Interview with Sarina Stone

Sarina Stone is a registered Universal Healing Tao (UHT) Practitioner, a Certified Medical  Qigong educator, practitioner and consultant. She specializes in Taoist (Natural) ways of attaining and maintaining optimal health and extending longevity.  From the Tao Garden in Thailand, she offers a regular health and wellness podcast.  She and her guests share insights on alchemy and the evolution of human consciousness.

Similar to William U. Wei, Sarina is a long-time student of Master Mantak Chia.  As the result, both have grown into teachers who offer unique guidance in areas of Tao healing.

 

Thanks Sarina for responding to this interview conducted as you lead up to your upcoming UHT -Australia CNT course on the Gold Coast.

 

For those unfamilliar with your life and background, please share key experiences that led you to connect with Master Mantak Chia. 

About 28 years ago, I had severe scoliosis.  The double curvature in my spine impeded organ and gland function such that by 5 PM each day I had to lie flat on my back or I was too exhausted to function.  Digestion was horrible and my fascia and lymphatic systems were constantly inflamed or overtaxed.

At that time I was the fairy god manager for a small theater company in Minneapolis. The artistic director came to the studio one day with the garage sale find… he paid $0.50 for a book and a cassette tape by a man I’d never heard of, Master Mantak Chia. The book and tape spoke of bringing the smiling mind inside the body to facilitate change on a molecular level. We, the artistic director and I, begin to incorporate these techniques into massage therapy sessions directed at straightening my spine. About seven months later I was sitting by myself on a stone bridge that overlooked a waterfall and realized I had been sitting up straight, without effort, for about 10 minutes. I wept.

Love synchronicity! As it happens, I had a scoliosis, though not as severe as yours.  Part of growing aware of energy flow certainly changed by relationship to my body. Tears are like peeling the layers away of what we no longer need in order to grow conscious of the next step of our destiny, is that not so? 

It was at that moment that I had an epiphany . I had to meet this master. I had to incorporate these practices into my life. Within a few months I found myself in New York City sitting feet away from Master Chia as he taught the same practices contained in the book and cassette. I asked him how he became so good at Medical QiGong, so powerful. And his reply was,” I became a teacher. I have to practice every day.”  

Daily acts of self-love change how everything is created and experienced. Is this encounter with Master Chia the turning point that prompted you to become a certified UHT practitioner?

All of the above are the key life experiences that lead me to connect with Master Chia and become a certified Universal Healing Tao (UHT) practitioner and educator by 1995.

How have the practices you teach changed the way you see and feel within yourself?

My own digestive issues, my own body aches were the greatest motivators for becoming specialized in the healing arts.  We tend to teach that which we need to learn J

What simple yet life-altering message! We teach what we are meant to learn. Master Chia himself also offers a wealth of insights, such as those during a recent London Real interview on How to strengthen your Chi. It resonates that we draw into our lives exactly what we need with perfect timing.

Your sharing here Sarina, reminds us of the power beyond, how we orchestrate exactly what the Soul needs on its unique path of growth.  When we permit it, intuition is the reliable guide for going with our feelings, embracing the unforeseen shifts in our life purpose and directon. 

As you are returning to Australia for upcoming workshops to follow up on your 2016 and 2017 visits, why is it especially useful for massage therapists and other healers to take this training?

As interest continues to grow in Chi Nei Tsang (CNT), I am coming in July to offer a unique 3 day course.

This trainig is the perfect adjunct to any healing practitioners repertoire. It addresses 70% of the clients immune system, ability to digest, absorb and eliminate, muscular tension and pain, inflammation, organ health, mental health and emotional health…all with one modality!

Let's begin with the basics: what is Chi Nei Tsang (CNT)?  Why do people do it or benefit from it?

CNT abdominal massage is a combination of hands on visceral massage and energy work (QiGong, Chi Kung). Technically, it is a healing branch of Medical QiGong (medicinal energy work). Medicine deals with the health and well-being of the body. Balance and rebalance are important when people feel less than optimium.

