Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. By ongoing, I mean I’ve been doing them for 10 years now and I’ve done over 500 of them and there’s no end in sight. If you appreciate this interview and would like to check out previous ones, if you haven’t been watching these, then go to batgap.com and there’s a past interviews menu under which you can find all the previous ones organized in several different ways. This program is made possible by the support of people who appreciate it and would like to support it. So if that describes you, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the site and even a very modest donation makes a difference. My guest today is my old friend Cynthia Lane. Welcome Cynthia.
Cynthia: Hi there.
Rick: Hi there. Cynthia and I have known each other for almost 50 years, even though neither of us looks a day over 40. And I interviewed her, she was one of my first, well she was within the first six months of having started BatGap by the summer of, what was it, 2010, so nine years ago. And I listened to that interview this week and I thought it was a really nice account of a very interesting life, all the things Cynthia had done with great sincerity and dedication and good results. So if you enjoy this interview, you might want to go back and listen to that one too. Might even want to listen to that one first and then listen to this one. But in any case, I’m going to read something Cynthia sent me that briefly summarizes the kinds of things we talked about in the first interview. She says, “From my earliest memories, God was always at the center of things. After exploring a number of teachers and modalities in the great spiritual garden of late 60s San Francisco, things really geared up when I learned the Transcendental Meditation technique in Berkeley in 1967. TM’s gifts were unmistakable and I began a 30-year career of devoted service to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Vedic tradition. This encompassed many years of teaching TM in the US, Europe, and Asia, and lots of time simply meditating, including seven years in a convent-style setting. All this yielded vast personal and spiritual growth, which remains fully integrated into my life, a gift that keeps on giving. Towards the end of this period, I studied and shared several healing modalities, especially cranial sacral therapy. This deepened my experience of the body as energy and light, and helped me discover that body’s huge role in lasting and comprehensive healing. In 1996, my path led me to the indigenous traditions of the West, especially Lakota. I was blessed in countless ways by the great Lakota holy man, wisdom keeper, and Sundance leader Naka Wa’anata. Through him, I received a personal pipe, a precious and powerful source of inspiration, healing and transformation, and was able to participate in life-changing Lakota ceremonies, including the Sundance, for many years. As a result, I opened to a profound and intimate relationship with the earth and her healing and nourishing gifts, and learned to embrace life on earth with a grounded joy and openness that I had never known before. Most importantly, I learned to embody and live the boundless consciousness I had merged with through the Vedic teachings, and find the same infinite self everywhere and in everyone. Through this time, I gradually realized that I was here not only to help people merge with the infinite in their awareness, but also to help them include their bodies in the journey. In simplest terms, this means helping our cellular reality or belief systems shift from identifying as density to self-recognizing as divine light, or first light as I call it. We truly are just a dream of light. Finally, around 2012, which would be after that interview we did, because we did that in 2010, finally what I now call the path of grace simply showed up for me, initially while visiting sacred sites in France. In essence, I was made aware that our growth is no longer something we have to work at. God/divine love/divine light is so powerfully present now that all we have to do is open and receive it, and it will take care of all that we need for spiritual and human fulfillment. Since then, many divine gifts have downloaded to share with others and to support this effortless form of growth. While remaining endlessly silent and utterly unlocalized, this magical mystery tour of a life is a sacred and joyous pilgrimage.” So, Cynthia has also been a professional writer, which you can kind of tell when I read that she’s a good writer. (Laughter.)
Cynthia: Thank you. So are you.
Rick: Yeah. Thanks. Never professional though. So, we can actually start perhaps by unpacking that last paragraph, you know, “finally around I could ask you some questions about it, or you could just take it from there if you want to just start saying some things.
Cynthia: I’ll do a brief intro. So I had a very strong impulse to go to France, and it was one of those things where everything you need just kind of shows up and is there for you, including a free plane ticket and a free place to stay and all those kind of miraculous things. And as I told different friends that I was going to be going there, I got all of these emails saying you have to go here and you have to go there and you have to go there. And every single place that people recommended was some association with Mary Magdalene. So I thought, oh, okay, I get the hint. I’m on some kind of Mary Magdalene trail here. And you know, I really had never thought about her all that much, but…
Rick: Now, just because people listen to this all over the world, and some may not be familiar with Christianity, who was Mary Magdalene?
Cynthia: Well, in my experience, she was an expression of divine light, of divine mother who was Christ’s equal in terms of the gifts that she was here to share. She’s as much about divine light as he is.
Rick: And according to some people, she was actually his wife?
Cynthia: Yes.
Rick: Yeah, okay.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: Okay, good, continue.
Cynthia: Okay, and you know, I have no background in all of that. This is just my feeling, my sense of it, my vision of it, of her and the whole thing. So at one point, I was in this town in southern France, absolutely gorgeous, gorgeous place called Rennes-le-Chateau. And they have, in France, Mary Magdalene is considered to be the first evangelist. They don’t think of her as married, but they do see her as being a kind of a saint, because she was the one to bring Christ’s teachings to Europe. And for instance, there’s a place, a cave called La Bambe St. Marie, where she was, people say she spent her last years, became a place of pilgrimage for popes and for kings. So she had a different kind of reputation than we sometimes hear. So there’s this one, and there are chapels and cathedrals dedicated to her, including one in Paris. So anyway, so I’m in this very tiny chapel, which is dedicated to her. And I’m sitting there, and it was as if she just merged with me. That was it. It wasn’t like channeling or anything like that. But it was a surprise, as you can imagine. And in essence, the understanding I got, and I know a lot of people feel a relationship to Mary Magdalene, but I can only speak for my own. In essence, what she said to me was that, “I am so here for you, and Christ is so here for you at this time of planetary and human transformation. We are so present, and we love all — no, not just me, but everybody so much that we are full on participating in and supporting this transformation.” And then she said, “You are going to be meeting all of humanity again, not just me. You’re going to be so happy, you cannot imagine how happy you’re going to be. It’s beyond anything you can imagine,” which reminded me of what Maharishi used to say about the age of enlightenment. And she said, “The next steps are not about working hard at it. They’re not about processing every little detail of your life.” She said, “We love you. I love you so much that all you have to do is open your heart and receive, and I will take care of everything.” So it became what I call the path of grace or path of miracles, where we just ask and we surrender to the infinite and then it gets taken care of.
