Something to Think About.

An Interview with Author Tim Carter and Illustrator Tony O’Callaghan

By Colin Whitby

Editor’s Note:-

Tim was one of the recipients of my first mailing announcing the launch of The Magic of Being and as a result he sent me an introduction to ‘Something to Think About’ to see if it was something we would like to feature. After having read the book we loved it so much we decided to ask for an interview with Tim and Tony, to find out what had inspired them to publish such an inspiring book.

I hope you enjoy the interview, and our review of ‘Something to Think About’ which features in our Soul Search section.

Colin Whitby – What led up to the writing of this book and the collaboration between you two?

Tim Carter - I think it has been a combination of things rather than there being one thing that lead up to the book, it wasn’t something I always wanted to do. I was brought up in a very churchgoing family, my parents are still very involved, so that was my experience from childhood. This was in a fairly positive and creative kind of way, there was a very active youth club for example, so it was my social life as well as everything else.

Many people as they get older, start to ask deeper questions about what they really think, about how institutions operate, are they doing the things that you think they are supposed to do. I think what has happened to me is that my understanding of God, or a God, of religion and of our spirituality has become much broader. As it has become broader I have become more interested in how people can approach their understanding of themselves and what they are here for in quite different ways. I have been fascinated in where different belief systems connect rather than where different belief systems diverge and conflict. It seems to me that lots of difficulties in the world are connected with belief systems clashing and accentuating the difference, whereas I think the trick is to look at where there is convergence.

So the writing is really around trying to help myself to connect with something which is a bit deeper and intangible, around the meaning of life, and thinking that it might enable other people perhaps to access some of that as well.

CW – well it certainly works. I thought at first they were prayers but they also feel a little like conversations. When did you decide to put them all together

TC – It was rather a round about route. I used to be a social worker, and before that a community development worker, and I started doing some writing around some of the individuals I was coming across, in an attempt to try to understand how they understood their lives. So I would try to get into their shoes and think how they might be thinking, and I would keep jotting things down and this developed into a few brief pen pictures of people in terms of them speaking for themselves. This got me interested in writing and I sketched together a couple of books, but these got very little interest from publishers.

Then because I have been connected to church for quite a long time it kind of dawned on me one day that I should be thinking about more devotional material because I knew there was a ready market for that. I could use it myself, and other people could use it. So I started writing what began as prayers but quickly became, as you say, much more like conversation pieces or poems or just meandering thoughts, hopefully with a little bit of parameter and structure. So they were lying around, and were a bit difficult to know what to do with.

Having known Tony for quite a long time, and knowing that he was starting to spend more time on his art, I took a risk and asked him if he would take one of these prayers and see if he could draw anything to go with it, as I thought they would look really good if they were illustrated.

Fortunately Tony said he would and from that he did a few and we became quite excited about trying to get them together and ultimately into a form that could become a booklet. For me it was very much that what I had felt and written had been doubled really, as the words were being reflected in a very different way. I completely left Tony to illustrate as he felt fit, because that seemed quite important, rather than me saying how I thought it should look. I thought it would be more useful for someone else to come into it and say ‘well this is what I am getting from it’. Then in turn I got something back from looking at the illustrations, which felt like a very creative way of producing something.

CW – Yes I understand what you mean about getting something back, it’s almost like a feedback loop, and as a reader you can contemplate them individually or together. The thing that stands out is that the illustrations were created for the words, whereas with some books of this kind you find that the words and pictures are not quite in tune.

Tony O'Callaghan – Yes every image is completely inspired by a piece. At the time I was struggling around my art and found that coming up with ideas for things to paint can be quite difficult at times. So actually having pieces of writing helped to create pictures in my head, it was then just a matter of putting those pictures onto paper. Other people might come up with different pictures as there are lots to each piece, they are not just one image, but this first set of 30 or so were the ones that leapt out at me out of nearly a hundred pieces we went through.

CW- So that was like a joint selection process?

Tony - Well there were several different ways of trying to select the pieces., through getting feedback from other people about the pieces themselves and then I just literally sat with them in a quiet place in order to get inspired by them from a visual point of view. Some of them created images very vividly and quickly and others didn’t, so that was kind of the process really.

Tim – What you have in front of you looks fairly straight forward, but actually to get it to this point of being produced really needed quite a lot of encouragement from each other at times, because you can quite easily think that you are biting off more than you can chew, because you are actually putting something out about yourself. Perhaps people are going to turn round and say that it’s not really worth the effort you’ve put into it.

Tony – That’s the fear of anything creative, it’s always part of yourself, whether it’s writing or painting or whatever it might be, it’s very exposing.
I feel my work is never finished, so if you put it out it’s as if you are completely satisfied with it, and I would never feel completely satisfied with anything, it’s just you have to stop somewhere and go on to the next thing.

Tim – You do find yourself needing fairly regular validation of what you have done, which is a strange thing really. We have had some really positive feedback, people have some back and said how useful and how significant it has been for them, but that doesn’t seem to last for a long time before you seem to need someone else to say it’s ok. I also have a view of the writing that some of those things are not mine, it seems that certain things are almost there in the ether that some individuals are just fortunate to be able to grab hold of and bring into life. I am sometimes surprised at some of the writing when I read it back myself and think ‘I don’t think I can do that again’. I sometimes wonder where it came from, which makes me feel that it is less to my credit, rather it’s something out there that I have just managed to get into the open, but I don’t really know how to describe that very well.

CW – Yes I understand what you are saying. A friend of mine in Australia was telling me about an artist she knows, who was producing the most amazing work, the problem was he was doing it so easily, and from somewhere seemingly beyond himself, he did not value it himself. I think that this is the whole point, that when you are tapping into the true part of you, and it’s coming easily, then sell it. That’s you working in your flow.