Taoist nature is also symbolic, about being without force.  It is the way of allowing.  Please expand on this intelligent energy.

The Soul and Spirit are intelligent energy. They condense energy to incarnate into a body to interconnect, grow and develop the energy. 

Think of Qi (Energy) in its simplest form as “electromagnetic energy”.  The same stuff that sparks throughout the brain and nervous system.  If there is a clear pathway to each part of the body the electromagnetic energy will bring information via that pathway to every organ, gland and cell.  If the pathway gets congested, we simply do not have the energy required to facilitate fullest function or the information the body requires for the constant state of self adjustment and self healing.  If electromagnetic energy is cut off long enough, systems begin failing. 

CNT can assist the body in removing emotional and physical blockages to allow for maximum energetic flow.

And unhindered flow is the natural state of being. The impact of emotional blockages is so often unrecognized and underestimated.  Your Intro to Chi Nei Tsang (CNT) recognizes the flow of energy, how it affects health and points people to learn practices to help localize issues and heal. Many people can appreciate and benefit from the such teachings. 

This said, how does this relate to the flow of Chi and healthy sexuality?What impact does it have on Anti-Aging, cellular regeneration, Restorative energy? 

It takes energy to orgasm.  It takes energy to self heal and stay young.  It takes energy to live fully.  

Ah-ha! mastering energy is key to mastering emotions and mastering oneself.  So many paths available to us.Reminding people sexual energy is simply another channel of flow that can be blocked or open is itself illuminating about so much more happening in and around the body.

On this note, some of our visitors ask if you can expand on the Jade Egg practice. 

This is an exercise tool that will be discussed during the course. Over 5000 years ago, it was understood that women create energy with their menstrual cycles and do not have to lose that energy (outward).  Jade Egg practice can be used to pull energy upward (in particular, energy in the ovaries and the uterus). The upcoming course will introduce this technique as a step one can move into in more depth as boundaries, use of space and energy are mastered.

What does the upcoming 3-day course curriculum in July 2018 involve exactly?

The Ultimate Training for Massage Therapists-  Items covered for Gold Coast CNT Level One Certification Workshop

Diagnostic tools
At least 2 fascia and skin clearing Chi Nei Tsang protocols
Seated Medical QiGong (Inner Alchemy organs meditation)
At least 3 colon detox Chi Nei Tsang protocols
At least 2 small intestine Chi Nei Tsang protocols
1 Nerve Activation technique for improving organ function
1 psoas release technique
Basic nutrition for intestinal health education
1 acid reflux technique
1 spine release technique (erector muscles)
Multiple abdominal self-massage techniques
Introduction to the Jade Egg exercises for women (men have opportunity to learn as well)
You will leave this course with specific Medical QiGong and Chi Nei Tsang abdominal massage protocols and exercises to activate and detoxify the body. You will understand why optimal organ, brain and spine function are the secrets to radiant health and longevity and have a clear understanding of what Chi Nei Tsang and seated Medical QiGong can do to improve physical and mental health.

That sounds jam-packed. I hear Adam Gokmen is also offering some pre-course UHT exercises.

By the way, can you expand on the idea of Tendon power?

We will not be addressing that in depth this time (in the upcoming course).  However, it should be known that electromagnetic energy travels through the nerve and skeletal systems, through the tendons and in to each muscle.  If the tendons are hard and blocked, muscle tissue does not get the signal to respond fully.  Over time the tissue reacts by shortening due to lack of use.  This REALLY hurts J We all need good tendon health to stay young and strong. 

Ultimately, Tendon Power is one secret to strength, youth & suppleness.  If the tendon is too hard, the energy signal cannot penetrate so the muscle will not fire at full capacity.  The muscle will become stiff and this hurts!  Also, hard tendons increase the chance of over stretching, which causes hypermobility or tearing.  Different massage techniques exist to work out the knots.   

Knots do occur in other part of the body as well.  Digestive issues arise for many people that are often poorly understood.  How can a person use abdominal massage to loosen food in the belly (release undigested food) as an option to/ if not doing a colonic?

