Interview with Shakti
Gawain
by Veronica M. Hay
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Shakti Gawain is a best-selling author and internationally renowned speaker/workshop leader in the world consciousness movement. She is the author who made Creative Visualization a household word in the 1970's and popularized the concept of intuitive guidance in the 80's.Shakti has helped thousands of people learn to develop and act on their own intuition and creativity. She offers a new vision for resolving both the personal struggles and global crises of this decade in her book, The Path of Transformation: How Healing Ourselves Can Change the World. |
Veronica: Sometimes, when you do let go, it does work out, and sometimes it doesn't. I suppose it does really but in a different way than you may have wanted.Shakti: Right, it's often complex, that's for sure. We have to learn when to let go and when to really go for it too. You know there are moments when the energy is blocked in us or in our lives and there is a time for just not pushing something and then there is another time when we feel a lot of energy for something and we need to easily go for it, really go all out to make it happen. It's really learning to dance with the energy of life and recognize when is it time for letting go and when is it time for really taking action. |
Veronica: A great number of people have invested heavily in time, energy and money on various paths to enlightenment, such as self-help books, self-improvement seminars, consciousness training, counselling etc. etc. etc. hoping that this will be the one. Many of us are now exhausted and discouraged and even more confused. What now?Shakti: I think that when people get to that particular stage, it may be a time when you are being thrown back in on your own resources. There's a time when we very enthusiastically run around trying to learn what everybody else is teaching and I don't see anything wrong with that. I think there is a time for that. It can be very enriching. I've learned an enormous amount from reading books and going to workshops and having teachers and so on. But there also comes a time when it's time to really begin to just listen inside yourself for what's true for you and of course that's always been a very fundamental basis of my teaching. That we all have a sense of truth inside of us and we need to really cultivate and develop our connection to our own inner truth or inner guidance and learn how to act on that because that really needs to be the guiding force in our life, more than anything outside of ourself.Veronica: When you say what's true for you, aren't there certain universal or metaphysical laws that apply no matter what? |
Shakti: I don't think there is much that applies no matter what. In other words, yes, there are metaphysical truths and for every truth, there is usually an opposite truth too. Every truth has two sides, so it can be really confusing trying to figure out what you are supposed to apply when, if you are using your head, and you are coming from an external kind of place. But, if you've really kind of learned to check in with your gut feeling about things, there is a very personal kind of truth that comes through at that moment, like this is what's right for me right now. This is what I need to do right now. It might be different from what I needed to do last week or what somebody else needs to do. We really do have an intuitive sense which we've learned to disregard, so we have to relearn to pay attention to this very natural intuitive sense that we all have, about what's needed at any given moment in our lives.Veronica: I hear and read basically the same things over and over. Be here now, live in the present, do what you love, feel your way through life, surrender. A lot of books, tapes etc. are all saying the same things, just in different ways. There are basically only a few simple truths, yet they are often difficult to live.Shakti: Well, they are. And also remember, that for everyone of those truths, the opposite is also true. In other words, yes, it's wonderful to be here now in the present moment, but as human beings, we also have to think about the future and plan for the future as well. It's just that most people spend too much time in the future and past and not enough in the present. Most people have to work on allowing themselves to experience being in the present. But, as human beings, we are very complex, and my feeling is that a very big part of the journey of being a human being has to do with embracing and expressing all aspects of ourselves, all the duality and paradoxes in life. So, my problem with a lot of the New Age teachings is that they are overly simplistic and people are trying to live up to these certain ideals or standards and there is not understanding of what the human journey is really all about. It is a complex process. It is an ever deepening process that involves getting to know and develop all sides of ourselves, all aspects of ourselves. It involves pain and frustration, that's part of it as well as a lot of joy and satisfaction. So, I think people expect there to be some kind of easy quick route to enlightenment and get discouraged. But, we need to understand that this is really a much more complex and rich journey than that. It is really about embracing and enjoying just the journey itself, who we are, right now, what we are doing, and what we're discovering. |
Veronica: You say it is quite possible to follow a spiritual path that is not necessarily a conscious path. How is that?Shakti: In this book, I talk about four levels of existence: spiritual, mental, emotional and physical and it is possible to be very developed in one, two or three areas and very undeveloped in another area. So, there are many people for example who have done a lot of meditation and a lot of spiritual practice who are very developed spiritually, but they may not have ever done their deep emotional psychological healing work. Or, they may be in denial of the body, they may not be developing their physical health and self-expression. What I am saying is that we really need to develop all aspects of ourselves and find balance. And that to me is consciousness. Consciousness is awareness of all the different parts of ourselves and not denying any of it. And a lot of the traditional transcendent spiritual approaches develop the spiritual and maybe the mental, but often deny the emotional and the physical. So, you can be very identified with being a very spiritual person, but that doesn't mean that you are in any way balanced or integrated, or know how to live in the world.Veronica: Yes, you see a lot of that.Shakti: Yes. |
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