Tony – Yes I’ve had that discussion with other artists where a piece of work only took 20 minutes to produce. Well that may be the case but it’s taken nearly 40 years in order to be able to create that in 20 minutes. Everything that’s happened to you during that 40 years of your life, has been put in that 20 minutes of artwork, and nobody else could do that, you’ve just been able to channel it suddenly, like you are in the zone. It’s like these connections with the Beatles or whatever, they are part of your life, they are part of you, and it may be the way they captured words that say a lot to you as well and that’s why they were so successful, it’s because they tapped into something that meant something to people. I’m sure when people read these words they understand what you are talking about because they feel the same way.

CW – that’s right, because they have come from the same place, they know that place as well. I’d sure that’s true particularly where the pieces are inwardly contemplating, real things are coming up that other people have experienced.

Tony - As a person who reads them, it is very comforting that somebody else has had that thought or had that situation, or had that feeling, and you can connect with it. You’re not the only person who has felt that way, or the only person who has thought that thought.

CW – So when you had the collaboration going and you thought it would be a nice idea to create a book, how did you get from that to this book.

Tony - He badgered me a lot, we’d have got there a lot quicker if I had not been involved.

CW – Were there any challenges getting publishers involved, for example, did you have to fund it yourself?

Tim – Yes we had to fund it ourselves.

Tony - We did a pamphlet first, almost like a sample to test the water in a way, so see what sort of response we would get through different places. We produced half a dozen pieces with images ourselves off the computer, most of which have ended up in the book.

The leaflets went quite quickly wherever they were, people wanted to know more about them, and this gave us the idea that perhaps we should do the book.

Tim – We found a printer just outside Weston-Super-Mare (UK) who was very helpful in talking us through the type of publication we could have. He was able to sort out the ISBN number for us and produce them at a set unit cost so that we can go back and get more when we need them without having to buy in a huge stock. Each bit of this has been quite an interesting learning really, we took it to a few publishers and a few shops since we have had it, and we have not had anyone say ‘yes this is what I have been waiting for, how many can you supply?’.

Tony – It’s finding the audience in a way, or people actually finding it as well.

Tim – Traditional book shops struggle to know where to put it, they generally want to put it in some kind of religious area.

Tony – We’ve not avoided the religious area, but we have attempted to make it more generic to have a wider appeal.

Tim – The language is obviously important, but it can become a barrier in itself and the project was about trying to open something up, to enable people in who perhaps were struggling to connect to their spirituality, because it is generally something which is talked about openly, unless you join a very specific institution. Getting the language right that enables people in rather than pushing people out, is quite a fine line.

CW – There are certainly a large number of small books out there at the moment, which do seem to appeal to a large number of people.

Tony – It seems to be about being able to cope with the depth of thought, if it goes on for too long I don’t think people can sustain it, but with these you can read one page and put it down again, then come back and read a different page, depending on what mood you are in it might take you to another piece.
Tim – Yes one or two people have said it’s by their bedside.

CW – I asked Gill when she was reviewing it if the size or shape was right, would it be better presented any other way, and she said no it’s perfect, it will fit in a handbag or a pocket, it’s portable.

Tim – Our hope is that it would be something that would sit around in cafés on coffee tables, that was the notion in terms of the size. It would be great if a distributor was interested enough to pick it up, because then we could look at something on a larger scale.

CW – It will find it’s way out if that is what is intended.

Tim - That’s what is strange about it, you have a plan but it’s got it’s own life, it’s own plan – I just wish I knew what that plan was.

If you would like to order 'Something to think about' contact Tim Carter on tandjcarter@btinternet.com

Interview with James Burgess

By Colin Whitby

Editor’s Note:-

James and I met at an inspirational evening in Bristol (England) hosted by Neil Crofts (see 7 stages interview) where James first explained the principles of the 7 Words to me. There was something rather persuasive in his manner that led me to buy his book, 7 Words Principles and Practices, there and then.
Since then, James and I have been in touch with a view to featuring his work in The Magic of Being, and we thought that the best way to explain the 7 Words and how they can be used would be via an interview.
James very kindly came over to visit one Sunday in April, and the following is a short extract of what turned out to be a very interesting 2½ hour discussion.

Colin - Where do you see the 7 Words system being used; who might it appeal to?

James – I am approaching the study and presentation of the 7 Words in two specific ways, the first one could be said to be more inward and the second more expressive. The inward sense of it would be related to self awareness and relationship, who you are and how you are getting on with your life; these kind of questions are somewhat central to developing into the New Age consciousness.

The outer expression applies more to management, so when I started writing about the business applications I turned these principles into concepts that businessmen/women would relate to more closely. However businessmen/women are also people, so I left in quite a lot of the personal elements such that it is talking to the individual - who has a role as a business manager. In this way 7 Words addresses the self-employed business person or executive, and actually anyone who manages anything would find it useful to apply the 7 Words principles.

Colin - You used the 7 Words questionnaire Q21 with me earlier, which enabled you to very quickly focus on one of my key issues at the moment. Where do you see this working most effectively?

James - The context in which I use this questionnaire very often begins informally and yet can very quickly turn into counselling – for example when I was talking about the 7 Words system with a professional counsellor in America, one of her clients came in that she had been working with for three months. She knew that her client had something to say but she had not been able to nudge her into self disclosure.

I did the questionnaire with her client and in a very short time, ten to fifteen minutes, we had the breakthrough they had been hoping for, it seemed so quick, incisive and clear. This shows how the questionnaire could indeed be used in a formal way for specific counselling situations.