Daily self-massage, done a particular way, literally breaks up and moves stuck fecal matter in both the large and small intestine.  Done weekly or more, Chi Nei Tsang abdominal self-massage can also induce peristaltic action in the large intestine thus moving food for a lifetime with no unnatural or invasive action. 

Furthermore, Chi Nei Tsang abdominal massage is an educational experience that includes conversation that will guide a person to “feel” when something they ate did or did not “agree” with them.  If we avoid foods that inflame the intestines and are conscious about maintaining healthy gut bacteria, we are more likely to digest, absorb and eliminate effectively each day and forego the need for outside sources to clean out.

Your encouragement to feel the way through health and wellness is so powerful. 

Please share some practices to circulate energy to help release tightness in the diaphragm, heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen and pancreas or other organs you view as significant. What can people do to stabilize and eliminate recurrent energetic imbalances?

I will do that and more in class J However the list below has links to specific practices, in a specific order that will energize and detoxify the organs as well as stabilize energetic imbalances over time.

Basic Medical QiGong practices that train us to send smiling energy to the organs, transform negative emotional energy in to positive vitality, circulate, refine and store our own life force are:

The Inner Smile Meditation

The Six Healing Sounds Meditation

The MicroCosmic Orbit Meditation

What would you recommend for people to feel more physically free and clean in their bodies? 

Come to class and begin your Medical QiGong training now.  Don’t wait.  Every day you spend emotionally or physically out of control is a day less appreciated. 

 Whether you are a therapist looking to integrate this into your practice or just looking to improve your own health, this course is for everyone interested in taking health to the next level!

Come learn methods of combining the power of the mind with 5,000 year old techniques (abdominal massage) for improving digestion, relieving toxic illness and opening channels in the body so we may improve the flow of blood, oxygen, cerebral spinal fluid and vital energy to the brain and organs.

If you truly cannot create a space to study with a living teacher, then begin study on line.  Eventually, you will master your thought processes and manifest your living teacher.  Master yourself, master your life.

What is the Healing Love practice?

Healing Love is the name Tao Master Mantak Chia gave to the art of cultivating, refining, circulating and storing reproductive energy for men and women. 

The title is exclusively used by Universal Healing Tao certified educators across the globe and their students.

The Gold Coast course will touch on this briefly as we discus why the Jade Egg practice for women helps strengthen the urogenital diaphragm and the importance of doing so.

How do Chi Nei Tsang and Medical QiGong practices revitalize physical and mental health? 

Since Chi Nei Tsang abdominal massage is a branch of Medical QiGong it, like most QiGong forms, addresses the physical, mental and energetic parts of ourselves.  The nature of this particular practice at its root is to simultaneously energize and detoxify.  The practice proves that electromagnetic energy is influenced by human emotion and indeed, human emotions generate their own Qi (Chi). 

Chi Nei Tsang supports not only the body to stay clean and energized, but offers tools to transform negative emotional energy in to positive vitality for health and longevity.

What can people do regularly to strengthen the relationship between humanity, the planet Earth and the universe?

Remember the Law of Attraction is in play 24 hours a day.  The Universe mirrors back what is in your heart and mind promptly…positive or negative.  If your desire is to be connected to your community, your planet and your self, then visualize this daily and make it happen.

Smile.  Accept the things you cannot change…and remember that nine times out of ten the patient on the operating table is ourself J 

What do you see as the connection between humanity and the universe?

What I see and what I have felt is an intrinsic relationship between humanity and the building blocks of the Universe.  At some point, unconditional love becomes the most important healing factor.  This is The Way of Nature.  Perhaps, this connectivity is the feeling of spirituality?

What would you like to leave as advice or a vision with our readers?

The secret ingredient to having a great life and a radiant body is love.  Find something to love, respect and appreciate in all situations and you have unlocked the door to paradise on earth and beyond.

Sarina, it is a joy to connect with you.  You can hear more about her extensive work on her website and during interviews such as on Lilou Mace's Juicy Living Tour Chi Nei Tsang and sexual energy of the Tao.