Rick: So, one just brief interjection, when you make gestures, try not to smack your microphone.
Cynthia: Oh, whoops.
Rick: Kind of makes scratchy noises and stuff.
Cynthia: I’ll try not to make any more gestures.
Rick: Gesture, but just don’t smack it. So did this whole thing come to you as maybe like a faint feeling and you just kind of were able to verbalize it within your own mind and then verbalize it to others, or was it actually quite explicit as you just related it?
Cynthia: It wasn’t faint at all, it was kind of overwhelming. It was, “wow, what was that?”
Rick:And it was just a transmission of the kind of information that you just verbalized.
Cynthia: Well, the merging was a kind of a transmission. The merging was very powerful and then I had no idea what had just happened or what it meant for me or for anybody and then I just, I got an understanding I’d call it half verbal and half feeling.
Rick:Okay. I’m completely comfortable with the idea and have felt this for a long time that there are higher beings no longer dwelling in human bodies who are kind of overseeing or tending to humanity and trying to help us along, but you know, some people give me flack for that position, they think it’s sort of kooky and strange. So just as a concession to people who might be thinking that way, how could you explain that there might be this deeper dimension where actual sentient beings of a sort of a higher nature live and help humanity from their position, their perspective?
Cynthia: Okay, well I’ll just explain my picture of the universe, this is what came to me. So it all starts from nothingness, okay? I’m just, at this point in my life I would describe myself as nothing doing nothing. And so there’s this infinite which has no content, no boundaries, you can only become it, you can’t know anything about it. And then I have no idea why it starts to dream itself into some form, some form, you know, the forms of this planet, the forms of other dimensions and other systems and other universes and other big bangs, but it starts to play in the world of form. In my experience, the very first expression of the infinite is this first light. And first light really is virtually infinite, but it has a little bit of something as opposed to the total nothing of the infinite or consciousness or quantum, whatever we want to call it. And that, I call it first light because I just don’t know what else to call it, but it’s really pre-photon light, it isn’t necessarily even visual. And so that first light contains within itself the potential for all that will unfold. Now that first light, as it begins to unfold its possibilities, it begins to take on more qualities. So we’d say in a virtual kind of way, it’s as if that first light now takes on a tint of pink, one huge field of pink, another huge field of pale blue or another huge field of pale green. I’m talking visually, but of course it’s, I don’t know how else to describe it. But these big fields, these fields which are, let’s say, the first increased expression of first light, those are the, I think, the fields which contain the great teachings or the source of the great teachings which have become available not just to humanity, but probably to other beings and other worlds and so on. So let’s say one of those vast fields is what we call the Christ light, okay? And periodically that light, so it’s not a being, okay? It’s not a being, it’s a field full of potential, wants to share itself and it wants to share itself with humanity. So it kind of precipitates into form and sends what I would call a representative of itself which contains the totality of what it is to share with others. And then, you know, we make of it what we make of it here on the planet. So it’s so much more than a limited figure or a limited, you know, particular incarnation. It’s a field that is gorgeous with gifts and all these fields are just meant to bring people home to the infinite.
Rick: That’s great. Let me try to reiterate some of it and correct me if I am a little bit off in some of this to really fine tune our understanding of this. So obviously everybody’s heard the Bible says, “Let there be light when creation comes forth,” but usually people think of that as something that happened a long time ago and then there were seven days of creation or whatever and now we have a creation. But what you’re saying I believe is that although it could be something that happened a long time ago, it’s also something that’s happening continuously. If we were to sort of settle down to the ground state of the universe or beyond any manifestation of the universe, we could perceive or cognize a field of light that is the first sprouting or emergence from complete unmanifest nothingness. Am I right so far?
Cynthia: Yeah, and also just to add, you know, I think it’s fairly held, commonly held now in the field of science that our Big Bang was just one of a zillion.
Rick: Yeah.
Cynthia: Okay.
Rick: Many scientists say that the multiverse idea that there’s just like bubbles coming up in ginger ale that there’s just universes sprouting all the time and some of them, you know, some of them take, many of them are duds, but you know, there’s an infinite number of them out there.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: Okay. Alright, so then you said about the field being like a field of intelligence, so it’s not just light which we could shine from a flashlight or something and we wouldn’t think of it as having intelligence, but you’re saying that there’s a field of intelligence that emerges…
Cynthia: Call it potential.
Rick: Potential.
Cynthia: Potential, okay.
Rick: Yeah, but it’s not sort of plain vanilla light, there’s a sort of a liveliness to it or it’s pregnant with possibility, we could say. And you said that there are different fields, and you used, I think it was metaphorical where you speak of colors, of a pink one and a blue one, but there are these different, as diversification continues a bit more, physicists would say this too, that you know, force and matter fields come out and from those there’s further diversification, but different fields of potentiality sort of emerge from this unmanifest. Okay, am I still on track?
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: Good. And so, I think what you also then said is that when someone like Christ or Mary Magdalene or you know, some of these great sages who have been born on Earth incarnate, it’s not like sort of so much an individual soul that’s been hanging around decides to take on a body. It’s more like one of these vast fields of potentiality decides – “decides” is such an anthropomorphic term – but it becomes embodied in human form and lives a life on Earth.
Cynthia: To share itself.
Rick: To share itself, and to…
Cynthia: Right.
Rick: Right, because it’s…
Cynthia: To awaken in one way or another.
