Discover Your Authentic Power & Live from The Seat of Your Soul | Gary Zukav

You are the love, but to see it yourself and to share it requires removing every bit of your personality. Preventing that one choice, love creates constructive, blissful, wonderful consequences. And the other fear creates the opposite. To create real power is to align yourself with love, with your soul. But you can't do that if you don't know what in you is preventing that from happening. And those are the frightened parts of your personality. And you don't have to believe them. And you don't have to act on them. When you use your emotional awareness, you put an arm's length between you and a part of your personality, and that gives you the ability to choose. The two major tools of creating authentic power are when you choose to act or speak from that energy. That's the moment of creating authentic power. That's when the rubber meets the road. It's amazing what we are, and our new consciousness is moving us in that direction. Was it moving us toward love?

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Hey everyone, welcome back to the No Thyself podcast. Our guest today is a number one New York Times best-selling author whose work, book, his teachings have supported millions of people for decades now, transforming their perspective and way of being in the world from chasing control externally to discovering the authentic power that lies in the presence within. And we're going to be exploring a lot of themes today of what that looks like, what that feels like, what that is like, um, so that this conversation can be a reference point for everybody tuning in to anchor that frequency and that way of being deeper into the world. Gary Zukov, thank you so much for being here.

It's a joy to be here, Andre. It's uh it's such a pleasure to have you.

One quote that really resonates with me that is super alignment in alignment with your work is this one from Marcel Prrowse, which says, "The real voyage of discovery comes not in seeking new lands but in seeing through new eyes," and the shift of perspective from the five-sensory human to the multisensory human. There's many ways we could label the term and the transformation and evolution of consciousness that's both happening externally in the world but also primarily within us first and foremost. How do you—because I know you've explained it in many different ways in different contexts throughout the years—uh, explain that shift? What is that fundamental shift from that old paradigm and way of consciousness to the new evolved one that's that's birthing?

You've covered a lot of ground in these introductory remarks. Maybe we can unpack a little bit of it. I don't know Marcel's work, but it sounds as though he's had some good experiences.

As we start, I'd like to say to you and to all of the people who are watching us and listening to us, I don't expect you to take anything that I say as so because I say it. On the contrary, I suggest that if you resonate with anything that I say, that you experiment with it, take it into your life, apply it as you are able, and see what it creates for you. And if you like what it creates, experiment some more. And if it doesn't work for you, let it go. There are so many people with pulpits, podcasts, television shows, books—you the authority in your life. And there's a reason for that because you are continually creating and you are responsible for what you create. In this way, you experience it. And so you said there are changes outside and inside, but first and foremost inside. Our new consciousness is taking us to exciting places. Except that by the time we get there, we're not there anymore.

Let me start with my experience. There is happening now an unprecedented epic transformation of human consciousness. It's not just a big thing. It's not just a new thing. It's an enormous thing. It has never happened before. And the only thing that could be comparable to it is the genesis of human experience itself. So for hundreds of thousands of years, roughly 300,000, but it depends upon where you start counting. It could be 3.5 million. The old consciousness has been evolving. And now a new consciousness is replacing that with velocity unimaginable. Our entire species is acquiring its new consciousness within three generations. That's faster than an eyeblink. That's faster than a heartbeat in comparison to the old standard of evolutionary time. We're in the middle of it. It's happening right now. The old consciousness is limited to the five senses. In other words, if something can't be detected by any of them, can't be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or touched, it doesn't exist to that consciousness. To the old consciousness, that would be imagination or fantasy or delusion. And the understanding of power, the only understanding that that consciousness could have is manipulation and control. The ability to manipulate and to control. And that's been our good medicine for a long time. Now it's poison.

The new consciousness is not confined to the limitations or the perceptions of the five senses. That means that human experience is now moving beyond the five senses. And that means we are beginning to experience some aspects or qualities or processes of non-physical reality. People use that term a lot, but now non-physical reality is becoming reality, and we're beginning to touch it, and it's beginning to touch us. It's easy to know if you have the new consciousness. Just ask yourself, "Am I only a body and a mind?" If you have the old consciousness, the answer will be, "What else is there?" If you have the new consciousness, you won't even need to answer. You do, and you know it, and no one has to tell you. That's a five. That's a multi-sensory perception. And the new consciousness is bringing with it a new understanding of power—alignment of the personality with the soul. When I say spiritual, I mean having to do with the soul. You are the soul.

