Interview with Jane MacAllister Dukes

By Colin Whitby

Jane and I first met over the internet when we were both taking part in one of Soleira Green's courses some four years ago. Since then we have been keeping touch over email, but it was when Jane sent me a link to her new web site that the idea of an interview came to mind.

I was delighted when she agreed, and we quickly arranged a telephone interview which flowed really well, I hope you can feel the energy that was generated; by the end of the session is was very tangible, like electrical energy in the air. This is 'The Magic of Being' in action, co-creating with like-minded souls.

We had some initial discussions about doing our energy or spiritual work whilst being in a ‘normal’ job, and the various impacts that normal working life had on us.

Jane MacAllister Dukes – I used to believe that it didn’t matter quite what was going on around me. I could do the (energy) work as it was that work that was important. I would do the work behind the scenes and being seen was not important. Now it’s like I need to stand up and put my head above the parapet.

Colin Whitby – Yes, that is what is happening with me, and that is what this web site is all about: standing up and being seen.

JMcAD – In a way I have always stood up and to some extent have felt until very recently that I was a lone voice. I have always had the conviction that the work I was doing was what I was here to do and that I would just carry on doing it anyway. There is a feeling now though that this is a time to stand up and share and be seen.

CW – And to help things along the whole point for me is that it is magical. That’s the emphasis of the web site, that it should be magical to share, and so far this has proved to be the case as everyone I have asked to contribute has come back positively. It should be easy, this process.

So to start our interview – how would you describe what you do in business?

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. In the process of living my life in a particular way I might paint, I might collaborate on the production of a book (which might involve my paintings being used as illustrations) or I might add some words to that book or I might take my kids to school, wash their hair, make dinner......I might design Christmas cards, I might design them on commission or freelance and sell them from local shops or from my web site and so on.....I’m a creator and a maker and I bring that creational beingness to everything I do.

I’m also a teacher, I’ve taught art at Foundation Course level at an Art College and many years ago I taught Silversmithing and Jewellery at Night Classes. I am much more of an inspirational teacher than a practical one, although I did teach practical techniques as well. Inspiration was always more important to me. It was about giving people confidence first and then the techniques would follow. Once they had the confidence and understood their own creational ability, then the techniques would come naturally.

I am a qualified Coach, I co-founded the Evolutionary Institute with four others. We created a new curriculum and we decided that we were going to alter coaching and make it into a much more evolutionary state or condition. We wanted people to be really empowered. We wanted to go a step beyond the belief system that says ‘the client knows everything’, because although on some level the client probably does know everything, whether they can access it or not is another matter.

So my main focus has always been the creational aspect of life and ‘being’, so it doesn’t matter what I’m doing, whether it’s coaching or writing a curriculum or painting or drawing or making dinner or cleaning.......whatever it is I always bring the same focus to it, which is that I honour it fully in the moment and am aligned to the energetic nature of it. So my passion, if you like and what I therefore do, is, I embody and live an ever-evolving understanding of energetics and consciousness. Does that make sense?

CW – Yes – and I think that the challenge for us all is to describe what we do or what we are so that it is understandable to ourselves and then to others. Until now I have been cautious about describing the energy work I have been doing as it did not seem to be the right time to share.

JMcAD – I do believe the reason you may have been hesitating is that there has been a separation between what you do and be, and there is no doubt that the coaching industry in my view has risen out of the desperate need or a calling for this to be addressed. Time and time again coaches will deal with highly paid executives that are brilliant at their jobs but have a terrible personal life. So they somehow work the system that they have created or that they are a part of, but when it comes to who they really are, there is a breakdown of understanding and they can’t deal with that.

A lot of people have focused on becoming successful and the word successful has meant someone who earns a lot of money and can buy cars and houses and things like that, but it’s only now that people are beginning to realise that houses and cars and stuff like that don’t make you happy. If you are really materialistic, which one or two people are, then you may be happy for a short while, but it is amazing how many really rich movie stars and pop stars, for example, are now saying in the press or magazines about how miserable they are, or unhappy they are, or how normal they are, or how they want to get married and have kids too.

So there is a general awareness which is beginning to weave itself through society, that money doesn’t buy you happiness. Now that’s something that had been said for a very long time, but it has not been truly understood. There is a sort of superficial nature to a lot of what we produce in society that is very destructive, and we can easily be seduced by it, and go down the route that says we need to have these symbols, that we have not made it until we have a big portfolio of assets, or can go out on a Friday night in London to night clubs and be seen in the right places, that we know the right people, wear the right clothes, say the right things. Depending on what you choose, then that is the set of beliefs that you buy into.