 

6 Reasons you exist

This is the moment to review your life purpose, to recall different ways to understand why you are where you are, and not doing something else somewhere else.  This may strike you as a changing motivation at different life stages or, a hidden driving force. 

 

What would you say to discover deeper reasons for being are not limited to goals your mind creates during this lifetime? Revitalize yourself as you ponder 6 reasons why you exist:

1. to learn

What you learn is less important that the process you go through to see yourself and this world differently. You choose to exist to generate and give meaning to mental, emotional, physical and other experience, to process the lessons and relay the vibrational information back to Source.  You opt to know what it is like to explore different forms of expression as well as to recall what is necessary to assist you to learn and move beyond lessons in this lifetime.

2.  to expand perception 

Every moment, you are inviting yourself to grow aware that your reality and what is possible for you is only limited by your own mind.  What you can do, become, how you can build on or develop your self-knowledge and physical experience and qualifications is allowed or denied by you alone.  The deepest intelligence arises as illusions of separation (perceived gaps in time) fall away between who you think you are and what is rel and possible.  As perception expands, something greater than your body connects, you register new stimuli, and you grow aware you are in the midst of an increasingly conscious light body activation.

3. to know the mind is all powerful

This is a power that is in the process of coming abck to humans through time. We have allowed timeless insights to lay dormant inside ourselves and now is the moment to access them. This involves insight into how to self-heal and transcend all sense of fear which is the most limiting vibration inthis world.

4. to realize divine being

TAccepting divine being is about taking responsibility for all your thoughts, perceptions, and behaviours. This implies you begin to understand uncertainty is a gift you give yourself to grow.  We can choose to realize we are divine and experience life through love or imagine we are less than we are and make choices out of fear.  Whenever we act out of fear, we are reactive and judgemental instead of pro-active and loving.  Acting out of fear is an unconscious way of protecting ourselves from being hurt. This hurt is a vital lesson in the awareness of soul's power. We are each a generator, orchestrator and destroyer  (g.o.d.) of every aspect of our own reality. Owning all of it is empowering as it enables us to shift focal point from a whole new level.

5. to be aware you are creating new universes

As the truth hits and you know you are not the physical body, you exist beyond time and space and you are actually spirit or light energy (choosing to have a physcial experience), the way you view your expeirence on the holographic Earth changes dramatically. Consider when you send email or phone, the energy signal is received immediately.  You communicate regularly beyond time and space yet people you dialogue with are present with you in this moment (on the phone/ skype).  From the moment, you grow aware the past, present and future happen simultaneously, you feel it is all here now.  The life you are living is because you have lessons you still feel you need to learn.  Every choice you make and do not make creates parallel universes.

6. To feel everything is a call for love

Peace, security, acceptance arise spontaneously from simply knowing this.  Being awake or expanding consciousness is not something you accomplish or earn as a reward for effort as ego has you believe.  This moment is complete in and of itself.  Everything you sense and feel is offering a message about love or invites loving yourself more. View everything as a mirror.  Notice whatever you do not like or resist around you is a reflection of what you resist loving about yourself.  Every life circumstance is a learning situation.  This is an opportunity to retrain your thinking into compassionate mindful living. Recognize and release your inner conflict and know you create everything in your life for a reson you can decode for yourself.

10 Tips from a Time Traveler

Many people are intrigued with the prospect of time travel. In the third dimensional (3-D) world, people are taught they must overcome physical forces like gravity.  The human mind conceives and engineers external technologies that are imagined as the means to enable the body to move between timelines and worlds.  Reflect on feelings arising within you.

Pop culture films like Back to the Future  and 6 sample others spark curiosity and stimulate imagination about time travel.  The Harry Potter series links time travel with magic facilitated by wands, time turners, portkeys, and spells that enable instantly appearing and disappearing.  The stories prompt readers to desire to attend Hogworts themselves and learn the magic required.  Yet what if the magic is already within yo uand awkaening at you pace?