From this broader context that's becoming visible to us. And by the way, it's not as though this is the whole universe becoming apparent. No single perception can encompass the universe. But we can use an example from light, physical light. I wrote a book on physics once, and it turns out—not from the book on physics—but that physical light is a reflection of non-physical light, and that's why the language of physical light is so applicable. It's the language of frequency and energy and amplitude and phase coherence. You might say the old consciousness is limited to visible light, and we know from visible light that runs from red to violet. But now we know—without ever having experienced it—but we experiment with it through technology—that there is light of lower frequency than red. Infrared, for example, you see it in the deli when its rotisseries are turning in infrared light and they're cooking. And we know that there are frequencies above violet, ultraviolet, high frequency, very high frequency, ultra high frequency. We can't see them, but we're using them right now. You're recording me. You're recording you in video, in audio, and that is going out not by semaphore, not by text. No one's writing a book. It's going out to television stations. It's going out to the internet, most of which is not connected by wire anymore. What is it connected by? It's connected by these invisible frequencies that work, but we can't see it. By analogy, our experience, our human experience is—you must say—red to violet, and now it's expanding this much. So it's gone from there to that. What is that? That is one part of a continuum. You know what a continuum is? It has no beginning and it has no end. So that's our human experience. Now we move from here to here on a continuum that has no beginning and has no end. It's amazing what we are and what we can experience, and our new consciousness is moving us in that direction. What's it moving us toward? Love.

We are learning the difference between external power, the ability to manipulate and control, and authentic power, which is alignment of the personality with the soul and the intentions of the soul, our harmony and cooperation and sharing and reverence for life. And as we align ourselves with that, we become powerful. Let's go back to the major shift—the shift. It isn't major. It isn't minor. It's the shift from five-sensory perception to multisensory perception. For example, my beloved Linda Francis, that I was blessed to be with for 27 years in the Earth School. The Earth School is this domain of time and space and matter and duality. It's a learning environment, and we're learning love. We're learning how to create it. Authentic power is love. There's no greater power. And that's what we're learning how to do.

Well, how does this earth school work? Continuously, flawlessly, exquisitely. Well, that's a start. What that means is that whenever you're having—having an experience—it's perfect for your spiritual growth. Even if there are four of us, we're all having experiences. And for each of us, the experiences that each is having is perfect for his or her spiritual growth. That's exquisite. That would take infinite banks of supercomputers to untangle that complexity with just four people. And there are billions of people on our planet alone. But this is the Earth school. So you know right away if that's the case, and I suggest to you that it is. In my experience, it is. Makes no sense at all to blame somebody for what you're feeling. It's perfect for you. So instead of complaining about it, use it. See what it's bringing into your life, into your awareness, and what you can learn about it. Not about the other person or about the world, but about yourself.

So as we zoom into the personal lived experience of this shift in consciousness from expanding from a five-sensory way of perceiving reality to tapping into deeper presence to be able to expand from here to here as you were talking about earlier in terms of our ability to be sensitive and to experience and perceive a greater bandwidth of information. But there are many fragrances like the blossoming of a flower; there's the fragrance that is inherent within it, and I would like to talk about those—the atmosphere that arises as the as the evolution of consciousness blossoms. Uh, you mentioned many shifts from how the personality starts to serve the soul, how you live with reverence uh towards the external uh world as is.

These are choices, Andre. These are choices. I don't have to live with reverence. I could still be a special forces officer. I couldn't now because I can. It's not who I am. But we have choices. And from the experience that I'm sharing with you, multisensory perception is is a gift from the universe. We don't have to make it happen. The new power is a potential. We have to create it. And that requires emotional awareness, responsible choice, and consulting intuition. The heart of authentic power. That means emotions are at the heart of authentic power. So you cannot grow spiritually if you're not aware of your emotions. You can think all you want, but if you're not aware of your emotions, you have to do that first.

How does one discern what is intuition based off of soul-led guidance per se versus uh karmic material um based off past wounding? How do you discern between the voice?