If you choose to be a fashion icon, for example, they you would need a certain handbag, or a certain set of shoes and so on. Recently there have been adverts on the TV about inserts that you can wear on the balls of your feet to put on when you go out to party in your high heeled party shoes, so that you don’t get burning feet. I used to think I can’t wear these shoes, what’s wrong with me, because I could not wear those kind of shoes without my feet hurting, but in fact everyone’s feet were hurting, it’s just they did not talk about it. So what is happening is people are beginning to speak about things more openly, and so it’s ok to admit your feet are burning. It’s ultimately a sign of awareness when it’s coming into the open like that.

I see signs everywhere of a kind of awakening if you like, and so what I do it is to encourage that awakening.

CW – You mentioned the Evolutionary Network earlier, how did that come about and how does it work?

JMcAD – 5 of us came together to create something called the Evolutionary Institute, and the idea of that was to create what we called at the time, Advanced Coach Training courses, which would teach people about energy and consciousness.

Everyone has an instinctive and innate understanding of it, and when we are kids we know it very well. We run about and naturally use our knowing (our intuitive knowledge) to inform us. We are also more than likely telepathic as children. That word telepathy has a strange connotation for people, they think it is kind of weird and that you can read people’s minds, but the truth is what you are really reading is energy.

We all had the desire to remind people of what they already knew, and so we came together to create this new institute. Now in the process of creating it we created a wonderful curriculum, we ran wonderful courses and we really did evolve the knowledge in relation to energetics and consciousness in the coaching world. It was such fun to do, huge fun, a wonderful dance of co-creation, just delightful.

In a sense you could say we used the coaching world as a portal to bring the information in, mainly because coaches tend to be more open. They have often been many other things before becoming coaches, so it was in a sense the most obvious route to take.

We decided that we did not want normal CVs, we wanted to break away and model a new way of being by doing it. We came up with names for ourselves, for example I was called Adventure Director, we had a Chief Energising Officer, a Chief Consciousness Officer and an Evolutionary Creation Director was another. The intention was that we grow this institute into a big global community of trainers and coaches who could run these courses all around the world.

In the process of creating the courses and running them and teaching them we evolved. We evolved ourselves into a different set up. One left as she was incredibly inspired to go off and do something else, which was perfectly right, but at the same time was in the background giving support. Then we split into two and two, and very naturally we came to the point where we wanted to teach differently and concentrate on slightly different things.

That was gorgeous because it meant we were not really ending. It was as if we were evolving into two different versions of what we co-created together, which was a natural evolution of being. The arm that I am part of then became the Evolutionary Network and I work with Soleira Green (and others) on that. The other two are continuing in the training that we co-created together in their own particular way, putting their stamp on it I’m sure and my understanding is that they too are evolving new work.

CW – Are you finding a growing interest in your new venture?

JMcAD – Yes and I remember in the beginning when the five of us were talking about how to create the courses, we would be cautious about using words like energy or consciousness and would have long discussions about their usage, whereas now these words are in common parlance. I see them popping up all over the place. So although we wouldn’t claim it was just us that did that, I do know that we were a contributing factor.

I stand for the work that has to be done when it is calling me. So when I co-create it with others and then see it in coaching magazines, in their adverts and their articles, then I know that my work is effective.

CW – Yes, in fact I find it possible to talk about these things at work more. There are people who I now share words like energy with, who I would not normally have even mentioned these things to.

JMcAD – A lot of the people I work with are nurses, telephone operators, receptionists, secretaries, school admin people, in fact people who are on the face of it not very important in the scheme of things. If you look at what success means in our society in the West particularly, we seem to have got things upside down and backside foremost.

A lot of these people are not considered to be particularly important in the bigger scheme of things according to the success definitions we use. However, in my book they are. All these people can touch so many others, so by doing the work they are doing and by being who they are being, they are altering the very fabric of everything, of creation.

So sometimes it is right to speak up when we are guided or prompted so that people are able to come out more, and people now have the courage to speak out, to say what is right in the right moment. There are a number of reasons we might not have done this kind of thing in the past. We might have felt that we would get shot down in flames or considered rather strange, or possibly even attacked, so we have had to be aware and not blunder about like a bull in a china shop. This is where conscious knowledge of energetics is really helpful, because you can read their energetics and actually work with it in a way which is honourable, has integrity and is sensible too. We have to have common sense in the whole of this as well.

