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.

When you’re thinking that, you’re not understanding what your nature is. All of us come from this place of well-being, love, and kindness.

But we’ve taken on these other things, and we think that they’re our nature. Our nature really is to be like God. That’s what we were like when we were babies.

*Read a selection of interviews, including key excerpts from the full interview with Wayne, on my website, www.hemachandra.com, and read an earlier interview with Dr. Dyer on his site, www.drwaynedyer.com.

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.

The difference between you, if you consider yourself not enlightened, and an enlightened master is not that the enlightened master has more knowledge. University professors have knowledge, and many enlightened masters have very little knowledge.

Jesus probably had less knowledge than any university professor alive today in terms of raw information. Even a relatively uneducated person has more information than Jesus or Buddha ever had about things, such as political things and so on.

So, what is the difference? The enlightened master simply is one with life, with what is, which is the now. That is the only difference.

It is so simple! Some people say it is hard to live in such a way, being completely one with the present moment. Of course, it is not hard. The opposite is hard. Not being one with life is hard, and that is how most people live.

Being one with the now actually is the easy way. But the habit patterns of the human mind are very strong and make it seem that the hard way is easy and the easy way is hard.

*Read more of this interview at Hemachandra.com, and learn more about Eckhart Tolle and his teachings at www.eckharttolle.com. I did the interview for New Age Retailer magazine.

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.

I wanted to bring the Shambhala terms out of their mystical background and make clear they are very practical. Understandings about the tiger, the lion, the garuda, and the dragon can be used to help out with everyday life situations. And I hope the notion of virtue I promote includes a sense of people living virtuous lives — lives of compassion.

A lot of times people do spiritual practice just for themselves. I try to turn that a little bit.

I try to make spiritual practice more a part of the community. I write about infusing people with compassion.

If we are going to live in a society, there has to be an attitude where people really do care for others. And if we are going to create a community, like a Shambhala community or a meditation community, there has to be some kind of warmth or energy that is very sustaining, appealing, and helpful.

Otherwise, there’s no point in doing it.

*Read about Sakyong Mipham and Shambhala Buddhism at his website, Mipham.com, and read this full interview at Hemachandra.com. I did the interview for New Age Retailer magazine.

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.

It would be like saying, “He told me to go away.” You can experience that in two ways: “He told me to go away” (Katie employs an aching, morose voice) or—and here’s how I would say it—“He told me to go away!” (Katie uses a bright, happy voice).

For me, if somebody tells me to go away, that is an opportunity: for me to give the person a better life, to realize where not to be, and to see what could be even better than being with that person I love.

So, the statements and concepts that used to depress me now bring me joy. That is not easily understood by people who believe what I used to believe.

*Read my full interview with Katie at www.Hemachandra.com and learn more about her at www.TheWork.com.

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. Most people who are on a spiritual path realize their thoughts are crucial to their experiences. If you have negative thoughts, you draw and attract negative experiences to yourself. But knowing that and ruling your behavior by it can seem like two different things.

How do you get yourself out of a funk? How do you avoid being influenced by someone else who is in a bad mood? Jophiel helps you rise above negative thinking to get your thoughts to a higher level where you can clearly manifest your highest good.

Archangel Jophiel also helps you beautify your physical life. I call this angel “the feng shui angel.” Jophiel encourages you to get rid of clutter and to donate things you don’t need anymore.

Chamuel [pronounced with a “Sh”] is another archangel I’d like to highlight. Chamuel is like the eyes of God.

This angel is analogous to Saint Anthony in Catholicism in that Chamuel can find things like nobody’s business — which is really handy for lightworkers, because a lot of lightworkers constantly lose their keys or misplace their checkbook or eyeglasses. Just think the thought, “Where is it?” and Chamuel immediately will draw you to find what you are looking for.

Archangel Chamuel can assist with more than car keys, of course. Chamuel can help you find right livelihood, right relationships, and the right home.

*See the full interview this post was excerpted from at Hemachandra.com. While this excerpt was drawn from that more recent conversation with Doreen, also read my 2005 interview with Doreen for New Age Retailer magazine on her site, www.angeltherapy.com.

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.

When I would teach teachers, even just in regular public school systems, I’d say, “If a student asks a question, and you don’t know the answer, say: That is a great question! I don’t know. I’m going to have to do some research on that. Thank you! Don’t say: That has nothing to do with our subject! or, You didn’t raise your hand. Just say: Wow. I don’t know.

A good teacher can say “I could be wrong” or “I don’t know.” A good teacher knows how to stay within herself or himself and not cross all those boundaries in the very delicate relations between a student and a teacher.

And I think every teacher has to be — continually — a student themselves, and if they give that up, it’s a serious problem. Just like any good therapist really has to be in therapy. You can’t say, “Oh, I’ve done that.”

*Read more about the late Rabbi David Zeller, author of The Soul of the Story, on his website DavidZeller.org, and read more of my interviews at Hemachandra.com. I did this interview for New Age Retailer magazine.

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.

That monster is out, and you’re just going to have to deal with it and slay it. That’s a midlife process. That’s why building a kind of psychic container—marking what’s happened, recognizing it, honoring it—is so important.

The fearless moral inventory, which Alcoholics Anonymous talks about, is recognizing your character defects. But, remember, your character defects are not where you were bad; they’re where you were wounded.

To the initiate, you recognize these as the places you were wounded. But to the uninitiated, these are just the places where you were a jerk—where you were obnoxious and behaved like an idiot.

You have to recognize at a certain point that no matter where you got it from, it’s yours now. You might be this way because of a parent who abandoned you or molested you or did whatever childhood wound you still feel, but at a certain point, maturity demands that regardless of where you got it from, it’s yours now.

You are the one who must take responsibility.

You’re the one who must pray that this be transformed.

You’re the one who must do the work of being different and changing.

*Read more of this interview at Hemachandra.com, and learn more about Marianne Williamson at Marianne.com.

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.

Fairies are difficult, tricksy creatures that we have to placate all the time. Now they’re coming back.

They’re sort of reminding us to pay attention to them and ultimately to pay attention to the world and our role in it.

We almost need another word for fairy, that’s the thing. Once people get to see what fairies’ real power is, then they understand.

*Learn about Brian Froud, Wendy Froud, and their amazing artwork at www.WorldofFroud.com, and read more of my interviews at Hemachandra.com. I did this interview for New Age Retailer magazine.

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.