Well, first of all, I wouldn't call anything past wounding. There's no wounds. There's experiences. There is what happens. That is what happens. And you can see it either as a wound or—let me put it this way—when you see through the lens of fear, you're not seeing things the way they actually are. You're seeing an illusion. The entire realm of fear is an illusion. Love is real. That's why following it takes you where you want to go, to fulfillment, to joy, to completion, to creativity. And that's why following fear doesn't. I mean, if it did, John Lennon would have written a song called "All We Need Is Fear," which obviously we know that's not so. We can choose. And in the Earth School, this is what we learn to do. We learn to choose what. The Earth school is the domain of duality. As I mentioned, everything's got an opposite. Big, small, little, good, bad. But the fundamental duality is love and fear. The opposite of love is not hatred, it's fear. And we make that decision between love and fear continually. If we're not aware of the intention that we're acting from, it's coming from fear. It requires awareness, consciousness to choose love. And these are things that are visible to multisensory perception. These are good things to know—the difference between good—between love and fear—because if we act—if you—whoever is listening—if I—speaking—act from fear, I create consequences for myself; and when I act or speak from love, I create consequences from myself, but they're different consequences. Fear creates the consequence—they're destructive, contractive, expecting unhealthy consequences, and they're painful. Love creates the opposite: healthy, expanded, meaningful consequences. So to create real power is to align yourself with love, with your soul. But you can't do that if you don't know what in you is preventing that from happening. And those are the frightened parts of your personality. And when you look through them, you'll always find painful physical experiences in your energy processing centers. For example, your throat, your chest, your solar plexus. These are chakras in the east. They're called uh by this Sanskrit word, but there's seven of them. And each of them has a function. And each of them processes energy. And when you are processing energy that—say—enters your head at the top and goes down and up again in any of these centers—when you're processing it in fear, it will create painful physical sensations in the vicinity of that center, and I don't mean happy, sad, blossoming, fragrant—I mean aching, throbbing, stinging, stabbing, burning, churning physical sensations; and when you are experiencing a frightened part of your personality, those physical sensations will be painful, unpleasant at first, uncomfortable, but then as you begin to be familiar with them, they're painful. And also, a frightened part of your personality will always be thinking critical or judgmental thoughts. For example, "I already know all this. I don't need to be here," or "I'll never understand this. Everyone around me is way above me," or "That person is so stupid. She's so stupid," or "I'm so stupid." Frightened parts of a personality think these things and experience these things. And if you don't realize that these experiences are not coming from the unchangeable ground of your being, they're coming from a part of your personality. And you don't have to believe them, and you don't have to act on them. When you use your emotional awareness, you—you—you put an arm's length between you and a part of your personality, and that gives you the ability to choose to act on it or not. That's where emotional awareness is so important.

You just shared actions that stem from the frightened part of our personality is going to bear consequences vastly different from actions that stem from the awareness of uh us being connected to the unchanging ground of our being. Like you said, what I'm attempting to convey is this that it's not an action that creates consequences. It's the intention, and the intention is either love or fear. So I agree with what you're saying. If—when you act with fear, you create painful consequences for yourself. And when you act with love, you create the opposite.

Yeah. The place that they're coming from. Well, I'm calling it an intention. For me, an intention is a quality of consciousness. If I uh act from love, I infuse. By doing that, my words and my actions are infused with that quality of consciousness. And if I act from fear, my deeds and words are infused with that quality of consciousness.

So would you say that the outdated paradigm or old paradigm of power over—which is controlling—I'm chasing control in our life that comes and is derived from these frightened parts of our personality. Whereas the new consciousness is coming from actions that are in deeper attention with the unchanging part of our being uh the present part of our self.

I wouldn't use that language, but I think we're—um—let me say, first of all, the new consciousness allows us to see that there are—first of all—that we are incarnations of a spirit. From the old consciousness, a lifetime beginning with your birth and ending with your death is a book. The book begins when you're born. It ends when you die. And that's the end. From the new consciousness, a lifetime is a chapter in a book. The book didn't begin when you were born. And it's not going to end when your personality dies. That will happen when your soul returns home to non-physical reality. And the tool that it adapted to grow—to learn in the earth school—is discarded—ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And what I'm suggesting is that—in fact—describing is that we can use the new consciousness to do things that people with the old consciousness couldn't do. They didn't recognize parts of their personalities, frightened parts, loving parts, and their ability to choose between them. But when they're choosing one or the other, they're not choosing something that's right or something that's wrong. There's no reward. There's no punishment. It's a change of consequences that you're creating for yourself. One choice, love, creates constructive, blissful, wonderful consequences. And the other fear creates the opposite. So it's always possible to climb the steepest route you can. I love climbing mountains, but you don't have to. You—you—you can pick a road that's a sand—has a lovely sandy beach with gentle surf by your side. It's your choice. Love or fear. And that way we can see how exquisite each experience is for you. And then when you say, "Well, who wrote this chapter that I'm living now?" You did. Look at it this way. Imagine—you don't have to imagine—but consider that every experience you have is a karmic necessity. It's not an accident. It's not an angry deity. It's not bad luck. It's not a tragedy, and it's not a blessing. Blessings are something else. But it is what it is. If you want to see it—in other words, how you experience something depends upon how you hold it. If you hold it with fear, if you see it through the lens of fear, you can see it as a tragedy, a wound, something that shouldn't have happened, something that wasn't good. If you see it through the lens of love, you see it for what it is.

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Back to the show.

How does the personality come into this and how we relate to it? How it changes as it starts to serve the soul.

It is—by it—you mean the new consciousness.

Yeah, it's a gift. We've got an entire—We've got four—two billion people now probably with a new consciousness. How many ways did that appear? How many ways could it occur? Infinite wisdom comes—too—and compassion and love and awareness come in an infinitude of ways—every life. It's the proverbial snowflake, and you are that—except more exquisite and more long-lasting, more durable because this—this uh—incarnation does not last that very long. In fact, time—the Earth school is the domain of time, space, matter, and duality and fear. None of those exist outside of the Earth school. So to say that you have an incarnation does it—or that you have a past life and a future life—is not the way your soul would say it. A soul has many incarnations—maybe countless—and from its perspective, they are all simultaneous. So this is how—by the way—healing—so to speak—generational karma happens. When you make a choice of love instead of fear, it not only affects you, it affects the world, it affects all of the souls—might say—fellow souls of your personality. So I'm—I'm trying to remember your questions because I—I want to answer it the best I can.