Rick: Yeah. And I guess we could say, you know, it’s sort of like that old analogy of when the mangoes are ripe, the tree bows down, you know, the branches bow down so people can easily pick them. It’s a little hard for, what we’re describing here is so abstract, at least at the level of fields of light that the average person would never be cognizant that any such thing exists. But if such a field of potentiality becomes an embodied being, then we humans can interact with him or her.
Cynthia: Mm-hmm, right. And that makes, for us as human beings, the qualities or the nature of that divine light more accessible to us.
Rick: Accessible, exactly.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: Here’s a question that came in already that might actually be relevant to what we’re saying. I think we can make something of it anyway and then we’ll keep talking about the things we’re talking about. This is from Akshay in Pune, India. He says, “Why is it that only a limited number of people on this planet are spiritually awakened or have a spiritual yearning and most of them are still in darkness or are only interested in worldly things?”
Cynthia: I tend to see everybody’s journey as very individual, okay? I feel like we’re all different packages of that same divine light and so our journey home or awakening comes in different ways, comes through many different routes and at many different paces. I think it’s just that time on Earth, but I see a lot of awakening going on, which is not necessarily obvious. So for instance, yesterday all over the world we had these fabulous, you know, climate, whatever we think about climate change, it was still everybody in every country in the world waking up to their commonality.
Rick: Led by children, I might add.
Cynthia: Right. So I think I can’t generalize. I can only say that for lots of us, the messages of our collective beliefs have been very strong and have not supported us to discover who we are, but we are shifting that. Since the caller, the question person is from India, I’d like to share an experience I had, which I think is very hopeful. So a zillion years ago, gosh, I can’t even remember when, I and a number of people, Maharishi sent us to India to teach TM and you might have thought, you know, ice to the Eskimos, but not. So there was one place where I was in Jaipur, one place where I was trying to teach and we found this medical school and we were very excited about teaching in a medical college because everybody spoke English.
Rick: You told the story in the first interview, by the way, but go ahead and tell it again.
Cynthia: Oh, I did?
Rick: Yeah.
Cynthia: All right. Okay. So it just seemed apropos for the moment. So what my experience of India with all due respect was that it was not linear at all. It was, you know, here if I wanted to set something up like an interview with Rick, I would do A, B, C, D, E and I’d be pretty sure I’d get from A to E if I took all the right steps. But in India, I didn’t find that to be the case. I found myself on a thousand detours talking to lots more people than I ever thought and it was all, it was challenging. Let’s put it that way. Plus I was sick. I had amoebas. So I was running a fever. And I was the only one on my team who was still functional. So there’s this professor, he is the very last person that could make the lecture possible. Everything else had, you know, blown up into a thousand pieces and we’re sitting in this big, big room. In my memory, it’s almost like a gymnasium. I’m not feeling well. So I know whatever happened was not about me. So he is telling me, “So sorry, madam, we can’t do this.” And I’m thinking, “Oh,” you know, and all of a sudden out of nowhere, there was the, I’m not going to do it on the microphone, but there was this really loud clap or cracking sound in the environment. And in the moment, he changed from saying, “We’re so sorry, it’s not possible,” to setting up the lecture, which we did eventually give. And he did not remember that one second ago, he was saying no. So what I see is that for those of us who are waking up a little bit more quickly than others, I feel like at a certain point, it’ll be like the hundredth monkey. The collective consciousness will just shift. And it’s not that we’ll all wake up the next day agreeing that there’s one appropriate belief system for everybody, but rather we’ll be able from that place of deep unity, of perfect connectedness, we’ll love everybody, you know? We’ll say, “Wow, my Muslim neighbor, she’s the best. My Christian neighbor, he’s the best. My Jewish neighbor, he’s the best.” You know, it’ll just, from that, we’ll just be able to love everything because we’ll experience everything as an expression of oneness.
Rick: Yeah, beliefs are just kind of the most, sort of, manifest or superficial expression of things and they generally are, in most people’s experience, are not grounded in experience. So you know, people believe this, that, and the other thing. I remember Oprah once asked Eckhart Tolle what he believed and he said, “Nothing in particular,” you know, because he’s not oriented around belief. He’s oriented around experience. And once you have the experience of the kind of thing that he and we and others are talking about, you know, beliefs just don’t carry as much clout as they do for many people. You don’t take refuge in them and you treat them more lightly, like hypotheses rather than certainties.
Cynthia: And absolutely, and just to encourage again the person who was kind enough to ask a question, I feel like we’re taking everybody with us, okay? We’re taking everybody with us and I do believe we’ll reach that point.
Rick: And so, I think what you mean by that is that collective consciousness as a whole is shifting, not just the individuals who seem to be keen on awakening at this point or something, and that “a rising tide lifts all boats” and that no one can escape the influence of a whole awakening that seems to be taking place.
Cynthia: And then there’s that other wonderful idea that’s in circulation about the holographic universe. So, when you merge with the infinite, it’s shared instantly with everybody else. And I love that idea.
Rick: Yeah. And that would make sense if we understand consciousness to be a field as opposed to just a product of our brains which is stuck within our skulls. And you alluded in the beginning to your experience of yourself or of consciousness as a field of infinite vastness. It’s not isolated to what we see here as Cynthia Lane.
Cynthia: No. (Laughter) Who is nothing doing nothing.
Rick: Right. And that’s completely congruent with what every wisdom tradition pretty much on the planet has been saying for thousands of years, you know, that we are the divine or we are the sort of, we are Brahman, we are the universal whatever. And that recognizing our reality as such has a ripple effect throughout, everywhere, because it’s connected to everyone. It’s at their root.
Cynthia: And also just coming back to this idea of beliefs and everybody’s on their own unique path home, the way I see it sometimes is if you could imagine this gargantuan crystal with a zillion facets and divine light is shining through that crystal, it’s still divine light, but it’s sharing itself in a myriad number of ways. I mean look at all the teachers and healers, you know, that are available now. Look at all the ones you’ve interviewed. It’s sharing itself through all these different ways so that everybody can find something that they resonate with to bring them home.