A Wrinkle in Time is also viewed as science fiction fantasy.  It describes mysterious disappearances and people materializing out of nothing.  Different ways to collapse time and space are viewed as rare or out of reach, yet are they?  What if mysteries simply describe phenomena that are poorly understood on an energetic level?

Film and book scenarios aside, when you are ready to see from a fifth dimensional (5-D) or more expansive view (that includes all dimensions), you begin to view time travel as an experience within rather than outside yourself.  How far and wide you travel depends on how deeply you are willing to explore and know your true being. Time travel occurs through the use of words, visualisations, and other means that reveal themselves when one is tuned in or vibrationally aligned with a variety of energetic gateways. 

The above said, what would a fully conscious version of being, that which is well aware and versed in time travel, offer as advice to you who are in the process of awakening?  What could be shared to assist catching up to the wider reality, more expanded being existing outside of time and space? What sort of reminders would you lay out for yourself? Consider these ten tips to remind you to see the world in a whole new way:

1.  You are the ingenius creation of yourself

In essence, you are that which creates, that which chooses to experience physical existence, through the ideas of imagined ego and time. Beyond all is beingness. Only your imagination (the mind) limits you.

2. This reality is a shared illusion, yet you exert free will in your own reality

Belief in the objective world, involves the illusions of self and other.  Outside this, we are unified.  You are creation exploring itself in a space-time mirror.  Time serves the measurable parameters of the illusion.

3. To change your reality, change what you see and feel about yourself

Perception is an act of creation.  Your choice of creation determines how you experience yourself and by extension, your entire reality. The degree you love yourself is projected and reflected back.  The degree you deprive yourself of love (and create fear) also shapes your physical experience in this holographic reality.

4. Trusting yourself fully implies you question everything you are told 

The more you question your beliefs, the more you shift your focal point.  Your experience of reality becomes more fluid and direct. What you desire manifests quicker as you trust yourself and accept your own authority

5. Ego is the leveraging mechanism of the self

Some would even say ego is the self. It exists to invite recognition of balance and imblance of our unique energy with the wider energy of the cosmos.

6. See value and lessons in everything

The mere desire of wanting to get rid of something stems from the belief that the thing you are trying to get rid of actually exists. So on one hand we have the fact that a certain amount of ego is necessary in order to participate in life. On the other hand we have the issue that the ego causes us suffering. It causes us to buy into beliefs about ourselves or about others that aren’t true and limit our experience of the world.

7. Take complete responsibility for every aspect of your reality

Youare the choice of yoruself. Release your fear. Fear is fear of the unknown. Fear creates limitation. Natural beautiful unfolding to life only happens when you let go of fear, allow yourself to be vulnerable.  All shields are a representation of a belief in danger. WHen barricaded behind shields creates the fear. The discovery of freedom is the realisation that the only thing standing against you is you. 

8.  Love or see a message about love in everything

Enter effortless creation. You are awakening to the natural illusion.  Fearlessly be yourself. Open and follow your heart.  This is your freedom.  Believe whatever your heart feels. This is to awaken to the equality of all beingness.  Every-changing truth is a reflection of an ever-unfolding truth.  No need for an answer when there is no probem.  There are no limits to what you can be.  The joy of this life through completely allowing your own being.  In yoru heart is a dream.  The meaning of this life is to live that dream.  Yo ucan only live what you believe you can.  You are free to be whatever you wsh.  You are both the creator and perceiver of all you experience. 

9. The answer to every question is within you

You are the creator and perceiver. Soul work allows your true being to blossom without limitation or self-sabotage.  The more frequently you listen, hear and live based on intuition, the more everything you need presents itself with perfect timing so you see and patiently allow yourself to accept and respond to what is.

10.  Certain messages register as pure light and sound.

Some communication is beyond words. The subconscious cannot comprehend it but activating biocircuitry of the Template comes on line along with energy anatomy as you are ready for the expansion of reality.