I began to think that perhaps it could also be useful for people who have no formal training in counselling and yet do come into contact with clients who need that kind of advice.
For example people with an alternative attitude towards healing, who are not just attending to the physical symptoms of a problem, but also deal with how their clients are in themselves. They may have an intuitive approach to counselling, but do not have the benefit of a model such as Gestalt or whatever, which takes quite a lot of training to understand the philosophy. In contrast, within quite a short period the 7 Words questionnaire can be used to great effect because it is so intuitively-based.
A body worker who approaches the physical problems in the body through massage – or chiropractor, homeopath etc – may benefit from running through the questionnaire before starting their treatment, so that they are aware of any underlying issues. This would help steer the way the treatment is given in a very focused way.

Colin - How did you arrive at the principles that lead you to the current structure?

James - The philosophy behind it is an aspect of Sufism and is quite ancient and profound; it took me nearly 8 years to understand it at all well. The 7 Words System is my attempt to make this profound philosophy available in a different vernacular, so that people can access and use it more easily.

Colin – Is there specific training available for would-be practitioners?

James - The book ‘7 Words Principles and Practices’ can be used as a workbook for those people who want to study the system themselves at a radical level in order to understand what they are doing and why.
The book also goes hand in hand with the study course of weekends in S.W.England, and with the on-line course which is specifically geared to chapters within the book. (See www.7words.co.uk for more details) There are quite detailed notes on the website too.

Colin - What are the key areas where the system can be used effectively?

James – The 7 Words system can address any problem or issue people have, so it would not be enough for you to ask ‘how do I use it?’, I would have to ask ‘what do you need?’ Do you have relationship questions, do you have decisions to make of some importance, do you have a problem at work where situations arise where you do not have a good model to deal with them, have you decided on your holiday yet?

Let me use this meeting as an example of how the system works.

When I came to your house I knocked on your door and waited until you invited me in, all of that was my experiencing your boundaries, your No.
This was quickly followed by your Hello, which was your opening the door, and also following with the ritual ‘would you like a cup of tea?’. There are different levels of Hello, for example offering biscuits with the tea goes to a slightly more intimate level - you want me to feel more welcome. There are very well defined ways of moving towards intimacy and we know what they are for our particular culture. Hello skills are often about entering a social group, and some people are more skilled than others at this.
If we were to continue to meet and get to know each other more, we might begin to appreciate qualities in each other, we may decide to express that appreciation by offering each other gifts of some kind, such as Birthday cards or Christmas cards. That would be when we move into Thank you, the third phase of the principle. If this stage went well, we would become friends and start to meet socially, eventually becoming fond of one another.
However all things come to an end, so Goodbye is the next concept.

Firstly there is a dawning, a realisation, that the relationship is drawing to a close. Perhaps we have done all we want to do together and one of us needs to move on. At some point a decision would be reached, and an announcement made. Then completion becomes important, we can’t really move on without completion.
This is particularly important with relationships, where you split up with a partner, slamming the door and walking away. You may be saying “Goodbye”, but it is unlikely that this is the real end of the relationship. Typically in a relationship, the Goodbye moment is only half way through the relationship itself because the completion bit has to deal with tricky things previously avoided – like childcare and finance. The thing about Goodbye is that it is really ‘in your face’; it must deal with the untying of the very profound knots that were in place during the relationship.

Many – perhaps most – people live out a repeated cycle of No-Hello-Thanks-Goodbye-No and the people who move on from this cycle of 4 are likely to be those who have vision of a better world, who do not accept that this is all there is to life. They share that vision and discuss it with others, which would be the Please stage.
Vision alone does not get very us very far so we need intention, which would be perhaps the difference between wishing something and wanting something.
In order to do something with others we need co-operation, and this is the central element to Please. Project managers are Please people for example, where they actively assert upon another person to get help from them in order to change things in their world.
If we master Please then we can mostly get what we want, which is what mastery means. Then your whole world is your doing, you are consciously responsible for it all. This is when we move into Sorry. We have accepted that everything we get is our own making. If someone has a problem, we help sort it out, because we feel responsible. This is a key element of Sorry.

Colin – Yes that came through very strongly in our piece in the last issue where Ihaleakala Hew Len talked about Ho'oponopono. According to the ancient Hawaiians, error arises from thoughts that are tainted by painful memories from the past. Simply put, Ho'oponopono means, "to make right," or "to rectify an error.

James – Yes, these are the healers, those who are humble, because you can’t really do Sorry properly without a measure of humility.
Finally, Yes is more to do with letting something happen, rather than making it happen. Yes also has four levels. Firstly where you are reluctant to say it (“oh all right”) that is permission, secondly is when you are not quite sure – acceptance, the third is when you want to say it (where you and I want the same thing) that’s agreement. The fourth is when you have said or implied that ‘anything goes’; this is surrender, which can be a spiritual condition – or the state that can exist between new lovers.

Colin – To finish, and in just a few words, how would you summarize the system and its uses?

James – The 7 Words System is defined by the idea that in all the complexity of human associations, there are only seven core gestures of communication; they are encapsulated by the 7 primary words and accessed by 28 keywords. These 7 archetypes of expression are the essential themes within all relations—they convey the necessary stages that healthy exchanges go through because they are the foundation of all thoughts, ideas and behaviours. By deepening our understanding of these fundamentals, we can come to clarity, truth and completion in all our dealings.

Colin – Thanks.

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All behaviour and communication can be observed as essentially expressing one or more of these 7 core meanings: No Hello Thanks Goodbye Please Sorry Yes. Find out what are your strengths and weaknesses with a free personality report at:
www.7words.co.uk

An Interview with Joy Hicklin-Bailey

by Colin Whitby

Despite her busy schedule I was fortunate enough to be able to arrange a face to face interview with Joy in the Pierian centre in Bristol. She was just about to leave for her trip to Andalucia in Spain, where she would be leading an alchemical workshop which, she says “opens the heart in a simple, yet profound way, allowing a place of trust, confidence and sensitivity, where we meet others in authenticity and ease”. 

