like this can happen.

And then it’s very important, as hard as it is, to somehow say that this is part of God’s plan.

Marianne Williamson on reaching middle age

Marianne Williamson

Ray: Were you afraid of reaching middle age, Marianne, and have you truly released those fears?

Marianne: My fiftieth birthday hit me hard. In the two or three months before that birthday, it was rough.

I talked to people who had already turned fifty, and a few good friends said they had absolutely been through the same thing I was going through. And two people said to me, “But then, all of a sudden, it lifts.”

I had that same experience. The day of my fiftieth birthday I was in Paris. I was sitting in a café, looking toward the Eiffel Tower, and all of a sudden it lifted. I got it—I understood that some new phase had begun.

But, yes, it was hard, because that’s when you know your youth is irrevocably over. Before you’re fifty, you can say things like, “Well, I’m still a young man or woman.” Once you’re fifty, you can’t say that anymore. It’s a demarcation.

Masaru Emoto on why he thinks he works with water

Masaru Emoto and Ray Hemachandra

Ray: Dr. Emoto, what originally gave you the idea to work with water?

Masaru: It is a very popular question, so I always have two answers. Which answer would you like?

Ray: Answer No. 2, definitely.

Masaru: OK, No. 2 then. I can understand that!

I believe in reincarnation. I believe that in my previous life I probably was a scientist working with water. I probably made many mistakes and had many failures.

Sakyong Mipham on mixing Shambhala Buddhism with other traditions

Sakyong Mipham with Ray Hemachandra, 2006

Ray: Many people outside the Shambhala community will read your book Ruling Your World. Also, you mention in the book that there are Shambhalian Christians and Shambhalian Jews. When people from other religious or spiritual traditions encounter Shambhala, do they experience any tensions, and, if so, what are they?

Mipham: People sometimes don’t like organized situations. Sometimes people need to be left alone more. Sometimes people need environmental support.

Within our community, one of the things I try to encourage is the notion that we are a community in which everybody at the same time is somewhere along the path of life, and everyone still is doing their own thing.

A majority of people within our community are Buddhist. But the Shambhala vision respects all traditions and the ability for each individual to live a life built on basic goodness.

Doreen Virtue on signs from the angels

Doreen Virtue

Ray: Doreen, what are some signs angels give to let people know they are present?

Doreen: One of the most common signs is seeing flickering or flashing lights with your physical eyes. You think you’re seeing Fourth of July sparklers or flashbulbs going off.

Some people have had their eyes checked by eye doctors and ruled out any organic causes. Flickering and flashing are what I call angel trails — the energy of angels moving across time and space to cause signs.

Peter Block on stewardship and leadership

Peter Block

Ray: Let’s get into the work. What is stewardship? How does it differ from leadership, or at least from traditional notions of leadership?

Peter: Leadership is about creating a place for accountability by centralizing power. Leadership is about making a center or a top — the owner of a business, for example, who is the hub of the wheel.

Leadership culture is a patriarchal culture. The leader creates the vision. The leader decides how an organization is going to operate and basically tries to get people to support that end.

Eckhart Tolle on Not Sweating the Small Stuff … or the Big Stuff

Ray Hemachandra and Eckhart Tolle

Ray: Learning to deal with the small things in the now trains you to deal with the larger ones, doesn’t it, Eckhart?

Eckhart: Exactly right. When you observe yourself reacting to what are minor things in your life, you will find that the mechanism is the same as when major things seem to go wrong in your life and there is upset.

By learning to accept the small things immediately as they happen, you can be free of having to react to things at all.

You still can respond when action is needed, but you can be free, internally, of events. You then can continue to be in a state of peace even while things are happening that the mind says should not be happening.

Louise Hay on her spiritual upbringing

Louise Hay with Ray Hemachandra in Tampa, Florida

Ray: What spiritual approach did your family practice when you were growing up?

