An Interview with Tara Khandro
By Colin Whitby
This month we have an interview with Tara Khandro who lives in Indonesia on the Island of Bali. Initially we published an article The Caravan of Joy by Tara and in our conversations we thought it would be a good idea to share some more of Tara’s thoughts and ideas in an interview, I hope you enjoy.
With Love,
Colin.
Colin:- Tara thanks so much for your time today, I wondered if a good place to start would be for you to describe how you came to be living and working in Bali.
Tara:- I am very much a mystic traveller and I live my life in accordance with my Soul and it’s unfolding into Consciousness. If I have any goal then it is to truly become the Light that IAM. I’ve expressed this goal in many different ways. I’ve been a tennis player, a video and commercial scriptwriter and producer; a drama therapist; an actor, director and playwright. Currently I express as an integrative consciousness healer.
Colin:- What prompted the move from acting to the world of healing?
Tara:- I have been the victim of three violent crimes, all stranger perpetrated, and the last one was 10 years to the exact date of the first one. At the time of that last one I was working as an actor. I was asleep in my apartment and this guy broke in. He was standing at the end of my bed. I knew that he wanted to rape me. He was blocking the door. Well, I had already experienced rape and I saw that he had no weapon. The only way out was to fight. When I regained consciousness, he was not there and I knew that I prevented my rape. After I called the police I went into the bathroom to look at my face- my head felt like a hot air balloon floating above my body.
When I looked into the mirror my face was a blob of black, blue and blood. In the middle of this mayhem I saw two little black dots that were my eyes. I looked into this darkness. I was very curious to know what was inside. As I looked into the mirror simultaneously I felt myself going down, down through my third eye, my throat and all the way down into my heart. As I continued to peer into the darkness I could feel the subsequent terror, rage, shame and grief that come up after one survives a violent crime. I descended past these emotions, as I wanted to find out what was at the bottom of this darkness.
I then, deep inside of my belly, saw a golden light; what is termed the “Face before you were born” in Zen, and I felt I wanted to stay connected to this Light. I intuitively knew that it would lead me out of my own darkness and assist me in healing all the trauma from many lifetimes. This was the beginning of me moving into my own integration processes and the subsequent awakenings at many different levels of Awareness. It turns out this was a Kundalini awakening, but I didn’t know that at the time.
Colin:- Some awakening! So out of that were you attracted to any particular form of healing or theology?
Tara:- I haven’t had any formal training, everything I have done has come through my own natural ability of clairvoyance, curiosity and devotion. At that time I was doing yoga, reading Sufi books, and studying Zen Buddhism. I later took initiation into many different esoteric and spiritual traditions. As an Indigo of my generation I came in with a lot of Awareness. I used to sit in full lotus position at 3 years of age chanting, for example, and since my experience with the attempted rape I have been very much feeling the energies and going with them. I have been moving house much more than I could have imagined in these past five years. So many of us at this moment in time are sensing the planetary and cosmic consciousness shifts taking place and we are letting go of any goals we may have and simply following our intuition.
Colin:- How long ago did your own travelling start?
Tara:- I’ve travelled all of my life. About five years ago I had a big practice in the United States, I had clients in New York, California, and Kansas City. I turned 50, my intimate partnership of 12 years was completing itself and I felt the call to move to New Mexico. I conceived and began pre-production on a documentary about earth honouring traditions and the prophecies for this time, which led me to Peru. I discovered that this journey was not so much about the documentary but about my own process. I had worked with the North American native traditions but this was the first adventure and initiation into the South American tradition.
After I came back from my second trip to Peru I had some debilitating health issues which meant I had to slow right down. It also meant I had no income for a while, so a friend of mine suggested I go to South Korea to teach English. It was my cocoon year. I lived in a village in the mountains by the sea with butterflies, cows and elderly people. When the contract in Korea finished I was led to move to Bali. I asked the Universe to show me a place on the planet where “my seeds will bear fruit”, and where I ‘will become Heaven on Earth”. Through serendipitous events the answer arose as Bali. I hadn’t been here before but knew something of their traditions and dance through the theatre companies in the early 90’s with whom we did a lot of work.
Colin:- That’s quite a journey.
Tara:- I feel very at home here because it’s in the tropics and I was getting very burned out on cold weather. In fact the only time I visited the UK was in February when it was snowing, all the snow ploughs went out and some of them got stuck, it seemed like a big thing there.
Colin:- Yes we had a pretty severe winter this year and we got caught out again, I guess it’s having so many mild winters, when a hard one comes along we run out of resources like ploughs and salt. Good fun though, I love the sound of silence after it snows.