Yeah. No, I—I—I think—I think you did. I'm just curious as this translates to uh relating to our—our personality uh within

Ourselves, within the world, our gifts, our career. But then also I would like to get your perspective a bit on relationships. Um, because I think this power over versus power from shows up a lot in relationship dynamics. Your relationships are the sub-provide the substance of your spiritual growth. Everything shows up in them. And they're changing too.

By the way, there is a new human archetype now: spiritual partnership. Partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. This is very different from marriage. Very different from any other archetype of relationship. Five sensory humans has no purpose; I simply didn't exist. But it does now.

So when you're in a spiritual partnership, spiritual partners know that they have souls. They know there's a reason that they're together. And that reason has to do with their souls. They know that they can't create authentic power for someone else, but they can support someone else. For example, someone says, "Oh my god, the my child just fell off his bike and he's in the street." A friend will say, "That's okay. We'll get him to the hospital right now. There's a great medical center right here and they've got a pediatric specialist unit and we'll do all that. We we'll do what's necessary." But for the experience, which is what you ask about, the friend, a spiritual partner will say, "Oh, where are you feeling that? What are you feeling now? That thing that you just said—oh my god, my child is he's hurt—was that coming from love or was that coming from fear?" In other words, a spiritual partner will attempt to support his or her partner in becoming more aware of what she's experiencing so that she can choose to experience differently.

Now I said that what we're learning in the earth school, you could look at it different ways. We're learning choice. That's the most fundamental of spiritual tools. Without it, there you you can't go any further. That means that the earth school is a very important place. It's not heaven's second-rate, hand-me-down, as the song goes. This is a significant place, and it's not a place that's separate from anything else because nothing is separate from anything else. There is no elsewhere, but there is our experience here and using it with the most in the most constructive way with the consciousness that we're now acquiring. And that's what I'm talking about.

I think as that illusion of separation starts to fade away, this energy or atmosphere of reverence starts to become more present. And a quote directly from your book about reverence was that, uh, "to live with reverence means being willing to say that is life. We must not harm it." Mhm. Of course, harm from the dense sense could could mean physical harm, but there's also a lot more subtle ways in which we can intend to harm. Um, and so what does fundamentally living with reverence feel like and look like? Well, um, gonna say we're unfolding a lot rapidly. So, let's look at what you said. Can you can physically harm life or you can harm someone else. You can't harm someone else. You can kill someone else. You can torture someone else. But my hero there is a fellow named Victor Frankl who was a Jew who was in a Nazi death camp. And one frigid morning, he and his work party were stumbling, some without shoes, over ruts in a frozen road with Nazi guards poking them with their rifle butts. And Victor had this realization. He said, "They've taken everything from me: my family, my home, my friends, the life I had, but they can't take from me my ability to love." Oh, this touches me still. This man saw that in a Nazi death camp. Well, we're all seeing it now. We're all seeing it from the broader perspective of multisensory perception. We have choice. We can look at anything through fear or we can look at it as it actually is—an opportunity to grow spiritually and use it that way.

Like when you look inside yourself and use emotional awareness and you see that a frightened part is active, you can in that moment use your volition, your willpower to put your attention into a loving part of your personality. Might be a time that it will be a time that you were loved or loving or both and you knew it. Might be with a grandparent, a parent, a child, a friend. For me, it was a time with my dad whom I never got along with until later when I started to change. But when I would come home to Pittsburgh, Kansas, and I would knock on the door, and I could hear my mom saying, "It's scary. It's scary." And she'd open the door and my dad, who couldn't walk very well then, would come around. We had a little tracked home, but he came into the room and his face was radiant when he saw me. Just radiant. I knew I was loved. This is from someone that I really hated at one time in my life and who provided me opportunities that I'm only now fully appreciating. So that's a place I go back to when I'm in a frightened part of my personality.

And when you do that, when you go back or you go to—because it's not back in time. Time is not what we think. It's not sequential. In fact, it doesn't exist except in the Earth school. When you choose to act or speak from that energy, the energy of a loving part of your personality instead of the energy of a frightened part of your personality while you're experiencing the frightened part, that's the moment of creating authentic power. That's when the rubber meets the road. That's when energy becomes matter. That's when a multitude of potential lives becomes your experience in your life in that moment. That's the moment that karma is created. And as you do that, as you create authentic power in just this way again and again, the frightened part of your personality that you're challenging begins to lose its control over you. Challenge doesn't mean go to war with it. And it doesn't mean accept it, embrace it, heal it. It just means experience it intimately, fully, and choose not to be controlled by it, to move beyond its control. And it will still continue to come. It will still hurt. It will still think its thoughts, but they won't penetrate you as deeply as they did before; they'll begin to roll off of you like water off the feathers of a duck, and that's creating authentic power, and that's what I love to share.