You don’t have to be the Prime Minister or famous to be effective. You don’t necessarily have to be a world figure to be an effective evolutionary changer. In fact sometimes its infinitely more effective if you’re not, because in a way you go about your work, in a sense like a secret agent, undercover.

A lot of people come on the courses and do not want to be a coach. They just want to take the knowledge into their working lives, whatever their working lives are. Sometimes people who are really in alignment with things are much more in tune with the universe and what is going on than those who are successful in the Western sense.

CW – One of the things we have been finding with the creation of this website is that there seems to be a new way of finding out what to say and what not to say, feeling from the heart rather than from the head. Taking the traditional stance about target audience and what they would like seems to be restricting the flow.

JMcAD – Well it’s interesting because when it comes to what should be in something like my new web site, my wee website as I call it, as it is the first ‘on my own’ web site I have created, at first I sat there and thought, what exactly do I put in there? Well it’s my web site, so I’ll put in there what feels right. So in the process of co-creating this with a designer I did exactly what felt right, and if it didn’t feel right I didn’t do it.

So when you talk about putting certain words in or out I would suggest that if you are feeling those words energetically and they don’t feel right then trust that feeling. If you are thinking about it intellectually then I would suggest that perhaps that’s not the right decision. The way to decide what is right is to feel it, and if it doesn’t feel right, figure out why not, or just follow that feeling and just don’t put it in.

What astonishes me is that my website was just for me really, just a bit of fun, and what staggers me is that I’ve had so many remarkable responses to it. There were one or two comments that were based upon how a website should look, or how a marketing tool should look, but for me the website wasn’t a marketing tool. So I don’t have a target audience, I don’t look at it that way round. I need to consider what it is I want to say, what it is I want to present according to what I am and what I feel in the moment, then that’s it, I create it. Then I will attract whoever I attract, which is the opposite way round to normal marketing and that’s fine because I find I just can’t do it any other way.

So you are going to have to stand in your own integrity and do that which feels right for you. When everybody does that in decency, with great honour, respecting everyone around, then the world will change overnight. That’s all it requires. That’s what coaching, in my view, is all about. We encourage and empower others to become who they truly are. That’s what a good coach does.

CW – How do you see 2007, what are your plans?

JMcAD – Just more, more of everything...It’s a very exciting time to be alive. I’m excited by what is unfolding, what I’m unfolding, what I am co-creating, what I am becoming. I can’t be more specific than that because I can see a plethora of unbelievably gorgeous things unfolding in front of me. How they manifest in a sense doesn’t really matter – there will be painting, dancing, workshops, talking, fun. There will be whatever it takes, whatever is called for. In every possible way, there will be creational movement. It will be part of, without a doubt, the greater movement for all.

http://www.janemd.com/
jane@janemd.com

An Interview with Jude Currivan

By Colin Whitby

Jude and I met on December 23rd 2003 in Avebury through an invitation on the Internet which I just could not ignore. She had brought together a group of people to help with the turning on of a ‘Master Key’ which was the culmination of 12 journeys she and her ‘team’ had made all over the world (for more details of these journeys see our review of ‘The 13th Step’, Jude’s latest book).

Colin: When we met you were at the end of a number of 12 journeys, what was the context of these and the work we did on the 23rd December 2003.

Jude:

I had been told through a clairaudient message a number of years before that we needed to complete 12 healing journeys around the world by early November 2003 and “turn the 13th Master Key at Avebury on 23rd December”, which would be the culmination of the planetary and collective healing that was the ultimate aim of the quest. Turning the master key opened an energetic portal between us and the centre of the galaxy to support this collective shift in consciousness.

I had thought at that time, quite naturally, that the journeys were complete and it was only early last year that a further message came through for a 13th Journey, whose purpose was about healing schisms between the 3 faiths of the bible, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

This 13th Journey took us to three countries and we were guided to start at Harran in Turkey last March at the time of the solar eclipse, which is where the patriarch Abraham began his journey and where the 3 religions have their beginnings.

We were then to go on to Egypt, which we had already planned to do in early October last year, then the message became very clear that we needed to go on to Jerusalem, and Megiddo, which we did.