Tara:- That’s nice, here in Bali the New Year’s day is Nyepi which is very quiet. A month before Nyepi the boys put together huge figures, effigies. On Nyepi eve at the main crossroad of every village, evil spirits are exorcised by setting fire to these figures of monsters and demons, called Ogoh-Ogohs. On New Year’s day everything is closed, the airports are shut down, and we are commanded to stay inside, not cook anything, just contemplate all day long.
Bali is one of the noisiest places on the planet, so to have a day of complete silence when all that can be heard are the roosters and the birds is amazing. It is possible to not only get in touch with your inner forces and understand them, but also to appreciate just what a force sound is, when it stops. So when snow has just settled it’s kind of nice to just listen to the silence for a while, when everything stops. Like Simon and Garfunkel said, ‘The Sound of Silence’.
Colin:- Whilst reading some of your material one of the things I was intrigued by was that you were the originator of the ‘Alchemy of Wonder’, could you explain a little more about that?
Tara:- Well alchemy is the process of transmuting lead into gold. This is a mystical metaphor meaning that we can transmute the lead weight of our pain and suffering into the golden Light of IAM. The alchemy happens however it is supposed to work in the moment during the time we-the client, myself and Spirit- commune together. For instance if a person comes with a very conscious awareness that there is a pain or a block, or maybe some kind of catalysing incident like a loss or a breakdown, then we will work with that. Sometimes a person will have a “spiritual emergence y” which is happening more frequently as we move through our planetary Cosmic Consciousness shift.
One of the reasons I told the story of how I found that place of our eternal essence is because that is the first thing I do when people come, I get them into that place. I anchor them there so that they know and feel it, and it is from that place that they become empowered to transmute their lead into gold. And we are both guided by this illuminated Source as to how we are to move through our time together.
I am clairvoyant I can pass on messages or bring in other energies, so in a recent case with a client, Mother Mary came to assist. I passed on some information and she guided me as to some repatterning regarding the client’s mother and self mothering. Then I saw that there was some darkness in her womb. I asked if she had problems with her womb she said no and that two years previous, in Thailand that question came up. I went deeper to discover a past life that was seminal in my client gaining awareness and power for this life. We cleared that past life pain and came into a recognition of its gift for this life.
I make sure that everyone who I am gifted to commune with gets rooted into their IAM Presence. Then they can begin to embrace, without judgment or fear, all that arises. They discover that the pain has purpose and meaning. Through simply allowing ourselves to be open to receive we discover the most beneficial ways to transmute the pain into consciousness, awareness and release. Then we become more open and more Light.
As a drama and movement therapist I worked within institutionalized settings. My mother is also narcissistic with a personality disorder. I was also a step mother of a drug addicted teen and have had the privilege of working with chemical addictions, post traumatic stress disorder, sociopaths, personality disorders, autism, schizophrenics, manic depressive, etc. However, my service is to simply be present with whatever arises. I also naturally understand the psychology of the soul and its journey to individuate. No matter what the context-private clients, drug treatment centre, United Nations conference- all those labels fall away, I take them to this place and anchor them in their True essence, and then the alchemy begins.
I offer them the chance to be aware of their own innate, divine alchemical power, and to do that with curiosity, and to wonder - ‘I wonder if I do this... what happens?’ When we relate to something that can be challenging, painful or scary with a sense of wonder from the inner soul part of us, that’s when the alchemy really starts happening. Your web site is the Magic of Being, so you know what it’s about, that’s when the magic starts happening.
The interesting thing is that most of this I’ve started doing intuitively, rather than following a particular method or teaching. It’s only later, when I meet a Tibetan for example, and they show me a method, that I realise I’ve been doing that for some time I just didn’t know it was a Tibetan practice.
Colin:- So I guess that would explain why I have not been able to find out much about what you do on my internet searches, because that is not what you are about.
Tara:- Well I’ve been officially facilitating Alchemy of Wonder for over a decade, yet I have been doing it all of my life. I have not been able to traditionally market myself because I live in the moment. When my friends ask me what I do I say that ‘I devote myself to practicing to live radically rooted in the wily wonder of the wow of now’. Not a great marketing tool!’
Colin:- That reminds me of the first interview I did for this magazine, where Jane MacAllister Dukes said the same kind of thing (JMcAD – Well it’s not about what I do, it’s about who I am being. So what I do is ‘I live who I am’. It’s about living my life in a particular way.)
Tara:- Wow that’s amazing. Yes. It is how we live our lives. When I am with someone I will work with energy that is specifically for them, and when I work with a group the same thing will happen. So if someone needs some energy or work that is of a particular vibration or intensity, and that might be something that a practitioner of a particular healing methodology might consider too high for an individual at this stage of their healing, I will go with my intuition and know that the reason it came through was that it was right in the moment.
Colin:- For me that sounds exactly right, and just the way I like to work too. It’s been so great to talk with you today Tara, thank you so much for your time.
Tara:- You’re welcome.
Skype: DancingWolfe
Share Article 