Colin – How did you find your way to your current lifestyle, what were the influences that led you to facilitating transformational retreats in Andalucia, Italy and the Hawaiian islands.

Joy – One thing I have realised today it that it is very rare for anyone to ask me a personal question so this is quite an unusual situation for me to talk about myself!

I was a very unusual little girl and I had a lot of the classic extraordinary metaphysical experiences when I was very young. In my early teens I poured a lot of my energy into reading spiritual books and spiritual poetry and didn’t think anything of it, that was just what I was drawn to do. I then went on to study literature and psychology at university and became very fascinated by Jung, all of which lead to psychotherapy training, but always with a spiritual focus, and always recognising the intelligence of life I was in touch with.

There was never any sense of what I would do with all this, there was just a love of the truth. Then my passion for psychology and healing came in Its one thing to know the truth when you hear it, it’s another thing to know what to do when a client is very challenged or in trauma or a dilemma, for example.

My passion is for people to be happy, and whatever I can offer to facilitate that is what I love to do.

Colin – So what drew you to Hawaii?

Joy  -  I’ve always been a wilderness person, so whether it was Hawaii, India, New Zealand, Greenland, the wilder spots of Europe and the UK, like spending 3 years in a bothy in Scotland, I’ve always been drawn to places that are a bit of a distance from normal society, from the hectic pace of city life. I was very drawn to indigenous cultures because of the sanity of it, the basic natural rhythm of life, the organic nature of ordinary life, and made so many journeys to Hawaii.

So during a 10 year period I travelled the world and naturally came into contact with people I resonated with, with village healers and people who taught me a lot about how to live on the planet happily.

Colin – How did that lead to the trips you now organise and the groups you lead?

Joy – It’s very difficult to answer that question because I’ve literally just put one foot in front of the other, I have no plan, I sometimes think that everyone else has this fantastic plan, but I haven’t, I just do what I do. I follow my passions, and I would say that to anyone, be what you are, do what you do, with totality.

This year has been quite challenging because I have been building a place where I can run workshops, but this has taken more time and effort than I expected, which has taken me away from my passion for a while. Nevertheless I just love waking up every day, I think it’s an amazing gift to be in a body, breathing, feeling. I love the work I do. It’s play to me. Playing in existence with beautiful beings who wish to live the truth and love that they are. The workshops which are listed on the website touch on all the themes that affect us all – intimacy, sex, birth, death, loss, living the one we are rather than the conditioned self, power, freedom, truth, joy. There is a lot of tenderness here for the vulnerable, fragile creative humanity we all share. I love to see the breakthroughs that create more simple happiness for those who come to my workshops. Miracles. That doesn’t mean those people, or myself, will never be challenged again, but challenges are so much more ok when there is a depth of realization of the emptiness, silence and love that pervades all life, that makes no judgements.

Colin – In this edition of the e-zine we are asking the question, ‘what is enlightenment?’, how would you describe it?

Joy – From this perspective, enlightenment is enlightening what is, whatever it is. That might be a feeling or circumstance the conditioned mind would not like, and the love we can hold ourselves in ANYWAY is the light, is the enlightenment.

Somehow the human mind is programmed to strive and try and get better and be separate and actually the truth is there is only being, there is no Joy, there is no Colin, there is no world, there is only being. This cannot be ‘taught’, only realized, and apparently being around certain situations, people, support, community, can create more likelihood of that realization.

It’s not about being like me though, I sometimes get that in my workshops, people will ask me how they can be like me. It’s human nature to say, ‘you’re better than me, give me what you’ve got’, but actually that’s the last thing I wish those I facilitate to think and feel. For me enlightenment it’s about taking your focus back to the silence and emptiness and life that you are, and then something happens to the human being you are -  the magic of your being can move and express, it’s not the same as my magic and you can find it for yourself. And there is just light happening. That light is you or me, it’s not personal, it doesn’t belong to us and nor can we control that light and life. When we let go, and relax, and drop the defences and misconceptions, the light, the life, finds its own perfect solutions.

People will often ask, ‘are you enlightened, what can I do to get where you are?’ and I’ll say to them that this is the most ordinary natural way to be in the world, every feeling, every experience is OK, just life arising now, that for me is enlightenment, it’s just human and ordinary, and I don’t know where all the complication comes from really. There is nowhere to get to, we are it.

Colin – I’m very interested in how you work with people, how you deal with relationships in your workshops, for example.

Joy – I do a lot of shamanic preparation before a group and there is a lot being done through me if you like. On a Sunday night as a retreat opens I’ll have a group in a circle and I’ll not know what to say to them really because for me it’s the most extraordinarily unknown situation to be apparently facilitating a group. Somehow the right words get said! I do not know what will happen between them, whether there will be combustion or bliss at any given moment. However I do know what extraordinary enlightenment, insight, love, grace, presence and truth is possible…and somehow that always gets manifested! Ive been working with people for twenty years now, I can generally see and feel what is ‘up’ for someone, where they need to go, and they have to do it for themselves, and there is a total trust in the perfection of what unfolds.

For me that’s the edge of my work, it’s very beautiful to work with people at such a loose level, to see what happens between us when we let go of our roles and conditioning, what can we learn, what has been touched in us, how total can we be in what we feel, what grace and presence can happen amongst us. The freedom of that means that people can realise the insights for themselves rather than being told, it is very powerful, it facilitates people in finding their own solutions and answers.

It’s all subjective, we are talking about subjective experience, the aliveness that runs through the body. I don’t have answers about what people should do in relationships, but as sure as anything if they are in a retreat or workshop those limits will be there for them, and probably for everyone else to see and hear. This is beautiful because when all the blocks or issues are there and witnessed, they are enlightened and dissolve. And then alchemical transformation happens if the ripeness is there for that so-called individual. And that ripeness has its own timing..In that sense there is no need to try!!