Rick: Yeah. And that’s actually an underlying philosophy that I have that enables me to do this show, which is that everybody resonates with somebody.
Cynthia: Right, right, right, right.
Rick: And you know, I’ll give an interview sometimes and you know, some people email me and say oh, that was the worst one you ever did. And somebody else will email me and say that was the best one you ever did. Because their particular resonance or affinity with that teacher is different than the other person’s.
Cynthia: Right, exactly. Exactly.
Rick: Okay. And just to lay out a little bit more here, I mean, and it’s not that every teacher has — teaches everything that anyone could possibly need. I don’t know if there is such a teacher, right?
Cynthia: Right, absolutely not, yeah. But we’re each a different package of the infinite. We’re each a different package of the infinite and so we get to share that. So we’re the infinite and we’re divine light embodied in this human presence. And this human presence is the dream of divine light. And we’re dreaming that human presence so that we can share our gifts but also enjoy this beautiful planet and this world. But we’re all packaged to share it a little bit differently. And that’s like that divine light shining through the crystal with all its different facets. It’s just one way of thinking about it. So that everybody can find their way home. Some people are more chocolate, some people are more pecan, some people are more strawberry, so they find a strawberry teacher or a, you know, coconut teacher or whatever.
Rick: I’m trying to think of a dessert which would incorporate all three of those. I’m sure there is one.
Cynthia: Well, sometimes we need to do a bunch of different things like I did. And you did too.
Rick: Yeah. So, a little earlier when you first started talking about your experience with Mary Magdalene and the message that she conveyed of everybody’s going to be happy and it’s going to be a beautiful world and all that, that might sound like a bit of a stretch to people who watch the evening news as I do and the morning news, and who’ve watched the Arctic melting and the species dying and the sea levels rising and the hurricanes and floods getting worse and all this stuff that seems to just be getting worse and worse. You know, we just, as you mentioned, had this climate strike and the young people are saying this is an emergency and you better do something or we’re not going to be around, you know, when we’re your age. We won’t reach your age or our children won’t. So, how do you reconcile the evidence that things are not quite so peachy with, you know, the kind of prediction that you received?
Cynthia: Well, there’s two kinds of evidence, first of all. One is the kind gets communicated on the news. How many good stories do they tell us? I know lots of people who are waking up, who are changing, who are shifting, who are healing and also lots of people who are creating, not lots, but at least some people, younger people who have bringing these fantastic innovations into the world that can support carbon free existence for example. So there’s a lot going on underneath the surface of the bad news. I also remember something that Maharishi taught, you know, Maharishi was a physicist and he loved to explain things in terms of the laws of physics and I enjoyed that very much and he talked about a phase transition and there was one chemical, I think it was hydrogen, is it hydrogen?
Rick: Keep going and maybe I’ll remember.
Cynthia: So you have hydrogen and then they make it colder and colder.
Rick: Oh, helium, liquid helium.
Cynthia: It was liquid helium and they make it colder and colder and colder and colder and when they get to a certain point, the helium takes on the qualities of eternity as much as it’s possible in the physical world.
Rick: It becomes a superfluid, there’s no resistance anymore.
Cynthia: It becomes a superfluid, so if you had it going round and round in a circle, there would be no entropy and it would literally move round and round and round forever. So frictionless flow, they called it I think. Now just before the helium reached that turning point where it became a totally coherent substance, there was a wild chaotic bubbling.
Rick: Yeah, turbulence.
Cynthia: Turbulence and that’s what Maharishi called the phase transition. And I think we’re in the middle of that crazy phase transition and the old systems are breaking down and those who are attached to them are holding on to them, but I can’t guarantee but I feel that we’ll make it, we will make it to the next state, but we have to tolerate the turbulence and not get involved and hold the light. Hold the light.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, I’ve always had, for decades I’ve had the feeling that many spiritual teachers see their role as facilitating as smooth a transition as possible.
Cynthia: Yes, yes.
Rick: To minimize the suffering.
Cynthia: Minimize the suffering.
Rick: That a transition is inevitable, but let’s make it as, you know, non-traumatic as possible.
Cynthia: Exactly, and to do that, again, everybody has their own path. Some people are much more activist, much more political. I know for me the job is to just be the being and let that, and that’s what I tell other people too, just be the light, be the light, be the light, be the being, be the being, and create a core of stability underneath that turbulence as things do fall apart.
Rick: So, I guess in all we’ve been talking about fields and enlivening fields and all that, I guess you might say that it’s not that, you know, a whole bunch of people getting interested in spirituality and having awakenings and meditating and stuff is just going to magically make everything better, but somehow they are helping to enliven a field which will make it more conducive for those whose role it is to, you know, devise new technologies to do so, and perhaps also more conducive for those who are, you know, stubborn about change to, like that guy in Jaipur, to suddenly shift in their thinking and be supportive of it.
Cynthia: And we don’t do it by doing, we do it by just being.
Rick: Yeah. You know, it’s…
Rick: Which is not to say that some people shouldn’t do, that doing is also necessary.
Cynthia: Yes, some people are, that’s their path and go for it, you know, but also, I’ll share another story from Maharishi which made a big impression on me because I was very actively teaching and we were in India at a conference and somebody asked Maharishi, “Who’s more valuable to you, the very successful TM teacher who instructs thousands of people?” And of course that was my identity, “or one enlightened person?” Well, he laughed, he said, “Oh, one enlightened person.” So that brought me crashing to the ground, right? But that’s the thing is, by being being, we support that perfect coherent, that non-turbulent value in everybody and then everybody lives and acts from there according to their package of light, according to what they’re meant to do here. You know, what’s interesting to me is I’ve met some younger folk, okay, and talked to them and they understand things that it took me 50 years to grasp. Something is really moving and changing and some of them hold these beautiful gifts to share technological gifts or how to govern from compassion, what I call compassion-based government and how to make all of that work. And I think we are shifting from a me-oriented society to a we-oriented society where we get that, first we’re all in this together and then we get, we’re just fluctuations of that same beautiful infinite field. So of course we’re here to support each other, but that sense of individuality is shrinking and shrinking and what we see on the surface is yes, the terrible headlines, is the struggle against that because what has kept that individuality orientation alive is of course fear. Okay, fear of dissolution.