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I love to share it because I learned about it through asking questions to an angel about my life, and the angel would answer questions. You would be sitting down speaking to what in your perception was an actual angel, or like, "Can you elaborate?" Here's the elaboration. And it starts when I got invited to Sweden because I written a book called *The Dancing Woolly Masters* that won that award for physics that I mentioned. And at the same time, I had just broken up with a woman and I didn't have relationships. I was addicted to sex.

This was like what, 20 to 40 years old, or how old were you? Oh, I was addicted to sex through my 30s. And you wrote, just for context, *The Seed of the Soul*; you wrote at what time? When did, how old were you when that came out? Uh, it was published in '89. Okay. So one of the—this is a good—So anyway, frightened parts of my personality were in pain, grief, despair, loss, all of that. That's a lot. And I went to the desert. I went to visit a fellow that I'd met, a Jungian analyst. His name is Robert Johnson. He wrote some books. He, we, she, he was brilliant. And he said, "Why don't you—why don't you drive down here and spend some time with me?" So I did. I went to San Diego, and after a few days he said, "Why don't you go into the desert and become enlightened? That's how it's traditionally done." Robert is low on social skills, laconic and wonderful. I didn't get enlightened, but I did go to the desert and I stayed there weeks, two weeks, three weeks. And in that time I learned—I learned how to understand my dreams and I started to learn about myself. And then I realized I want to go to this invitation because I was invited to Sweden, but I couldn't go because I couldn't even speak. I was in so much loss and despair, and I thought, "Now I'm going to go." So I went—went home to tell my dad I love him. I realized that for the first time, and I began a change. I don't think in him maybe. Yeah, in him, but certainly in me. And then I went to Sweden.

First night there, everybody's jetlagged. There's four presenters; I'm one of them. Edgar Mitchell, the founder of the Institute of Noetic Science, then an Apollo 14 astronaut, was another one of co-presenter with me and two more. And the organizer of the retreat—of the it was not a retreat, it was a conference—and he said, "Um, I'm so glad that you're here. It's a welcome to Sweden, and all the big companies are here: the telecoms, the banks, Volvo, Saab, and I have a surprise for you." Oh, we were just jetlagged. But he took us into this room. There was this man sitting on a chair, middle-aged, and his son. He's speaking in Swedish. They close the door, and he becomes someone else; his personality changes into what he says is a 3,000-year-old Egyptian named Umbris. All right, I'm just jetlagged; I'm not really that interested.

So, the next morning, Yan, the conference organizer, comes to me again in the lobby and says, "You can speak with Umbris anytime you want." And I didn't realize what a nice offer, what a really good offer that was because a lot of people are lined up to speak with Umbris in Sweden. And even though my interaction had been—my experience had been shallow, I was curious. So I said, "I—I would like to." So he took me to the room again. Same thing. The man, his son stood and his son and stood—a becomes Umbris. So the first thing that Umbris said captured my attention completely and permanently. He said, "How did you learn to understand your dreams in the desert?" And—no one knew I was—no one knew about that. Robert knew that I was in the desert, but he didn't know what happened. My parents didn't even know about the desert, but Umbris knew. He knew all about it. And I realized this is not something for me to flippantly dismiss anymore. This is real. Even though I don't believe it's real, this is real. And so we talked, and he told me, "Gary, a little flame has been ignited in you. It's a little flame. It's like a candle in a cathedral, and you need to feed the flame or it'll go out—or it could go out." And wow, I—that alarmed me. I said, "So it could go out." And he said, "Yes, you could fall." I said, "Well, how do I feed the flame?" And he said, "You must need to talk to people." I said, "Umbris, that's what I can't do." After three weeks in the desert, I'd go to get groceries in a little store and the clerk would say, "Good morning, sir," and I—I couldn't talk. I was so deep in myself. Everything was like intimidating in a way. And then Umbris took both my hands like this, and his grip was strong, really strong. And he said, "Will you speak with people?" There's no convincing me. It was a question. And I had to—I felt fear. I felt trepidation. And then I said, "Yes." Let go of my hands. And our conversation ended. And I went outside, and there was a group of people right outside the doorway in the hall talking, and I said—immediately the universe had given me an opportunity to implement the decision I had just made—and I found out later from Yan this wasn't a conference on decision-making.

I met Umbris one more time in Sweden, and I asked him, "Why do you have to talk to me through someone who speaks Swedish, who speaks to his son, who speaks English, who translates it into me, and then the other way back? Why can't you just talk to me?" I want to challenging him. "Why can't you just talk to me?" And he said, "Yes, I could. Could you hear me?" And I knew the answer as soon as I heard the question. That's the beginning of this story.