One thing I’d really like to say is that at the deepest level of life everything is a paradox, and that is OK. That’s why everything I say is open to total misunderstanding. At the deepest level of existence in the world everything must be paradoxical; there has to be light and there has to be dark, there must be love and there must be hate, and there has to be a thought that appears to be true and the opposite thought, which is also true. For example I could say I’m a good person, but I could equally say I’m a bad person, and both might be true.

When we go deeper into shamanic work we are going to find a world of paradox where honesty is required, and then underneath that there is simply being. When there is being, and the personality is out of the way not in its role of trying to get somewhere or do something, then there is no paradox, there is just the still silent flow that doesn’t belong to anyone, and if you can rest in that, that is a great way to relate.

So a lot of my work in intimacy and relationship is how do you let go of your preferences and demands, the fear and the hurt, the fear of being taken advantage of and such like. Once we are present intimacy is the best healing there is, because in presence there is never a problem. If you can speak from this place then you will never need a therapist or a course, or energy, because intimacy heals! Makes us whole.

The most important thing for me is who is giving you reflection in life, where are you being sustained and nourished, are you getting support for you highest intentions, and that is vital.

Colin – Yes and being honest with yourself too is important

Joy – The more congruent someone is about what they wish to do then other people will just naturally support them, and it is the same with our feelings. Many women will say to me ‘my partner hates it if I get disturbed or angry’ and I ask them ‘how disturbed are you by it?’, because if they can’t allow the natural human responses that arise in life, then the person they are living with will be frightened by those as well. If you are present with the whole of your being, then you are going to get total acceptance, if you love yourself, it’s simple. The greatest gift is to be – all that you are – and be free and loved in that.

Its great to be able to inspire people and show them that this intimacy is possible, and it’s not romance, it’s not the glamour you think it is, it’s just ordinary loving living, and its absolutely available to anyone.

Colin – On a slightly different tack, how do you see us taking this kind of knowing to our workplace?

Joy – One perspective I have is that I have met so many healers in business, because the business world is about people, so it does not mean that because you are in business you are not a healer, it means that you choose to take your energy into that realm. You don’t have to be weird, or a hippy, you don’t have to set yourself outside of that environment. Healing and enlightenment is really about simplicity, and awakeness and knowing life is just a great, amazing game that truly isn’t personal. Sometimes someone round the table at a business meeting, who brings their consciousness into that situation. Your presence is all that is required, there are so many amazing people in business, you don’t have to be running some energy based business to be valid. Everyone is making their contribution by being the way they are.

I also find business people can be ver open to working shamanically, with forgiveness rituals, inner journeys etc

How can we say what really matters, how can we know what we are meant to do, we just do what we do. Its all perfect. Any investment in ‘becoming enlightened’ or ‘becoming a better person’ is really a bit of a limitation or diversion.

Colin – Well thank you so much for your time today, and for your insights, it’s been a really enlightening experience.

http://www.secretgarden.eu.com/

An Interview with June-Elleni

By Colin Whitby

http://www.psychicartworks.com/june-elleni.html

In the true spirit of the Magic of Being , June-Elleni had approached us to see if it would be possible to contribute to this edition. She found us through a link on the Cygnus Books site http://www.cygnus-books.co.uk , which I had not even realised we had, so thank a big thank you to Cygnus for that!

June-Elleni was a commercial fashion designer and business woman for 20 years, and during the last 17 years she has been exploring perception, awareness and consciousness through Psychic Art. As one of very few pioneering teachers in this field she was inspired to write the first book about how to actually develop Psychic Art. ’The Art of Being… Psychic” shares some of the ideas and unusual experiences she’s had along the way.

Colin – When we were first talking about an interview you sent me through a link to a radio show you have been doing, how did that come about?
(you can hear June-Elleni at http://www.myspiritradio.com/3-obooks.html)

June-Elleni – The work that I do in Psychic Art is very fascinating, interesting and consuming and I had kind of got to the stage in my life where I thought, ‘this is it, this is the way forward’. Then I became very aware, all of a sudden, that it’s not the only way forward, why not get out there and talk to other people and see what’s happening.

It was about 18 months ago that I was invited to chair lectures at the college of Physic studies and I have so enjoyed it, and have met some wonderful people.

The opportunity to host my publisher’s radio show came about after a weekend retreat I was doing in Somerset. As part of the retreat I was teaching the making of mandalas, and one particular young guy decided that he was going to make a mandala to get himself a radio show. So he did one and it was so beautiful, it was really a lovely mandala, I was looking at it for a quite while. Then on the Monday afterwards I was offered the radio show, which I thought was just hilarious. I heard from the young man about three weeks later and he got his radio show too.
So I am interviewing other authors on the most recent books that are coming out, so I am getting the chance to read far more that I would have done, reviewing them for light and also interviewing them on the radio show. Its great to share different ideas and see so many common threads running through the different ideas and concepts people are working with. Do you find that?

Colin – Yes very much so, I think the language changes depending on where you are, who you are and perhaps your audience, but certainly the ideas and approaches have a familiar feel to them.

June-Elleni – I was inspired by Roger Woolcoat Sperry, the Nobel prise winner, he did the first mapping of the brain and started to see that we have got conflict inside out heads which made perfect sense to me when I read it. The left brain is the logical, the judgmental, the side that gets hurt, the side that thinks it’s separate from everyone, then there’s the right side which doesn’t really understand language at all, and wants to have fun, to laugh, to do art and music and colour, and likes movement and all the things that are not logical.

So I thought if was have got these two sides to our brain and they are in constant battle with each other it must make sense to delve into it a little bit more and see what’s happening. That’s why I use art, because art triggers the right side of the brain, and when you put people in the space where in the right side of their brain is dominant then you can get peace, you can get co-operation and a oneness, this aspect of us that everybody feels that is connected.

