Interview excerpts, sparks of light.
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 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
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
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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
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.
… 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
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 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
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.
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.”
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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.
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
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.