10 Tips to ground yourself

It is tempting to feel lost and confused with so many changes unfolding within the body and in the external world.  Every moment you reach out for guidance and advice from others, you are inviting your own perception to expand to detect love in new forms. Reflect on these 10 tips to ground yourself in this process:

1. We exist in the physical body to experience Soul tests.

2.  If we knew all the answers to tests we go through before, lessons would not be meaningful.

3.  We go through stages of forgetting in order to know what the joy of remembering feels like.

4. Time is the means by which the ego creates to reflect, feel or intuit its way through lessons.

5. The more you understand about time, how it is created and used, the better you understand, your physical experience and ultimaltely master and mindfully direct energy.  

6. The more you elevate your perspective, move outward and upward from the self-centre, the easier and more obvious it is to see a wider (cosmic) view of wherever you are.

7.  When we grasp we humans exist for spiritual growth,  we shift away from being ego-driven to focus more on being love-oriented.

8.  The more your actions are grounded in love, the more you are living an authentic (soul) life.

9. Every moment you are receptive, you deepen understanding of the cosmic game and expand consciousness. 

10. The more you invite (create) like-minded kindered spirits into your life, who also desire to live authentically, the more you strengthen a deep sense of love and appreciation and grow aware of conditioned blind spots and allow them to dissolve. 

Interview with Svetlana Meritt

Svetlana Meritt is a former high-profile journalist and long-time spiritual seeker.  During ten years of journeys far and wide, she began to tune into higher understanding. 

On route, she discovered her life mission: to revive attention to ancient sacred sites, teach about the nature of terrestrial energy and conscious expansion. Based on her direct experiences, hew book invites living vicariously through her, feel into mysteries of the unseen Earth currents that inform all life.

Amidst an busy schedule of world travel and energetic upgrades, we appreciate that you fit this in. We are eager for your views on why it is said travel is the only thing that makes you richer.

Based on your book, Meet Me in the Underworld: How 77 Sacred Sites, 770 Cappuccinos, and 26,000 Miles Led Me to My Soul,  you are long drawn to travel. It feels heart-activating to engage in your unique adventure travelogue.  So, tell us a bit about your background, what originally sparked your interest in foreign places.

The love of travel has always been a part of my life, way back in my native Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia, where I was born. While I was still in college, I worked as a travel guide at the Adriatic Sea and on tours to the Serbian monasteries in Kosovo. I’ve been told I love traveling so much because I have a Sagittarius Moon, and travel is my default program of sorts. Be that as it may, I’ve always felt most alive when I traveled, as if traveling opened a set of new eyes. I would get insights, ideas, and inspiration I wouldn’t have had had I stayed home.

I resonate deeply with your travel experiences. An avid explorer myself, I am intuitively drawn to visit over 65 countries. Your own travelogue echoes we are each living the hero's journey, creating a map of self-discovery for navigating the road less traveled. Love that your book reflects universal elements. On some level, leaving the familliar, seeing who you think you are from new vantage points, reflects the path of awakening or what Joseph Campbell describes as the Hero's journey. 

Only much later in life, after my travelogue was published and I started teaching a course on sacred sites, an unexpected memory from childhood floated to the surface of my consciousness – a memory that was buried for, what I still consider, mysterious reasons my whole life.

When I was seven, living in Belgrade, my mother brought me a coffee-table book for my birthday about the 7 wonders of the Ancient World and 100 wonders of the modern world – actually about the most famous sacred sites of the world! I was so fascinated by the beautiful pictures of ancient temples, mountains, sanctuaries, palaces, cathedrals, that I read the book over and over many times. For hours I stared at the pictures, noticing every detail, imagining what had transpired there, until they became amalgamated with my own image-making faculty.

Being fascinated with time, whenever life choices are linked to memory, a quote by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman jumps to mind.  He says, "We don’t choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences. Even when we think about the future, we don’t think of our future normally as experiences. We think of our future as anticipated memories."  Its like we imagine how we would like to feel and can consciously create experiences to reflect our projections.