Colin – Our theme this edition is ‘what is enlightenment’, how would you describe it?

June-Elleni – To me enlightenment is more about being rather than thinking, or trying or doing. During the teaching of psychic art we come to a place where we see the ego trying to control the drawing, trying to control what comes through, so I have to say to people’ stop trying, just allow it to be what it is, allow it to come through, and then trust whatever comes through will be easy and it will be so easy you probably wont value it’.
I have composers and artists and all kinds of people, when they go into that space they say ‘that was so easy’ therefore it cant be worthwhile, but when we listen to the music or we look the artwork, it’s just so incredible. When it comes from that space of oneness, from the right brain hemisphere, that’s the magic, that’s the zone where we can literally pull stuff out of the quantum field that hasn’t been invented yet, like Leonardo da Vinci did in the 1400’s.

When we look back at his work we see diving equipment and helicopters, so boy was he connected. He was quoted in saying, ‘where spirit does not work with the hand there is no art’. When the left brain takes over and creates from the ego then that’s when you are trying and then we create things we already know how to do. If we want to start to do the stuff that we don’t know how to do, we have to learn how to quieten that left brain that thinks it knows everything better than everybody else.

Colin – So presumably that’s where your book title comes from ‘The Art of Being – Psychic?

June-Elleni – This is where I can share my work to get people into that space, and I did some work with a couple of sound engineers, (soundologists composers) and we did a companion CD to go with the book and one particular track, track seven, was done to trigger people into the right brain. It’s very interesting because people say to me ‘I can’t even think straight when it’s on’, which is the whole idea, you’re not meant to be thinking straight, your are meant to be experiencing what it feels like to be in that space of connection, what the scientists call the quantum field, and pull out everything that’s in there that you don’t know that you already know.

So what is enlightenment? Well we are all enlightened, we just don’t know it. And we don’t know that we don’t know it, because the ego gets in the way.

Colin -– I’m intrigued, when you hold your workshops, are you getting all sorts of people coming along?

June-Elleni – Oh yes, I get so many people; teachers, policemen, nurses and of course artists, although they have been coming along more recently. If you are an artist the chances are you have learnt to draw with the left side of your brain and you know how to draw, so the whole time you are doing art you are trying, which can get in the way of the flow, sometimes referred to as artist’s block.

Colin – I can remember some time ago my wife picked up a book called ‘drawing from the right side of the brain’, which she enjoyed immensely.

June-Elleni – By Doctor Betty Edwards, yes a fantastic book, and that book goes into a lot of what I am talking about but does not go quite far enough for me. Most people are frightened of psychic ability and certainly a renowned doctor would not venture there.

However I kind of got hooked on going into the altered state when I was designing and I noticed, from a business perspective, that when I went into that space the designs that I was creating turned out to be my best sellers, I was selling thousands upon thousands of dresses that I had designed from this altered state.

In a way my left brain allowed my right brain to create in this way, even though it did not know what was going on, because it made me money, and you know 20 years ago was a big thing.

I was finding though, as a result of my using these abilities, that I was hearing voices, having dreams and out of body experiences that began to frighten me so much that I did not want to go to bed at night. It was like skiing down hill without being able to stop. I spoke to a friend who was developing his healing gifts and he advised me to go and see someone about this.

So I went to see a spiritual development teacher at the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain (SAGB) in London, and I was so in luck because she was interviewing to take people into a development class. I told her that the reason I was there was that I was having these experiences and rather than develop my psychic skills I just want to make them stop.

She told me that if I came into the development circle she would teach me how to make it stop, so in I went. What I learned however is that I can ski and stop, and start again, when I choose, which changed the balance of what I was doing.

Colin - So how did you discover your ability to do psychic art?

June-Elleni – Well I found that when people were asked what they had felt after an exercise, because the class was so large, by the time it came to me I had forgotten what I had experienced, and the conversation just went on to the next person.

So I started taking in a note pad and pen, so that I could make notes, and then when the lights were down when we would work to just a red light, I found that the pen would take a life of it’s own, and I would go into that state that I remembered from designing, but this time I was drawing people’s faces. When the lights were turned on people started to recognise them, which was a bit of an alarming situation to begin with, because I certainly had not intended it and did not really understand it either.

Fortunately for me this was the time that Coral Polge, and internationally renowned psychic artist, was at the SAGB and she took a hand and helped my teacher to develop the portraiture, and I did some workshops with her and it just went from strength to strength and became more and more fascinating.

To me, from a logical left brain point of view, this was a way you could be objective about it, here was objective proof, pictures of people. How could I know what they looked like, I didn’t know them, they just appeared through the drawings. From that I went on to do other forms of psychic art, precognitive art and mandalas, which I am writing a book about at the moment.

Mandalas are the most fascinating tools for manifestation, and they are 40,000 years old and we are only just starting to realise the value of them now. Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning container for essense, circle, totality, completion or primordial sound. It is the 'space' where the inner and outer worlds meet, a 'place' that can hold and represent the powerful energy of intention (creation). I use Mandala's in Psychic Art as 're-mind-ers' to shift the vibration of the perceiver,to the 'right' frequency to attract a specific 'goal' or 'quality'. Learning to create your own Mandala's is very empowering, and a great way to practice the art of focusing your mind.

Colin – A friend of mine, Saleena, has been creating mandala like vibrational art for some time now, she calls them vibrakeys, and they are very powerful too. http://www.themagicofbeing.com/reviewvibra.html

June-Elleni – Art is very powerful if it is done with intention, which is what mandalas are, you put the intention of what you wish to manifest into the mandala, and then whoever looks at the mandala picks it up on a conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious level.

So all three levels are working with you, looking at that particular piece of artwork, which doesn’t engage the left brain particularly, so your ‘I can’t do it’ and the person who normally sabotages you is kind of not invited in.