The journey continued to reveal its purpose as ultimately the reconciliation of the divine feminine with the cosmic masculine, and we energetically completed that sacred communion overnight on the 18th of October to the dawn on the 19th. We had no idea until just before, that this was the so-called Night of Destiny. In the Islamic faith at some point during Ramadan (which changes every year depending on the phases of the moon) there is a night which the mystics say the doors of heaven are open. This is the night, before knowing its significance, we had synchronistically “chosen” for our vigil.

The entire transformational experiences of all thirteen journeys and what I feel they reveal about our hidden heritage and cosmic destiny are shared in my new book The 13th Step which has just been published.

The book is really about our collective journey, and it aims to speak to everyone. It doesn’t matter if you have taken an inner journey in your own back yard, or have been fortunate enough to visit the places we did, inevitably it’s a sacred journey back to ourselves - a quest to re-member who we really are.

Colin: I see a lot of your work is through the Marlborough Natural Health Centre http://www.marlboroughnaturalhealth.com/egypt.htm, how did that come about?

Jude: Justina and Emma, who are the owners, had journeyed with me to Egypt and Peru, and Justina asked last year if I would be happy to lead a journey to Egypt if she organised it. This went very well and was then part of the 13th Journey. What we are doing this year is organising another journey to Egypt and Sinai this October, and also to China and Tibet next year at the time there of a total solar eclipse just before the Olympics.

As you know the ancient musical scale has 13 notes, the 13th note completes an octave and begins the next. So as we completed the 13 journeys last year, it culminated a great octave of work but then it takes us to a whole new level. So the journey continues, but at a new level.

Colin: I have been reading the 8th Chakra which was your last book, and I read there that you had also written another book The Wave.

Jude: Yes that’s right, there have been three books in three years, and they act as a trilogy. As I write about in The 8th Chakra, I believe that we are now beginning to access higher aspects of our psyche through the 8th chakra of the universal heart. This calls on us to balance our hearts, minds and purpose in service to our highest purpose. My guidance was to co-create this emerging balance through writing three books.

The Wave reconciles science and Spirit in an empowering mew vision of the Cosmos and so the understanding it offers is the way of the mind,
The 8th Chakra, which shares my understanding of our expanding awareness and what that means for us personally and collectively and with our relationship with the living Earth, our Soular System and the wider Cosmos. Its message is the way of the heart.

The 13th Step shares a transformational message that I feel speaks to us all – about our personal and collective choice to be here at this momentous time and its message is the way of our purpose.

When the universal heart of our 8th chakra opens it brings heart, mind and purpose together and literally raises our vibration to one of unconditional love.

Colin: I am very much drawn to some of the scientific explanations of the energies and how they work, such as Bruce Lipton’s Biology of Belief, do you think it is important that science finds explanations for what we are actually experiencing and what we are doing in energy?

Jude: Yes it is because this really needs to be a mainstream and not a peripheral world view, and the mainstream view is so influenced and guided by science. Its only when science becomes self limiting, when it is not willing to go where the evidence leads, that I would have an issue. My own background is as a scientist, I’ve got a Masters Degree specialising in quantum physics and cosmology and a PhD in Archaeology, so I appreciate the scientific method. I feel though it now needs to expand its horizons.

My own journey began at the age of 4 when I had my first psychic experience and I realised that there was far more to the Cosmos than the physical world. So I was walking between worlds as a child very naturally but was guided to understand how this all comes together and especially what consciousness is, and I have come to the perspective that what we call the physical world is actually part of an integral reality, where cosmic mind is all pervasive – and we are both creation and co-creator.

So a lot of my work is about reconciling leading-edge science with frontier research into consciousness and a reawakening of spiritual wisdom. So I describe the world in terms of everything and all we call reality as being part of an integral conscious whole. We can’t separate mind and matter, matter and energy, space and time, spirit, it literally is all, and all is consciousness, all is cosmic mind.

This has been a view that pioneering scientists such as Albert Einstein have also had a sense of, and we are in an incredible position now to be able see far further and deeper and higher in the physical world than ever before with science but my own view is that it is crucial now that we reconcile science with spirit and come back to the ancient world view that everything arises from and is consciousness. Sages and Shaman and Seers throughout time and across the world have had this universal view. My work now is bringing all of this together and sharing this with people in a way that empowers them to experience it and realise it for themselves.

I’m currently co-authoring a new book with Ervin Laszlo called CosMos – a co-creators guide to the whole world. It’s being published by Hay House next year.