Rick: Yeah. Do you feel that there’s any kind of certainty that the brighter outlook will prevail or do you think it could go either way?
Cynthia: There’s no certainty at all. There’s no certainty at all. I think each of us in the way that we’re put together, whether sharing politically, whether being climate activists or whether being being-being is your main thing, we just have to keep following our own inner guidance.
Rick: Yeah, I was listening to some of these webinars that you did and in one you described the collision of the asteroid to the Yucatan Peninsula that wiped out the dinosaurs and just what a violent event that was. I mean it was quite a vivid description. I like that kind of science-y stuff and so I found it very interesting, but the point you were making was that, you know, nature itself is not all, you know, ponies and butterflies.
Cynthia: No!
Rick: Nature can be quite violent and brutal and yet, as violent as that thing was, which is one of the most violent things that geologists can imagine having happened to the Earth, it resulted in a huge evolutionary leap.
Cynthia: Right, so we don’t always, we don’t, it’s not a linear world. “A” does not necessarily lead to “B”, does not necessarily lead to “C”, so we have to stay in that infinite place, be one with the mystery, both in how we live our own lives. I don’t know anything, I don’t know anything about how my life’s going to unfold. I call it living on a need-to-know basis, though I was going to have something with you and so I had to, you know, meet with the tech guy and, you know, so I get fed the information that I need, but I don’t know anything. And all I know is what I’m given to know, which is to play my particular role because of how my soul is put together, which is to support people to come home to the infinite and to be in a state of love.
Rick: Yeah, I think that thing you said about sort of being in this, how did you put it, just being in the self or being in being is the key to this whole discussion about, you know, the world being crazy and how are we going to get through it. I was actually on a boat ride with Maharishi one time and someone, on Lake Lucerne, and someone said, “Well, how should we, what should we do to be able to survive the phase transition?” And he just said, “Be established in the self.”
Cynthia: Right, right.
Rick: Yeah.
Cynthia: Right.
Rick: Which actually could have multiple meanings because you know, even if your body didn’t survive, being established in the self is more fundamental than that.
Cynthia: Right, right, right. But one of the things I’d like to kind of lead into since you mentioned the word “body” is one of the things that, and it was just the path of my soul that led me to shift into all things Lakota was, I know that one of the things I’m here to do is to help it be not just a state of awareness but a state of being human where our cells come to self-recognize as divine light.
Rick: Our cells?
Cynthia: Our cells, C-E-L-L-S.
Rick: C-E-L-L-S, yeah.
Cynthia: Yes, so our cells, our organs, our energy systems rather than identifying with density or even energy, that we self-identify with that first light. As presences, as streams of light, we can’t self-identify physically with the infinite or we would just disappear, but we can become divine light. I feel that’s quite possible and live and function from there.
Rick: So, are you distinguishing between the infinite and divine light?
Cynthia: I am. The infinite is nothing. It’s just nothing. It’s absolutely nothing.
Rick: But you say that you are nothing and doing nothing and feel like you’re nothing and yet you’re functioning.
Cynthia: I am, but I don’t feel like I’m functioning or doing anything. The inner knowing says, “Who’s talking?” I don’t know. (Laughter)
Rick: Yeah, it’s like I heard you say in a recording that very often you would get to the end of the day in which you’d been very busy doing different things and you’d think, “What happened? I didn’t do anything. There’s nothing going on all day.” It’s like, how did all that happen?
Cynthia: Right, right. You know the old knock-knock joke? Knock-knock, who’s there? Nobody. Nothing. (Laughter)
Rick: Let’s clarify this because some people might find this confusing. I think what we’re saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that there are different, we could say different strata of existence and there’s a level which seems obvious and it’s more perhaps surface or superficial in which there’s all kinds of stuff going on. But like an ocean which might be undergoing a hurricane on the surface, there’s a deeper level which is totally silent and just beyond the reach or the influence of the hurricane. So there’s a level of our life which is like that and we can get established there and have that be our predominant place, resting place, and then engage in dynamic activity. Right?
Cynthia: That infiniteness is not our predominant place, it’s just who we are, it’s who we become. There’s just nothing else. There’s no way to describe it because, you know, the best, I call it – you have to try to find some words – I call it “Infinite Transparency.” I call it “being utterly unlocalized,” I don’t know how, you know, but it’s who you are, it’s not your predominant and yet you find yourself still driving a car or, you know, engaging in work like this, but there’s never any sense of anything happening or doing.
Rick: Right. I think that maybe the word “predominant” works if a person is sort of approaching it from the usual perspective and then maybe initially they have some fleeting glimpse of something down there, but it seems like very tenuous and it’s lost. And then, you know, continuing along it becomes clearer and more stable and so on and so forth and eventually the sort of identity shifts.
Cynthia: Right. You kind of slip in and out.
Rick: Yeah, for a while.
Cynthia: You sort of slip in and out and then there’s no slipping.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. The old dying the cloth analogy.
Cynthia: Right. And, as an option, in addition to that absolutely exquisite experience, that, you know, fantastic experience, it’s hard to explain why nothing is so much fun, but it really is. (Laughter) You know, I have a mentoring group and I’d say, I know it seems incomprehensible that I could talk so long about nothing and it’s so fun, but somehow it is. So the, but what about these bodies? Okay. What about these bodies? Because some people have this, are in this absolutely blissful state of consciousness, but they’re sick.
Rick: Right.