In my workshops I have people draw the energy of words, for example. How many times have you heard this conversation? ‘ How are you?’ – ‘Oh not bad’. Or ‘can you do this for me?’ – ‘No problem’. If only they knew the energy of these negative words and what it does to their aura, so I get people to draw the energy of the words.

Masaru Emoto http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/eprofile.html has done some fantastic work to show the energy of words and what they can do to water and when you bear in mind we are 75% water and the words are coming out of our own mouths, so to have people draw the energy of words they can then see it, and it can be quite alarming for them. They will see graphically how the language they are using is affecting them.

So Art is a fantastic visual tool to show you what is happening on an energy level, on a level beyond what you can really see, and yet at some level we are able to capture it, and when we learn to speak the language of art we can interpret it.

Colin – Well thank you so much for spending some time today to talk about your work, it has been fascinating, and I look forward to reading your new book when it comes out.

An Interview with Elaine Thompson

By Colin Whitby

Elaine’s name was passed to me by Saleena, a long time friend from Hawaii, as she had just been given some sound therapy healing by Elaine and thought she might like to be featured on our web site ‘She’s from the UK, Bristol I think’, she says.

Well it turned out that Elaine lives just 5 minutes walk from where I live in Bristol UK, which is quite amazing considering it took someone from Hawaii to connect us. When we started talking at the beginning of the interview, I found that Elaine also knows a friend of mine who attends the same lightworkers meetings as me. It feels like we are making ourselves known to each other now, and these ‘coincidences’ are multiplying fast.

For this interview we focused on Elaine’s sound therapy work, which I hope you’ll find interesting. I have also reviewed her book ‘Voices From Our Galaxy’, which gives a great deal more background into her life and experiences with ET’s.

Colin – How did you first become interested in sound therapy, how did you come into contact with it?

Elaine – The beginning came many years ago when I was in Glastonbury when I had a dream, which is unusual for me because I never remember my dreams.

I woke up on this particular morning with a vivid dream in my head that sound could heal. At the time I translated that to mean musical or piano notes and thought that I could record them and play them to people. However as this was a particularly busy time in my life I put it to one side and carried on as before.

Then one day a woman came to my guest house and asked to stay who turned out to be Joan Ocean, and we instantly struck up a friendship, so much so that I suggested she stayed for free. In return she invited me to go stay with her in Hawaii, which is what I eventually did, I didn’t know at that time that she did dolphin swims with people.

Whilst I was there she suggested that I watch a video tape of Shari Edwards who was doing research on sound in Ohio, and this was an absolute eureka moment for me. At this stage she was at the very beginning of putting this work out, claiming that she could heal many different kinds of illness. I thought this is going to be the medicine of the future, the best thing since sliced bread.

I did not know how I would be able to afford to go to the states so soon after my visit to Hawaii, but another miracle happened and I was given exactly the right amount of money for the fare by a dear friend.

When I travelled to meet her I found that the sound therapy was everything she said it was, I saw people barely able to walk, and skipping out, less than an hour later.

There was a female police officer who lived locally and we were doing a test with her eyesight. With her glasses on she could read a paragraph in the newspaper, with her glasses off she could not read the text. When the sound was switched on, she could read everything without her glasses.

I saw how specific one can get with sound, and specific is a key word here. The range of frequencies we use is all within the brainwave range, which is low frequency, and this has a very dramatic and quick effect on the body.

From then on I have been consumed by the subject, I’m so passionate about sound healing because the world of frequency and sound offers an incredible scope for healing right across the board, emotional, physical and chemical.

Colin – How does the sound therapy work?

Elaine - Every frequency has another frequency that cancels it out, so for example there is a frequency for nullifying nuclear fallout, poison in the body, or a virus in the body. We do not need to name the virus or illness, we take a voice print which shows us where the peaks are and then feedback the opposite sound.

For me I have all the evidence I need to know that it works, but for the scientist it is too simple to work. So one of my aims is to show what can be done with it.

Colin – There are a number of books out there that are describing the new sciences, such as Lynne McTaggart’s ‘The Field’ , is sound therapy getting noticed?

Elaine - Well when I read Lynne McTaggart’s book I was so excited I wrote twenty pages of notes as I was reading it. Here she was talking about the field, which is frequency, the zero point field is about frequency, and at last people are putting things together. When we look at dimensions, they are also frequency, so in order to experience a different dimension it is just a matter of resonating at a higher rate, which comes from the kind of thoughts we think, how large our energy field is and such like. So sound and frequency is a universal energy, it touches into every single place you can possible think of.

Colin – When I see people listening to their iPods on the train and blasting their brains out with sound I wonder what kind of impact that is having on them.

Elaine – One thing to remember, the kind of sound therapy I do is very specific, and within a very particular part of the sound spectrum, and it also has a particular wave form. Music is generated in sound waves which are gentler on the body, and generally touch more into the emotional side of the psyche. In truth what kids are doing is enjoying what gives them pleasure, it lifts their emotions. It covers such a huge range of the sound spectrum they are getting a blanket effect on their emotional bodies.

Colin – Did you carry out research of your own or did you follow the findings of the people you were working with?

Elaine – One of the areas of research I have carried out was to do with Dolphins, when I helped a colleague in Tenerife. We measured and took data on children with severe learning difficulties. In this case we took readings before and after their swims with the dolphins. What we discovered was that the sounds from the Dolphins stimulated the children’s body’s chemistry in ways that we do not quite understand.

I then went on to do more studies with Dolphins in Hawaii with Joan and was invited by the Joyful Heart Foundation who help rape crisis victims. I volunteered to do before and after voice prints, and the results there were quite astounding. I found people had made huge emotional and physical changes.