I relate to that. When I was 26, I came to Santa Barbara, California, to do graduate studies in French Literature, and forgot everything about the book I read as a child. I also continued my journalist career and led a very exciting life, interviewing famous public figures, such as the Dalai Lama, Yoko Ono, John Voight, Allen Ginsberg.  Looking back, I think the seeds planted by the book germinated in me until many years later they led me to my own journey of exploring and researching sacred sites.

Every event the human experiences in this physical world is indeed a stepping stone to what is unforeseen and yet, on another leve, is orchestrated perfectly by the soul to learn lessons.

Its funny how we are all drawn to individuals who enable us to get more in touch with ourselves.  In the spirit of 2 Cellos who offer their version of Coldplay's Every Teardrop is a waterfall, we are each a unique droplet in the cosmic ocean, interacting with droplets that create a path home.

If you had to put it into words, what did you observe was happening in your life to trigger what an awakening? 

Simply put, I met a man I had been searching for since I was 16; a man who could answer all my numerous questions about the universe and the meaning of life; a man who interpreted my extremely vivid and exceedingly perplexing dreams. He became my teacher, then my partner, and finally my husband – Dwight Johnson. 

Any particular reason you were drawn to specific countries that you write about in your travelogue? Was it business-related or was there another voice guiding you?

I’m afraid, nothing was business-related. We were guided where we needed to be, even if at the time that wasn’t evident. The guidance for the first country, the little island in the Mediterranean Sea called Cyprus, came through a book “The Magus of Strovolos,” about this teacher and healer, a western version of Don Juan, if you will. When we read the book we felt drawn to study with him and that’s how the idea about our journey was born.

As the journey continued, however, I became more sensitive to the inner guidance. I would experience something like an inner knowing, a deep conviction that would swoop through me and I would know without having to think. It is a beautiful feeling, a beautiful way to live, an inspired way to live. I only wish everything in my life would happen that way.

On the surface, trips related to study, work, or events, visiting friends, being drawn to structures, natural wonders or mysterious sites. Only later, it hits me that spontaneous itinerary changes, seeing images on postcards and dropping everything to go, cancelled and re-routed flights always have an underlying energetic purpose. 

What shifted you from a non-spiritual motivation to feeling like you are on a spiritual journey?

Actually, it was a more or less spiritual motivation since the beginning, as we went to India to meditate in the ashrams, to study with the teacher/healer in Cyprus, and to explore the temples of Egypt. What shifted later was the rapport between the journey and myself. At the beginning I related to it as something outside of myself: there was me and there was the experience of the places, and we were separate. Later, however, the journey and I merged. My very life became the journey and vice versa.

Our readers are interested in milestones or pivotal moments.  Please share a few that stand out.

I can identify two kinds of pivotal moments: those that made me become a better person through sacrifice and deepening of compassion, caused by Dwight’s life-threatening asthma attacks in India and Rome, or his accident in a church in France that left him with a broken hip. Those were really times of trials, when I was forced to forget about myself and my little needs, and give of myself unselfishly. There is a great beauty in sacrificing the wants and demands of your personality (which always wants something!) to attend to the survival of your beloved. You feel yourself become bigger in a way. 

The other kind of pivotal moments were those that led to the expansion of my consciousness. Once it was through a weird accident I had in Antibes, France, which took me out of the body and consciousness for some time. After a night of excruciating pain, in the morning everything was miraculously gone, and I felt acutely aware of everything around me, able to merge with other people. I considered that event my rebirth. Another time it was through my victory over a deep-seated, paralyzing fear of authority, triggered and full blown by the disturbing and intimidating interaction with the woman whose house we rented in Provence. After many months of struggle, when I managed to lift myself up above the fear and look at it from that vantage point, I almost heard the cracking of the chains that held me captive in the fear frequency. The sense of liberation, of expansion, of becoming whole, was absolutely intoxicating.

As you can see, there were quite a few pivotal moments. But then again, it was a long journey – six whole years, and my inner journey was my full-time job. It was a do or die for me. I was fortunate that during those years we were financially helped, so I didn’t have to work. It would have been impossible to go through all those intense emotional trials and break-throughs if I had to work. A true and sincere inner work is a hard work, and sometimes it can spell the death of the personality, either symbolic or even physical. In fact, some incarnations are milestone incarnations, when our Soul decides to free itself from bondages we accumulate through life experiences.