Cynthia: So they don’t necessarily get to enjoy it. Or they’re suffering from the limitations of age as we watch different things need more and more attention, that kind of a thing. We can, through… we can get our bodies, and it’s not something we can talk about just like meditating isn’t something you can talk about, but we can get our bodies to come to self-recognize as divine light. So and it’s through transmission, it’s being supported by the cosmos, it’s through, you know, but it starts to change.
Rick: If we do that, does that mean that we’re not going to get sick or age? Is that what you’re implying?
Cynthia: I would say that if you were in light, or mostly in light, that just intention would create healing.
Rick: Well, you know, don’t mean to sound skeptical, but all the great sages of history have died of something, Ramana of cancer, and Papaji of diabetes, and Sargadatta of cancer, and so on. So, you know, what did they do wrong?
Cynthia: They didn’t do anything.
Rick: Aside from chain smoking cigarettes in Sargadatta’s case.
Cynthia: They didn’t do anything wrong. Maybe it just wasn’t something they wanted to consider. It’s an option. Okay, you know, there’s a very interesting thing. Somebody told me about it, then I Googled it, and oh my god, everything, you can get everything on Google.
Rick: It’s like Alice’s Restaurant.
Cynthia: Right. There’s a tradition in Tibet of people who take the path of what they call the rainbow body.
Rick: Right, right.
Cynthia: And there’s pictures of it, you know, of the people. And when they decide to go, they sit in a hut or wherever they sit, and people see beautiful light coming off the hut. Okay, rainbow light. And when they go inside, all that’s left of the person’s physical body, I mean, it’s right there, you know, is this tiny little remnant. So that person has done, I would say, a version of becoming light.
Rick: Yeah. Go ahead.
Cynthia: When I look at people who are in a pretty good state of awareness, to me they look very transparent already, okay? They look very holographic, and I feel that we can get, it’s there as an option.
Rick: Yeah. I was going to ask you if you could cite some examples of it, and I guess that Tibetan thing would be one. Obviously there would need to be more corroboration. It’s kind of like levitation, you know? I mean, there are all these stories throughout history of saints levitating, but you know, no one’s ever seen one in our day and age that we know of. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of people trying, but no one actually doing it.
Cynthia: It’s the hardest thing in the world because everything in our collective consciousness tells us, even when we know all about quantum mechanics and everything else, keeps sending us the message that we’re dense or maybe even made of energy at the subtlest, but so it’s a big shift.
Rick: Yeah. So, do you think that this beautiful, happy world that Mary Magdalene conveyed the idea of would be one in which, you know, people all have these sort of light bodies and tend not to get sick or age? Or is it still going to be a sort of rather rare option?
Cynthia: Gosh.
Rick: Or you don’t know?
Cynthia: I don’t, I really don’t know. But it’s an option, it’s a choice. It’s like getting a life is a choice.
Rick: This is obviously something that is important to you, so what do you do personally to help this happen for you, and what do you do with students to help it happen for them?
Cynthia: A lot of what I get to help people has to do with this physiological as well as spiritual transformation. So, as you know, and it really all started with craniosacral therapy where I discovered that many of the traumas that we suffer in a lifetime, that they have an energetic remnant in the body, in the cells, and the functioning of the nervous system, and that if we release those, then the psychological emotional healing is much more thorough and lasting and deep. So that was the first way I got drawn to the body. But then, when I work with people, the first thing I do when we start to meditate usually is to introduce to them, and to their physiologies, just their resonance, not through trying to convince them of anything, that their body is a dream of light. And then we invite divine light or divine love to come in and heal whatever it is that needs healing. In that process, the body begins to self-identify little by little more and more with that knowing that “I am just a dream of light.” And every time I do that, of course, it gets reinforced inside me. But I keep getting, you know, you read some of the, listen to some of the teleconferences that I’ve been.
Rick: Webinars, yeah.
Cynthia: Yeah. Every time I work with people, especially in a group, something more is given for me to share. It comes out of nowhere. It’s totally unexpected. And I go, “Wow, I would never have thought of that.” And it never shows up more than two or three days beforehand, ever. But it’s resonance, okay? (pointing to head) It can’t be here. (hands move from head down her body) It has to be here. And it’s the resonance. It’s, I suppose we could call it, a version of the Darshan principle, you know, that these systems come through to help the body begin to self-identify with divine light. I also see that there’s something which I call the new light, which is a beautiful field of light that is present to us here on earth that is working with everybody here, consciously or unconsciously, to support that transformation, you know, of awareness and of our physiologies. I really don’t know what that will mean in terms of the aging process or anything else. It’s like I’m just this instrument and I feel like I’m supposed to do this, so I keep doing it.
Rick: Is the new light something which has always been around, you know, which was around?
Cynthia: No.
Rick: No, it wasn’t around in the days of Jesus, but it’s something that’s happening now on earth?
Cynthia: Yes. That’s how I see it.
Rick: And so, say a bit more about what it is.
Cynthia: So, it’s a light field, like we could say Christ is…
Rick: Omnipresent kind of thing?
Cynthia: Yes, and it’s omnipresent and of course if a person actually invites it in, then it’s more effective, but I see it go right into the spine and into the nervous system and it’s about living as human beings without belief systems, including physiological belief systems and it works in the background, it works on chemistry, it works on the nervous system, you know, it’s just very background, very gentle because it’s very background, but it’s helping, it’s like a big assist from the cosmos to help dissolve belief systems, all belief systems, whether emotional or physical or… The way I first was given to introduce it was I would say to people, “Okay, imagine you’re standing on a bridge and on one side of the bridge are all the belief systems that ever were, you know, starting from the beginning of humanity and all of your own individual belief systems, so all the individual and collective belief systems that ever were and it’s just this wild, you know, turbulent ball of energy,” and then I say, “Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to turn our back on that, okay?” And as soon as we turn our back on that and take one step forward to the other side of the bridge, that light is there. And it is. It absolutely is there and it’s just a gift. It’s to help with our transformation.