The other area of research came from the data I had gathered from Germany. Some years ago I was with Shari Edwards in Hawaii at a power of sound conference and sound people from all over the world were there. A German called Nicky Reaman was there he helps to run a healing spa attached to a German clinic that helps people with skin diseases and that kind of thing,.

Nicky’s work is called liquid sound which is fantastic, and he invited me to present to the doctors there what I could do with sound. We invited an outside audience as well as the doctors who were there, and during the presentation I was guided to pick someone who was in a wheelchair. He agreed to have his voiceprint taken and I asked him what was wrong, and he advised that he had multiple sclerosis, and had suffered from it for 20 years. I asked him what mobility problems he had and he said “I can’t walk, but I can stand if I hold on to something”.

I was taking his voice print as he was talking and looking at the pattern, as certain diseases have particular patterns, and I thought that this person does not have an MS pattern, it didn’t look right. Intuitively, and sticking my neck out, I asked him if he had ever had an accident, such as falling off a bicycle or something?

At first he could not remember, then he recalled an accident that happened about a year before his problems with his legs started. What showed up on his voice print was that there was one vertebrae that had no energy at all. I decided on the off-chance to give him that frequency and took the risk of asking him if he would stand up, which he did. As I was talking to the doctors he took a huge lurch forward, and stood there and said he felt really strong. The doctors wanted to see this again and asked for a further demonstration the following day. I gave him the sounds on a box to play overnight and then he came back the following day.

We put the sounds on again and this time he took three steps forward, and that night we were all due to go out and he was able to walk up three flights of stairs and back down with only an arm on the doctor’s shoulder for support.

The news and television were called in and they put the whole story on RTL television, so we had a huge influx of people with MS, paralysis, strokes and Parkinson’s disease. So I was able to do the most amazing research on hundreds of people all with the same disease over a period of nine months. I was able to gather huge amounts of data about the different types of MS and the patterns that are there.

The rest of my data has come from years of experience.

Colin – So what was the key yes moment for your research?

Elaine – I’ve had hundreds of yes moments, every time I get a new disease, look at the patterns and I look at the evidence, I find I know the answer, that’s a yes moment.

Colin – So how did you move from the research to developing your own techniques and technologies?

Elaine – Many of the techniques I use now, like the computer programme, have been developed by practitioners for practitioners, which has been a great help. Much of the work I did was left brain work, to find out how these things functioned, but once I have things in my head I then allow myself to make the jump and use my intuitive sense to give my clients something that may not appear in the results.

The tone box was invented by a very dear friend of mine who was taking classes at the same time at me. He just happened to be a computer programmer and electronic engineer. He combined the work we were doing and said he could make a box that generated tones, to do exactly what you want. So the hardware came from him, and if we want any extra features on the box he can do them for us.

Many people will take what we do and use it in their own specialism, for example chiropractors will use sound to strengthen muscles, to shift energy and all kinds of things. Nutritionists use voice analysis to find out where you are deficient in minerals and vitamins and so on. So sound has grown it the applications it can be used in.

We have others who are mathematicians who are working on equations that describe nicotine for smokers, to see what works best.

Colin – How would a patient use the sounds you have prepared for them?

Elaine – Well it depends on how extreme their problem is, if we have someone with MS for example, I would advise them to go home and listen to the sounds 24x7, and that means using the tone box with a headset or an amplified speaker.

Interestingly if you do not want to listen to the sound or do not have and amplified speaker you can unplug the headset and just carry the tonebox on your body and it still works. No-one knows how it works without the sound, but this is how we treat babies and animals. We can also provide the sounds on CD’s.

We need to keep up with technology to provide downloads, but we are not sure if MP3 players can provide the low frequency sound reproduction.

Colin - Do you find that the work you do with sound naturally complements the other work you have done as a healer and intuitive?

Elaine – Yes, if you can bring another layer to the cake by using your intuition then you are enhancing it tremendously.

I’d like to tell you the story of Derek. A number of years ago I was invited to do a radio program for Radio Bristol, and as a result of that I was contacted by a lady from Gloucester who’s husband was diagnosed with senile dementia. It had been coming on for eight years but had been clinically diagnosed for four years.

When Derek arrived it took four of us to carry him in to my sound studio because he had no concept of where his feet were. He could barely speak and the only words I could use for the voice print were ABC and I managed to get a very small print with his wife’s help.

Prior to people coming to me I always ask them to fill out a medical questionnaire so that I can look at the problem and check it out from all angles. I always look into the past history or a client, and it turned out that Derek suddenly came down with an attack of shingles some eight years previously. Not long after this he had gone to hospital to have his gall bladder removed which gave another angle to consider.

Whilst he was in having the operation they detected an aneurysm. When Derek came out he was Ok but he started to forget things, and slowly he became worse and worse until he was in the condition that I first saw him in.

I went on a fair slice of intuition as I had a very small sample and he could not respond to me. I noticed that Derek’s birthday note or frequency was very close to the antidote to the virus that causes shingles. Right next door to this was the neurotransmitter GABA – which I call my miracle Neurotransmitter.

So I began to think that the shingles may have knocked out this neurotransmitter which is where his problems began. I put on the sound of GAB onto the speakers, and he started to respond and scratched himself on the cheek.

All of a sudden he sat up on the couch, swung his legs over, looked at his watch and said to his wife, ‘don’t you think it is time we went home, we have to take the dog out?’

That was the first sentence he had spoken in 2 years. I put a combination of frequencies and put it on his head and it only took 2 of us to get him to the car. Within the next 48 hours he was walking talking and wandering around the house. By the end of the week he could pick up a knife and fork and feed himself, and after two weeks he could dress himself.

Although this did not cure his dementia, it gave him back enough quality of life for his wife to be able to support him at home and ask him questions and he could answer.

It’s things like this that makes everything worthwhile.