Since publishing the book, you have been offering workshops and tours of sacred places. What compelled you to get into that? Also how do you choose which ones to visit over and over? After all, you have visited a lot.

Everything developed organically: one thing led to another, to the third, etc. It was part of my book promotion to give talks about Earth energies and sacred sites. Amazingly, every door opened and there was great interest in the topic, which makes me realize there is a need in the collective unconscious of humanity for this kind of knowledge. I gave talks even at conventional places like the Rotary Club to hard-core businessmen! Then my proposal to teach a course on sacred sites at the City College non-credit division was accepted, and that’s how everything unfolded.

Love that you are developing a new course around your experiences of energetics of sacred places.  Growing interest in sacred places  and visiting them reflects that expansion of collective consciousness. 

What advice would you offer our readers who are themselves experiencing spiritual revelations or transcendental moments?

Even though it may be unpopular in the New Age community, it has been my experience that the higher you go, the lower you go too. It happens both ways. When you choose the spiritual path, much will be demanded of you. The light reveals not only the heights, but the ravines and hidden nooks, and god knows what’s in them. So be prepared for the unexpected.

And above all – share what you learn.

How has your personal and professional life changed as the result of publishing your book?

By the very nature of its genre – travelogue and memoir – the book has been another journey. Even though I didn’t anticipate it, it has offered me a different perspective, from a valuable time distance, to grasp the events in a wider frame. Many times in the course of writing, I paused in front of my screen and squealed: “Oh, I missed that!”

Mastering Time is linked to self-mastery.  How do your views of time travel shift on your journey?

I also had a very unusual experience during the process of writing. At some junctures, I felt as if the very nature of time was fluid, and by reconnecting with myself in the past I was able to help myself in the present. It was somewhat like time travel: I would go back in my memory and with my present deeper understanding I was able to shift something, even if only very little, to ease the suffering of my past self.

On a more objective level, publishing the book helped me establish firmly my service activity. I fully realized that this IS my calling.

Do you envision other books or is this a springboard to other things?

Oh, yes. I’m gestating a new book on sacred sites as an outward manifestation of the Spiritual Science taught in ancient Mystery Schools. I’ve been having a growing sense the time has come when this knowledge, previously kept secret under vows of silence, is now being unlocked. The vows are lifted; the time has come to restore the Mysteries, not as they were, of course, but according to the present level of consciousness and understanding.

Readers would definitely enjoy hearing more about this sacred course you are putting together.  Keep us posted and we can add an update. Readers love hearing whether any new spiritual mentor inspires you of whether your path/ course simply feels divinely guided by light, sound or something beyond words.

By the way, what is your vision for the changes unfolding around you? How do you view life and yourself differently?

It is a continuous deepening of understanding of how things work, of the invisible laws that govern life and manifestation. The point is: learning and inner work never really stop. My learning since the book came out has been to do things more impersonally, rather than to be attached to the outcome. Ultimately, the outcome, the results, are not in my hands. What is in my hands is to do my part the best I can. It was a very hard lesson to learn – to let go of what I wanted and thought should happen. For me, the reward for a lesson well learned has been a greater degree of wisdom.

Anything else you would like to add?

So much…but most importantly to encourage your readers to realize fully that we are collectively at an important crossroads; the decisions and choices we make now will set the frame for the upcoming era. Every effort matters; every inner achievement counts. Everything we do personally will contribute to the creation of a new society (I use this term in a broad sense). And we want the new society to be built on the spiritual principles and higher values. Let us be aware that we are all architects of this new civilization.

Sounds like this vision is following a new trend of visionaries, including Eckhart Tolle's teachings and his renowned book  A New Earth among others. Many thanks Svetlana. Keep us in the loop of your travels, presentations and course developments. We are inspired by your energy and journey!