Colin: I love the timing, this edition of The Magic of Being feels like it is weaving around the subject of people connecting and taking action, we have Shelly Yates’s Fire the Grid event coming up in July, we have Re-creating our world from Dr. Nicholas Knoth and now we have your invitation to ‘keep turning up’.

Jude: It feels to me that there is so much coming forward and so many grass roots movements are raising our collective vibration, it’s wonderful. There’s something called the walk of Abraham which is aimed at reconciling the faiths for example, and the Peace One Day initiative. There is so much work now with bringing in the divine feminine, and what I’ve described in my books as birthing the cosmic child within us. This is the unity awareness that sees beyond all the polarities and truly realises that we are all one. It’s an amazing time for us to be here and to take part in all of this and to “show up” to do whatever we are being called to do in service to our highest purpose.

Colin: That’s a great message, thanks very much.

Interview with Neil Crofts

By Colin Whitby

I first heard of Neil's Authentic Business ideas though an email he sent out at the launch of his venture. Since then I have been reading his web site and books with great interest.

When we were talking about how the web site might look the suggestion was that we have a mix of articles, reviews and interviews, and almost immediately the idea of asking Neil for an interview came to mind.

He was kind enough to come to our house and take part in the first interview for our new venture, and I'm sure you'll agree, his ideas and commitment to authenticity come shining through.

Our initial discussions were regarding qualifications – particularly in healing…where we cannot start trading even as a healer without having passed through some kind of ‘education’.

Neil Crofts – I’m not qualified, I think I’ve got three O levels. What we have done in our society is we have created all sorts of exclusive clubs to keep people out – in order to work for us you need to pass these criteria.

If you take some of the most successful people in the world they dropped out of education: Richard Branson, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, none of them completed their education. The only subject the formal education in the UK teaches is conformity, the rest of it is just mechanisms to teach conformity: it is not about who are you, what are you here for, what are you brilliant at, what mark are you going to make on the world; it’s not even about how to manage your finances or how to eat healthy food or any of those practical things that would be useful.

There are teachers and schools that break out from this mould, but the vast majority fall into this category.

Colin Whitby – Our first connection came out of a group that had come together during a conference in Bristol where you had presented, and so I had received the very first email you sent out launching Authentic Business. How would you describe your journey since your original launch?

NC – I think when I first launched I was focusing on continuing on doing what I had already done, which was consultancy for business, and then through that I started doing more coaching work. Through the coaching work, and doing my own learning and my own development, my focus now has turned almost entirely on people. Now this might be on people in business, but the focus is entirely on the people, then the next bit will be working with education.

In more spiritual terms my level of understanding of what’s going on and how things work has moved on enormously. In Seven Stages terms, when I wrote that original email that was me doing stage 4, really, then stage 5 is opening up to learning and then bouncing between stage 5 and stage 6, which is what I’ve been doing.

When I had done my stage 4 coming out I was still “Green” in Spiral Dynamics terms, and since then that I have shifted to “Yellow” and to second tier consciousness. So I’m now thinking at a far broader level of responsibility, I’m now far more able to communicate with other levels. When I started all of this my best communication was with “Orange”, so it was a “Green” to “Orange” communication, whereas now I find I can communicate from “Yellow” to “Green” and “Orange” and to “Blue” to some extent, although this is more challenging.

CW – At the conference I remember someone describing how energy worked, and at the time I thought how advanced that was for that kind of audience.

NC – Isn’t it amazing how thinking has evolved in just 4 or 5 years, it’s astonishing.

CW – One of my questions regarding authenticity was related to people who find they are thinking in new ways and discovering themselves, but then feel they have to leave their current jobs. Do you think this is changing now?

NC – I can now communicate this message to someone in an “Orange” business such that they can now see the opportunity within the business, which is a breakthrough, because they can stay and change the business from within.

CW – Reading your book I found myself reflecting that I fit one of the profiles of someone who has a mortgage, had a car loan and so on, and in order to fund these I have a traditional job.

NC – Part of the shift from “Green” to “Yellow” in Spiral Dynamics terms, one of the reasons we are able to think at this level, is because everything else is sorted out. We have enough food, we are comfortable, we are warm, we are not worried about being eaten by tigers, we have created an environment where we can think at this level. It’s important to have a comfortable environment without fear, so there is no problem with making yourself comfortable.

CW – Do you think your own spiritual journey has been an essential part of your life journey, does it go hand in hand?