Louise: Nothing! My mother was a lapsed Catholic. The only time I ever heard her say anything negative in my life was when she saw some nuns having lunch and said, “They shouldn’t be out in public!” Oh, my!

My stepfather was an atheist, so there wasn’t anything religious in my childhood except three weeks of Christian Science Sunday school at one point in my life. That was it.

Jonathan Goldman on the highest intention of sound healing: love

Ray Hemachandra with Andi and Jonathan Goldman at the New Age Retailer book at INATS in 2006

Ray: What would you most like the enduring legacy of your sound-healing music and work to be?

Jonathan: Love. If there is an intention of intentions, a secret of secrets, that could be imbibed and encoded on everything I do, it is the energy of love.

I’m talking about unconditional love–divine love that lets us know we are all one.

I believe the creation and manifestation process at this point in time and space goes beyond just the artistic need to create. It is our imperative to participate in planetary change and transformation, and love is the key.

Jamie Sams on the Journey to Consciousness

Jamie Sams

Ray: Your book Dancing the Dream delineates seven paths of human development to give help to people undergoing their spiritual journey. After successfully walking the first four paths, the final three deal with expanding into universal consciousness and, ultimately, into full awareness and presence in the now. What would you most like people to realize about the journey to consciousness?

Jamie: That book was designed to give people an overview of a map of consciousness. But you cannot tell another human being how to get there. It’s an impossibility, because every human being is beautifully unique and will respond in a different way because their gifts, talents, and abilities, as well as their life experiences and the environment they grew up in, are so unbelievably diverse.

So, you can’t say someone should do it like this, this, and this.

My job was to give the overview and say this is one way. This is how I experienced it, and these are the life lessons every human being experiences in the maturation process. We all hope that we mature and go beyond base emotions, addictions, upsets, and family problems.

We hope we can get to a place where we authentically embrace the world without judgment and allow every other human being to follow their path and honor that as being sacred.

Lisa Nichols on African American Stories

Lisa Nichols

Ray: How are African American stories unique?

Lisa: Within each African American story sits an individual fighting to love themselves in the package that God gave them, fighting to love themselves in a time and space where other people around them may not be loving them.

You can change your geographical location, the car you drive, or your choice of occupation, but God knows you can’t change the color of your skin.

I can’t change the fact that I am mocha brown. I can’t change the fact that I have full lips and round hips. I can’t change the fact that I have short curly hair.

I can’t change the fact that God gave me a full body to work with. He didn’t give me a size 2, 5, or even 6 frame. He gave me what he gave me, and I can’t change that.

So, African American stories differ because they show the challenge and the struggle of ourselves and our families fighting to love the African American body, the image, the culture, and all the history that came with the culture.

For me, that means knowing that my ancestors came from the space of slavery, and knowing that I did not see any positive images like me on television until 1984. That also means knowing that, in spite of these things, I have learned to love myself so much.

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer on Your Dharma

Wayne Dyer and Ray Hemachandra

Ray: If the dharma for all human beings is doing good and being good, it still manifests itself differently for different people. Are the differences in our dharmas based on choices we make—on free will—or is our specific dharma something with which we’re born?

Wayne: We’re all individualized expressions of God, of oneness. We do have personality differences. Everyone who has had more than one child knows that they come in with personalities. The moment they come in—some come in screaming, some sleep through that first night and stay peaceful the rest of their lives—you see the differences. It gives me pause to think about past lives and those kinds of things.

Free will is something that people struggle with so much, but it’s very simple to me. Carl Jung said at the same moment you’re a protagonist in your own life making choices, you also are the spear carrier, or the extra, in a much larger drama. You’ve got to live with these two opposite ideas at the same time.

Marianne Williamson on Your Most Important Question

Marianne Williamson

Ray: Marianne, from the perspective of midlife, what’s the most valuable question people can ask themselves?

Marianne: A lot of times people ask, “What am I supposed to do?” or “What’s my purpose?” But there’s a deeper question to ask. A Course in Miracles, and really any serious spiritual path, posits the question, “Who am I supposed to be?”