Rick: So, you’re saying that focusing on our belief systems sort of obscures it and that if we can just sort of turn away from them for a Bit, it’ll be more accessible?
Cynthia: It’s just a metaphor. It’s just a metaphor. And I say, including the belief system that you came here to change anything or do anything or fix anything, okay? It’s just turning into a way of living which we don’t really, we’ve never lived that way. I can’t answer specific questions. It’s to live with the same freedom we live in in the realm of light, okay? In the realm of, we’re the precipitated form of who we are as beings of light. Is to live with that same freedom as if we were never here, as if we’ve never taken on a human belief system, whether it’s belief system in sickness or mortality or this religion or that religion. It’s to live with that same freedom so that we can be here with that same divine joy, okay, even while we have bodies.
Rick: Yeah, that’s nice. So in other words, our physicality doesn’t have to be a restriction or a prison, it can actually, well actually I would go, I would take it a step further and say that there’s something more to being able to live this light in a physical body than to just be light without any manifest expression.
Cynthia: Right, but I like being human. I mean, I like it here and I think that we have been given a very special gift that we can experience divinity through our senses, you know? It’s fantastic.
Rick: Yeah, I want to talk to you more about that. I just want to add, before I forget, that what you were saying about the light being kind of a new light reminds me of a book that my friend Rob Cox wrote many years ago, you may know Rob, called “The Pillar of Celestial Fire and the Lost Science of the Ancient Seers” in which he talked about sort of the procession of the equinoxes and how we’re coming into a time when there’s going to be this blast of subtle energy from the center of the galaxy or something that radiates or enlivens the earth and bathes us all in evolutionary influence.
Cynthia: We are being bathed, I wouldn’t call it a blast because it’s being done in a way
Rick: Yeah, that’s just my word.
Cynthia: Yeah, yeah, that won’t trigger, you know?
Rick: Yeah, it’s not like a laser beam or
Cynthia: Yeah, it’s very loving but very powerful indeed and it’s just to help us take the next step.
Rick: Yeah. Do you see it ramping up more and more?
Cynthia: I don’t see how it could be more ramped up than it is.
Rick: You think it’s about as ramped as it’s going to get?
Cynthia: Because ramped up is an energetic word, okay? And light is different than energy, it’s much more subtle.
Rick: Yeah, but with light, like if you have a rheostat, you can start by just turning it a little bit and you can barely see it and then you can turn it more and then more and then more. You know, there are many possible degrees of intensity of light.
Cynthia: I haven’t thought a lot about that. I just feel it.
Rick: Okay, good. Well, I’m just giving you a hard time because I like to.
Cynthia: (Laughter) I don’t mind because you’re my friend.
Rick: So, this thing about, you just said about being able to perceive the divine, how did you put that?
Cynthia: With our senses.
Rick: With our senses. So, give us some examples of how it would be, how it is to perceive the divine with the senses.
Cynthia: So…
Rick: Like, let’s say two people are walking down the street and they see a tree, and one person is sort of in an ordinary state of consciousness and the other is in a state where he or she can perceive the divine with their senses. How do their perceptions differ?
Cynthia: Well, that tree might either be glowing or it might be – and this is just a visual thing of course, because different people are more predominantly hearing, more sight, more whatever – it might be totally transparent.
Rick: The tree?
Cynthia: Yeah, you might feel like, “Oh, I can just put my hand right through that thing.” You probably, you may not be able to, but, and it’s the same thing with people. You know, we can see people as a bundle of qualities, some of which we love and some of which we could maybe do without, or we can just see everybody as just this gorgeous, fantastic gift from the creator, you know, a living presence of God. And when we see everybody in that way, it helps them recognize that part of themselves. It helps them, you know. If I see somebody that way and I, you know, whether it’s in the grocery store or a parking lot, and I’m engaging with them, God, they cheer right up, you know, because it’s just, it wakes that up in them. So it’s noticing more and more of the divine and ultimately infinite nature of everything. It’s how we interpret things through our senses. So when I see something, that’s what I see, another person might see this terrible, you know, situation, you know, dark qualities or threatening qualities as opposed to everything just being an expression of the infinite.
Rick: How do you balance that perception with the need to take action? For instance, let’s say you lived, you were an adult in 1941 and Hitler was doing his thing and, you know, maybe you had this celestial perception and you could see the divine in Hitler but also something had to be done about his behavior. How do you balance or reconcile those two things?
Cynthia: It’s not here, so the words balance and reconcile don’t play a role. So if you are that infiniteness, if you are that nothing, there’s no filter between you and the way that that infiniteness wants to express through you and as you. So you just find yourself doing what you’re supposed to do. You take that step.
Rick: Which might be actually a military step in this case.
Cynthia: It could be a military step, absolutely. Yes, it could be becoming engaged on that level.
Rick: Yeah.
Cynthia: Absolutely.
Rick: Well, actually the Gita is a good example because there was a war about to start and, you know, Krishna sitting there probably having that perception you describe of seeing everything as divine and, you know, whereas Arjuna was more sort of like, “Ugh, get these guys.” And Krishna kind of kicked him out of that dualistic perspective and had him get established in being before performing action.
Cynthia: And then he knew he was supposed to act, he just knew it. And it’s just that simple. You know, I’m sure almost all of your listeners have had that experience of somehow just knowing. You know, it’s the simplest knowing. Sometimes it’s not even something that’s intellectually cognized first. It’s just, it’s the infinite and the infinite expresses itself through you, and as you, without any filters.
Rick: Yeah. Now in your case, especially if people listen to the first interview, they’ll hear this. You know, you have been like a full-time spiritual junkie for, you know, 50 years.
Cynthia: laughs
Rick: Just doing, you know, going on months and months and months, years all together of courses where you’re meditating basically all your waking hours and doing all kinds of intense spiritual stuff. I doubt you’re probably in the top 1% of anybody who’s listening to this show in terms of the amount of stuff you have done to facilitate your evolution. So how would you speak to the other 99%, so to speak, who might be feeling like, “Well, my lifestyle doesn’t support that, I don’t have the motivation to do that, I mean how can I experience what she’s experiencing, if I’m not going to pay my dues the way she did?”