NC – There is no distinction, as soon as you stop going round in circles of emptiness, you can call it what you like, an Authentic journey or a spiritual journey – they are all about meaning and there is only one meaning of life and that is evolution. Anyone who steps off that circle is taking part in evolution. It’s very Darwinian, you are either contributing to evolution or you are contributing to demise, and the tension between the two is very important too, because it energises the evolution. So going to war in Iraq was actually a really positive and evolutionary step because it galvanised enormous resistance, so the next time a western politician attempts to usurp power and create an illegal war it will be a hell of a lot more difficult than it was last time.

So all these things contribute to evolution. Climate change is our big evolutional challenge.

CW – I subscribe to your Authentic Update Emails and wondered how difficult it was for you to come up with inspiring thoughts on a weekly basis.

NC – Occasionally (probably one or two times) it’s felt like work, on the whole it’s either an insight that has come to me during the week, or it’s a direction I want to go in and want to explore. Recent messages have been around money and love, which is part of a new direction that I want to go in.

CW – Much of the personal work that is being done at the moment is around relationships, either dealing with them or letting them go. What is your approach in this area?

NC – I believe our life purpose has like a gravitational pull, it will happen if we let it. The things that hold us back are what I call tensions, and those tensions are both physical and psychological or emotional – a tension might be a relationship, it might be a health issue, it might be about confidence and that sort of thing. So the coaching work I do is all about getting rid of those tensions, either by aligning them or letting them go. If you deal with all those tensions your purpose happens.

CW – What would be your advice to people who are “waking”, but they are in a business that is not “waking up”.

NC – What I would say is that this kind of situation is a tension that is preventing you from achieving your purpose, so you have to find a way of relieving that tension. That means that you either have to align it or let it go, you have to lose the tension. This could mean changing the business, or the part of the business that you are in, which is doable. There is no question that authenticity releases great energy and motivation, but it does depend slightly on what the business is about.

I find it inconceivable that tobacco companies or arms companies could find anything authentic, but for the most part there are opportunities for improving the business from within. It comes down to the issue of investment, is it worth investing, do you have the capacity to invest, the energy required to make the change?

There are only three purposes, they are Art, Environment and Community, and all of them are about Evolution. Art is about the communication of spirit, Community is about anything that supports and promotes community, and Environment is about anything that supports and promotes the environment.

The majority of people are community oriented. If you are a team leader in a call centre, and your purpose is about community, you can achieve it with the team you work with, and with the calls you take. For the environment, if your passion is saving penguins and you find yourself on the checkout at a supermarket, it’s unlikely you will realise that purpose.

If you are Art oriented, then the communication of spirit is a little different. If you work as a designer for an advertising agency and you design ads describing different ways of selling mashed potato, you are really not getting anywhere with that, so you may need to find a different way of doing that.

As we evolve, what we find is that those three purposes come together into the single purpose of evolution. Evolution is achieved through the communication of spirit, a spiritual evolution where we become sustainable beings who are part of sustainable communities.

CW – What are your plans for 2007 and beyond, how has that changed from your original ideas, and how does it feel when you are planning ahead?

NC – 2007 is really about expanding the Authentic Transformation practice, getting more people involved and delivering more of that to individuals and to business.

2007 will also be about Authentic Education – this is a campaign whose objective is really making child centred education available to everyone. The strategy to achieve that is for all parents to win the right to determine how their child’s state education budget is spent. Instead of only being able to spend that state education budget with the monopoly provider, the opportunity would be that parents would have the choice of where to spend that money.

At the same time promoting child centred education as the most positive alternative at this time. The route to achieving this is to create a membership organisation with a million UK voters as members – then offering those million votes to whichever political party enshrines that choice, that right in law.

I feel that these things are inevitable, it will happen, for anything else to happen would be contrary to evolution. We are now at a time where we know enough and where we have a time constraint and we have to do it.

I would like kids to come out of education really knowing what they are worth, and find a way of attracting energy. Businesses would need to be inspiring to attract these new children. It’s interesting that in London Barclays is finding it hard to recruit cashiers primarily because of competition from Prêt à Manger, because Prêt à Manger offer such better (working) conditions and pay.

CW – You can actually feel the difference with the business and its products I think.

NC – There is no question that there is an energetic difference between a Yeo Valley yoghurt and a Muller yoghurt, for example. There is a difference in the energy of the design, in the taste, in the packaging – everything, it carries a happier energy.

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