I think that’s the crowning glory of aging: to answer the challenge of becoming the person you are capable of being. And out of that emerges a desire to serve that you never quite experienced before.

It’s ironic and counterintuitive: When you know you have less time left, you care even more about what happens in the future of the planet.

Masaru Emoto on the Nature of Words

Masaru Emoto and Ray Hemachandra

Ray: Words are representations. They are creations. We assign them to things.

What is it about words that has such power? Why do words get a response from water when you conduct experiments?

Is it the history of a word? Is it the associations the researchers have with a word when you conduct the experiments?

Masaru: Ray, I don’t believe words are made artificially. I believe the first words were made from the vibrations, from nature. The “roahrrr” sound that lions make, for example. The birds make beautiful “byoop, byoo” sounds, and the storm makes an ugly “phoom” sound.

I believe the beginning of the word was when a man wanted to warn the village there was a lion. People associated lions with the sound they heard lions make. People made that sound through vibration, and then passed the sound on to other people. That’s how words came into being.

Rabbi David Zeller on Why Jews are the Chosen People — and Why You Are Chosen, too



Rabbi David Zeller

Ray: Rabbi, what’s the biggest misconception people hold about Jews and Judaism?

David: To a certain degree I’d say among both non-Jews and Jews, I think the biggest misconception that people have of Judaism is that there is a tremendous misunderstanding about what keeps getting put on us as the chosen people. It’s tremendously misunderstood by Jews and non-Jews alike.

The way I understand it is, yes, we’re chosen by God to do the particular thing that God has chosen us to do. And you — whoever the you is — have been chosen to do the particular thing you have been chosen to do.

Byron Katie on the Turnaround in The Work

Byron Katie

Ray: Katie, why is the turnaround so important in The Work? Is it because it shows us other possibilities than our own judgmental thoughts?

Katie: Yes. It shows the mind what is as true or truer than the original thought. People usually find that the turnaround is as true or truer than the stressful thought they began with.

What’s an example? Let’s say the thought is “John should apologize.” Turned around: “I should apologize to John.” And if your mind is closed, you might not be able to see how that turnaround is true: “Me? But he’s the one who hurt me. He owes me the apology.”

Or: “I should apologize to John? Well, okay, I really did do this and that to him. But he deserved it!”

But if you’re really doing The Work, you’ll be able to see how every turnaround is true: “I should apologize to John. Let me do what I expect him to do. Let me get my own house in order here.”

Even more, you’ll find genuine examples of why apologizing to John is a good thing. And if you think it’s difficult for you to apologize, then you begin to understand why it’s so difficult for John to apologize to you.

Your job is to turn it around; to see what you have done, what your part is; and then to apologize and go back to that person and ask how you can make it right. Usually you don’t even have to ask—you know.

Eckhart Tolle on Stress, Modern Life, and the Present Moment

Ray Hemachandra and Eckhart Tolle

Ray: Why is stress so common, and what are the consequences of people living stress-based lives?

Eckhart: The whole world accepts that being stressed is the normal way to live. In fact, people think you have to be stressed to be successful. They think if you are not stressed, something is wrong with you.

But any action that arises out of stress is of low quality, and it contributes to human suffering. You are making yourself and others suffer.

Stress is a form of suffering. Look at your body and see what stress does to the body and its functions — what it does to the heart, the circulation, the immune system, the digestive function, the liver.

Stress is extremely harmful to the body. Even mainstream medicine now is recognizing how many diseases stress causes.

Stress is a form of suffering, but it is accepted as normal. And it is normal in our world.

But it is not natural.

Doreen Virtue on Angels and Free Will

Doreen Virtue

Ray: Do you have to ask for help from the angels to receive it?

Doreen: One thing I’ve learned that is basic but bears repeating constantly: You are created with free will.

Not even the Creator can help you unless you ask for help.