Years later, I meet another woman, and early on she says to me playfully, "I channel a non-physical entity. Would you like to meet it?" And because of my experiences with Umbris, I said, "Yes, I want to." And I said, "What is this non-physical entity?" And she said, "He says he's an angel." I said, "Well, does the angel have a name?" And she—she said, "He says you can call me Genesis." So I said, "Yes, I want to meet Genesis." So we got in a room. Uh, we were in a larger house that was private and quiet, and she channeled Genesis. She closes her eyes. She can't remember anything afterwards, and she seems to go to sleep, and Genesis appears. Genesis says, "Um, how can I help you?" And I wanted to say, "Genesis, I can't stop thinking about sex. I can't stop looking for sex. I can't stop having sex, and I have herpes. Can you please help me?" But I didn't say any of that. I said, "Well, I have a some experiences I'd like to discuss with you, and I've picked up something along the way. I hope you can help me with," and Genesis said, "Let us move into healing, shall we," just like that, and he answered my question—not the one I asked, the one I needed to ask. We talked the whole morning; we took a break; talked again; talked twice in the afternoon. This was September 1st, I think, early September 1985. That was my first talk with Genesis, and Genesis said, "Over the course of a day, the issue is not sexuality for you. The issue is the nature of love." So immediately he had taken my concerns with my addiction to sex and my herpes into a larger, more meaningful context. And then later, as we discussed more, he said, "The issue—the fundament—the the issue for you is the nature of power." I thought, "But what has power got to do with—with all of this?" But he kept explaining, explaining, and I never stopped talking with Genesis. Um, and then after two years, our engagement unraveled. And this was very concerning to me because not only was I going to lose her, I was going to lose my access to Genesis. And I was—and she was—living on a faraway Midwest, and I was on the West Coast, and we were at her home, her home. When I was driving back one night, close to when we were going—going to separate—to leave, I was going to leave. And I had a thought, and immediately after the thought, I had another one. Genesis put that thought in my head. Genesis did it. I think he did. I could hardly wait to get back and talk with him again. And I don't know if it's a he. I asked him, "What are you, one once?" And he said, "I'm an impersonal energy dynamic." And give me some more description, too. And I said, "Did—did you put that thought in my—in my mind?" He said, "Yes, I did. Can you remember the voice you heard when you heard that thought?" And then I realized, "Yes, I can. I can." And Genesis said, "Well done. Communication is established. Me, you will not lose, and I never have." That was about 40 years ago.

You went on a five-year journey thereafter, eventually coming to the—to the writing of—of *The Seed of the Soul*. Correct. A five-year journey. Oh, you mean from—from '84 to '89? *The Seed of the Soul* was published in '89. Got it. But written before that. And so you went on quite the journey there. Yes. But you're giving me credit for much more than I could take credit for. I wanted to share what I had learned over those two years from Genesis. So I did. It's not mine; it's Genesis. *The Seed of the Soul*. Everything in it. Everything I'm telling you that I know from my experience now came first from Genesis. It was fun for me. It—it wasn't—I used to think writing a book—well, *The Dancing Woolly Masters*, the book on physics, was fun—pure fun. I love my intellect; that's why I was talking to you about intellect. I know about it; it's—it's—it's a joy, but it's limited. I wrote to the best of my ability what I learned from Genesis, and toward the end I didn't know if I could do it well enough, so I asked Genesis, "Would it be okay if I use some of your words?" "Yes, Gary." And I wrote the book, and it got published. And just before it was published, I was in Mount Shasta. I had moved there by then. And I was musing. I thought *The Dancing Woolly Masters* got a rave review in the *New York Times* the day before it was published—I mean, two-thirds of a newspaper page with a picture of me and it completely laudatory. Not one critical remark. And I thought, "Well, what is the *New York Times* going to think about this book, which is about reincarnation, evolution, and the soul? They'll just write something savage about that." They—they didn't even notice it. But Genesis said, "Don't worry yourself. This arrow will find its mark."