It is up to you to be asking for help continuously, whether you want to talk directly to God or to the angels or the ascended masters, like Jesus or Kuan Yin. It really doesn’t matter who you ask. What matters is that you ask for help.

Similarly, how you ask for help is secondary to the fact that you ask for help.

Sakyong Mipham on Buddhist Dabblers

Sakyong Mipham with Ray Hemachandra, 2006

Ray: Is dabbling in Buddhism a good thing or a concern?

Here’s what I mean: Practitioners of some spiritualities, especially indigenous ones such as certain Native American spiritualities, often think people who just read a book or take a workshop — dabblers — are trivializing the spiritual path. They say a book or a class can’t give someone the meaning or the insight of a lifetime on the path — a lifetime of spiritual work and being.

By contrast, take the Christian notion of the virtues: If you dabble in the Christian virtues, it might not make you virtuous, or Christian, but it’s better than not dabbling in them at all.

So, what do you think of Buddhist dabblers?

Mipham: Well, there are a lot of them! (Laughs.)

With the principles in Buddhism, we say that even if people hear one word, it’s beneficial, in the sense that it puts a certain karmic motion in mind.

Maybe somebody hears the word “compassion” or the word “nonaggression.” Then, the person is about to yell at somebody, and the word pops up in the mind. The person might not understand the totality of it, or be able to sustain it afterward, but I think it’s a seed. That seed has to be watered.

Louise Hay on Women Empowering Themselves

Louise Hay with Ray Hemachandra in Tampa, Florida

Louise, how can women best empower themselves?

Love who they are, and don’t listen to the bullshit. I’m in a kick right now where I’m trying to get everyone to say to themselves, “Life loves me!” Because if we can get that inside of ourselves, then it’s a lot easier. And every time something nice happens we see it and acknowledge it: Yes! Life loves me! See, there’s proof!

I just think we have to believe in ourselves more. It’s all the same thing: We need to release the guilt. We need to forgive. We need to drop all that bullshit we were taught. And a lot of it was taught by people who loved us.

Some of us had rotten parents, and some of us had fabulous parents. They really wanted us to be safe, so they gave us their rules. But their rules didn’t work for them either. But we were good little children—good little girls and boys—so we learned what our parents taught us.

Lisa Nichols on What We All Can Learn from African American Spirituality and Culture

Ray: What can non-African Americans learn from the close-knit tapestry underlying African American spirituality and culture?

Lisa Nichols

Lisa: I really appreciate that question. I have a large number of friends who are not African American, so I am going to echo some things I have heard directly from them.

First, being in my space, they always feel my essence — and the essence of my family and friends — oozing all over them.

A friend of mine who is not African American said to me, “I want to thank you for teaching me how important family is beyond my immediate family — that the rivers of my blood run deeper than I have been acknowledging and embracing.”

Family is our gas, our fuel, the helium in our balloon. We African Americans make people who are not blood family. I have more cousins who are not really of my bloodline than I have cousins who are.

Family represents unwavering belief in me. Family represents unconditional love and support in me.

Marianne Williamson on Forgiveness

Ray: Marianne, what about the essential role of forgiveness in releasing the past? In The Age of Miracles, you write, “We can have a grievance or we can have a miracle, but we cannot have both.” But I think we sometimes forgive ourselves a little too quickly, before we’ve really dealt with something in a deep and serious way.

Marianne Williamson

Marianne: I think that’s true. I think we’re too easy on ourselves.

The standard line is that we’re too hard on ourselves, but sometimes we’re too easy. That’s why I talk about healthy shame.

Forgiving others is part of the process, too, of course, and there are people who cannot get off the fact that twenty years ago their husband or their wife left them. Well, who’s the real enemy—the person who left you twenty years ago or the force within yourself that’s let twenty years go by and still hasn’t gotten over it?

Forgiveness isn’t easy, but it’s imperative. It’s imperative in order to emerge into a revitalized next chapter of life.

Ray: So, forgive and forget?