How did it end up finding—what was the first spark of it finding its mark? Yeah. Well, first of all, it started to sell, and it sold, I think, pretty well for the book on the market. Maybe—I was 100,000 or more copies. And then I got a call from Oprah Winfrey, and she introduced herself. I was living in Mount Shasta, and I didn't have a television. I had a television but it was connected to a VHS player, and no, we don't have a television station in Mount Shasta. She introduced herself; I didn't recognize her. Her name was familiar. And she called back and explained she had a television show. And then I didn't think much of it. And then later one of her producers called and he said, "Would you like to—uh, come to Chicago and be interviewed by Miss Winfrey for a part of her shows at that time? The last five minutes had something called 'Remembering Your Spirit.'" And the other minutes, the other 37 minutes were whatever she put in it. So I called Linda—that's my spiritual partner, Linda Francis, my beloved. She was in San Diego. I said, "What do you think?" She said, "Let's go." So we flew to Chicago where we met—and I met Oprah. She had us meet in a little apartment close to Op—uh, Harpo Studios, and there was her team there. She brought her all—She was teaching *The Seed of the Soul* to her company—to her staff—and it was a lot of staff. I mean, a lot of employees, anyway. So we had a circle in a prayer, a little prayer-like meditation mostly, and then we went—we sat down on a couch and like you and I are talking now. Exactly, except there's a camera over her shoulder and a camera over mine, and she's asking me questions, and I can tell that they're—they're good questions, and she's really trying to understand, and sometimes she's really being taken back by my answers and—and not pushing them away—just "Ooh," you know, that kind of "Ooh," and afterwards—Oh, little backstory: Linda and I went to Europe for the first time, and I was in—in Italy, and I wanted to buy an Italian suit. I never had one, so I did. There's no re—reason or use for it in Mount Shasta, California. It's a little town, 3,500. But I use it—

For the first time to meet Oprah. And afterwards, she was joking with Diane, her producer, executive producer, and she said, "Look at him. I could put him on television." I think she thought I was going to have a pot belly and a plaid shirt and a chainsaw. And then she heard her own words and she said, "I'm going to make a gift of this interview and I'm going to give it to my audience." And she did. She aired it on Christmas Eve afternoon. And you said, "What caused the spark? How did I know that the arrow found its mark?"

We started doing shows together. We did about 30 or 35 and every time I spoke, I was the feature. It wasn't, "Oh, and here's a piece on Gary." Oprah and I were talking like you and I are talking now. The difference is that, well, I don't know how many are watching us, but for her it was a lot. Every time I spoke it was to between 10 million and 12 million people a month. That's when I saw the arrow find its mark.

Andrea, what did you make of this success and the position you found yourself in as a leader, as a communicator of these ideas? I got inflated. I got the inverse of a big head, you know. Oh, no. It wasn't me. It was, in other words, a frightened parts of my personality didn't recognize or want to recognize what had happened. Did you feel like an impostor, or did you just—No, I not an impostor. I wrote it, but it wasn't my content. No. No. I mean, I wouldn't say an impostor knows he's not what he is, and he's pretending to be something else. And I've never done that. But I couldn't accommodate. We went from Linda and I from having a—And Linda is not the person who channeled this—that this was the one before Linda, the woman before Linda. But we had maybe $40,000 period and no income. And now suddenly there were millions of people buying this book and are getting royalties. It was very destabilizing.

And we wound up moving to Ashland, Oregon, which is an hour away. We lived in Mount Chester for 13 years. I love the back country. I spent all my time in it. I climbed the mountain again and again and again. I loved it. I loved being on it. I love what it gave me. Then we moved to Ashland, and I became withdrawn. We had enough money now to buy a house, and I was pretty reclusive for around 15 or 20 years. It was like, you know, that's just the way it was. I was intimidated. I didn't like people. Everywhere I went, people would know me like they did in Mount Chester, but now everywhere I went in the world, whether it was Maui, New York, and I couldn't really accept that. Uh, so I it just never dawned on me until maybe this two or three weeks ago when a friend brought his friend over who's a woman and she said, "My mom gave me the seat of the soul and that changed my life." I told her about how I'd never really experienced the reality of the reach of that book in these television shows. And she said, "Well, I'm here to tell you it's real." And that's the first time I got it.

That's wild. I got it. I got it. Even when that's the first time and it's more being able to accept the responsibility of that. Yeah. 'Cause you opportunities of that. You you speak to responsibility. It's one of the last topics I'd like to just explore with you because uh I think it's a it's a big part and overarching theme of of that book of your of the work and in what you share. What do you wish to remind people of of the power of responsibility? Your power of creativity is unlimited and so also is the extent to which you are responsible for what you create. In other words, you're totally responsible. And once you see that, you'll begin to monitor your words and your deeds and act accordingly. The two major tools of creating authentic power are emotional awareness and responsible choice. A responsible choice is a choice that creates consequences for which you're willing to assume responsibility. And that together is the creation of authentic power: emotions, the heart, responsible choice.

I think this is a famous analogy or story about Michelangelo. I don't know if it's true, but the story I heard was people ask him, "How did you make their beautiful sculptures?" Example, I've been in Florence, Italy, Fenzi, and I've seen this 17-foot statue called David—David, the David with his slingshot. Andre, it's amazing. You—It's you feel as though if you reach down and touch him, your hand is going to, you know, touch flesh. How did he do that out of marble? And when someone asked him, he said, "I saw the David in the block of marble and I removed everything that kept people from seeing it." Well, that's the way it is with love and you. You are the love. But to see it yourself and to share it requires removing every bit of your personality that's preventing that. How do you do that? Not with a hammer and a chisel, with your choices. But you don't know what's enclosing your love until you experience it. Those are the frightened parts of your personality. And that's where you use your emotional awareness and you see how painful physically it is. And it's critical judgmental thoughts. And whenever you experience that, you use your free will to move your attention into a loving part of your personality. And you choose to act or speak from the loving part instead of the frightened part. That's the equivalent of one little knock on the hammer and a little chip falls off.

You mentioned earlier how we experience the lessons perfectly designed for our own evolution and growth. Essentially chipping away at the marble of who we're not. No. No. Those lessons are not chipping away at anything. If there's any—when the chipping is done, you do it consciously. Those are the choices you make to act from a loving part of your personality while a frightened part. But would you not—would you not say that the lessons that we learn are in what uh largely activate our choice to to move in a different direction? They provide opportunities. It's your action. You make your choices with your actions. To act is the choice you can. In other words, when you experience a frightened part of your personality, you are experiencing a temptation. If you would like to know what is the nature of human transformation, it's the gracious dynamic of temptation. A temptation is not something that's created outside of yourself by a malevolent entity to pull you away from goodness or whatever you consider goodness. It is the masterpiece of a frightened part of your personality, showing you exactly what it's going to do, what its intention is if you don't intervene. A temptation is a dress rehearsal for a negative karmic event. Since you're a producer—well, you're not a stage producer, but if you were a stage producer, you would know that a dress rehearsal is the very last time—everyone knows their lines. They're in costume. They know the blocking. They know the—they know it all. And it's the last time they're going to go through it before the door is open and the public pours in. When the door is open and the public pours in, that's because you've acted on the temptation. So multisensory perception puts us in this remarkable position to be able to see our personality in terms of its many parts, to experience each of its parts and choose which ones you're going to act on and which ones you're not.

Now, maybe we'll have to meet—we have to have another conversation to go into where this consciousness is going. I've given you a little bit of it. I'd love to share everything I know. One of it is that that there is no distinction between the lines—between the earth school and non-physical reality are becoming blurred and we become aware of processes of non-physical reality such as incarnation and reincarnation, such as non-physical teachers, a non-physical teacher. Intuition is the voice of the non-physical world. We could go into that by itself. Everyone has non-physical teachers or at least one. I want to ask you just because you brought it up a bit more about intuition because you kind of referred to it as a connection to source in a sense. No, it's connection to a non-physical teacher or connection to—it's connection to a source of wisdom and intelligence. That's and compassion that's beyond what we can give to one another. If you say source, I'm now—first of all, I don't know what you mean by source. I'm assuming you mean God or some deity or some presence that is all that is. You are all that is. Our consciousness is now evolving into remarkable experiences. But they're not your experiences anymore. There's no you. There's no his. There's no other. When you look at someone, you look at me and you think you're seeing an other, it's your imagination. It's not real. Let me put it this way: There is one, and all is that. We're used to looking at our experiences and our experiences in terms of things and relationships between them. There are no such things and there never have been. There is one, and all is that. And that is where the new consciousness is taking us. And I'm so grateful to be able to share it with you and with the people that you honor by sharing what we share with your audience. It's—it's our pleasure. I think I can speak on behalf of our community as well. It's—it's a great joy to to share in the awakened realization of of this as well, you know, and um create environments, communities, uh platforms that can be a space to talk about this space and to imbibe in it. And um I think uh typically as people wake—awaken to these grander realizations of their true nature, um sometimes they don't immediately experience that reflection in their surroundings. It may—may take time to manifest. And so I think individuals like yourself with books like—like that you've written um and platforms that you come on like this hopefully support people as strengthening that signal. Um and so thank you for coming out today, man. I appreciate you flying down and and getting to connect and uh yeah, we'll have to dance another time as well.

It's a joy. I'd like to do that. And we'll talk about things like intuition in more detail and community which is an interesting thing to talk about and more amazing. Well, we'll also leave down below where everybody can find your work and your podcast and your books and resources. So, we'll have—Oh, thank you. May I say we have created a beautiful course called—quite several of them—only three or four now, but one of them's called emotional awareness and it's—you can also read about it in the book called the heart of the soul—emotional awareness—but if you go to our website which is seat of the soul.com—yet another book—seat of the soul.com has this course emotional awareness and if anything I've said resonates with you and you'd like to really go into experiencing emotional awareness, you can read the book, which is good. Linda and I co-authored it. And you can take the course. It's I think good if you take the course because if you read the book, chances are you might, if you're like me, an intellectual, you just read the part that I wrote. She wrote all of the exercises. And if you just—And when I wrote it, I thought, uh, well, what I wrote is the good part. But I see now that what Linda added—the exercises—is the heart of the heart because if you only read what I wrote, you'll know a lot about emotional awareness, but you won't be emotionally aware.

Amazing, man. We'll—we'll—we'll link that down below. Thanks for continually creating resources to support people on that path. And uh it's been a pleasure, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning to this episode. Until next time, be well. [Music]