Cynthia: I don’t believe in paying dues. (laughs) Follow your heart. Follow your heart. If you’re drawn to meditate or not meditate, with this teacher or that teacher, or, you know, go to church or go to the mosque or, you know, the synagogue, just be a good person. Just, you know, shower everybody you meet with love. You know, whatever is right for you, the universe is making so many options available and it’s so much easier to grow now because there’s so much consciousness. You know, I remember when I was still teaching TM, towards the end people would have these fantastic experiences which were less available to people, you know, 30 years prior because there’s so much more consciousness in the world. So you don’t have to work at it and that was the whole message of Mary Magdalene. Just “open and receive and I am going to support you.”
Rick: Well, I hope everybody is getting this. If anybody is listening to this and thinking, “Well, I don’t quite understand how I can do that, what should I do?” Feel free to send in a question. This is your opportunity. Because, you know, when I do these interviews, my predominant feeling is that I want people to derive benefit from them, not just entertainment or something. There should be a really concrete impact and tangible thing that will be life-changing for them, to whatever extent is possible. So what you’re describing is beautiful and I just really hope that, I mean, help me out here. So when you’re dealing with people and teaching people and talking to people and so on, you have probably met some people who have doubts or resistances or feelings of, you know, inferiority or inadequacy and so on. How do you help them break through those things and really start to experience the stuff you’re talking about?
Cynthia: I don’t do anything.
Rick:I know, you don’t do anything, but…
Cynthia: No, I mean, I didn’t tell you, but… so I guess I have two… my first major desire for humanity was for everybody to know how deeply they are loved, how utterly, totally, completely, and unconditionally they are loved. And they don’t have to change a thing. That love is there. So one of the people that I most admire, besides Mr. Rogers as you know, is this wonderful priest in Los Angeles named Father Greg Boyle.
Rick: I’ve heard of him.
Cynthia: Yeah, and he’s just, he’s incredible.
Rick: Oh yeah, he works with drug addicts and gang members.
Cynthia: He works with the gang population, yeah. And he found that the key to healing was unconditional love. And he used these, he’s written two books which I think are fantastic. And he used these – and he’s done lots of YouTubes, if anybody wants to watch him – he used these words that, for healing to take place, it has to take place in the context of an irresistible culture of tenderness, in which each person knows that they are cherished. So when I heard those words, I was so excited, I thought, that’s what I want to say. And then I got that that “irresistible culture of tenderness” has to be established not just between people, but in every cell in the body. So what I do is…
Rick: I think it would have to be established within people before it can be established between people.
Cynthia: Exactly. And so what I did was, what I do with people is we take a look at what needs to change in order for that, let’s say, whatever’s standing in the way of that person’s happiness. We don’t try to figure out every single detail of it, okay? But we just are aware that it’s there and we just say, “I invite in, I guess we could say divine light and divine love.” And they get soaked in that, okay? And that resistance to knowing who you are, you know, that forgetting of knowing who you are, it gets dissolved and dissolved and dissolved.
Rick: So just having that intention or that…
Cynthia: It’s intention.
Rick: That desire, yeah.
Cynthia: It’s intention, it’s a setup, and then we offer it to the infinite and to God.
Rick: Yeah, I used to be kind of skeptical about intention like that, and sometimes it’s used in a rather superficial way just to get material things, but I’ve seen a lot of examples where people, once they just have this sort of moment of wanting to know or wanting to grow or wanting to open or wanting to, you know, there’s a “seek and you shall” find dynamic that takes place. There’s a certain shift that takes place in one’s attitude, and then all of a sudden, stuff starts coming, you know, opportunities for evolution.
Cynthia: It’s not about, you know, what people call manifesting or anything like that, everything has its role. It’s not like that. It’s not trying to make something specific happen. It’s asking for help, okay? I’ve lived with this for umpteen years and I help, and then we drop it, we hand it over. We surrender it. It’s totally about non-doing. It’s totally about not being in control. It’s totally about surrender.
Rick: Yeah, it almost sounds like Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, really, there is a thing of realizing that you’re not in control and you need help.
Cynthia: We’re in control of nothing.
Rick: Right, once you reach that realization, then healing is possible.
Cynthia: Right, right. Right.
Rick: So, Kim, someone named Kim, sent in a question saying, “What makes you sure that today our awareness of the divine is greater than in earlier times? My idea of divine light is that in letting go, we perceive it, not by working at it.” Those almost seem like two different points there, but go ahead.
Cynthia: Kim I don’t think it’s more or less. I mean, to be in that state is just to be in that state. There’s no more or less involved.
Rick: Well, I think you were saying that there’s this light bathing the planet now that wasn’t there a thousand years ago.
Cynthia: There’s more support. Well, I don’t know what was going on with that, but there’s a lot of support now, okay? And I do see that support and it’s very helpful, but I wouldn’t necessarily go more or less. And to be, I mean, nothing is nothing. You can’t be more or less nothing. You can’t be more or less divine light. You just can be merged with it and that’s that.
Rick: Yeah, there are degrees of merger, aren’t there? Degrees of reflectivity or embodiment?
Cynthia: Well, we talked about that. You can slip in and out, but when you’re there, you’re there and that’s that.
Rick: Yeah. So like, in your own experience, you’re there and that’s that, but nonetheless, paradoxically, is there still a sense of the light becoming even more embodied or more bright or more effusive or any such thing? In what dimension is your growth taking place these days? (long pause) Hard to say?
Cynthia: It’s hard to say because I’m so unlocalized, with it, I don’t know what to say. But if we were going to, definitely I do feel that my body’s changing little by little. Yeah, I do feel that sometimes. I feel… I do feel that sometimes.
Rick: And is anything else changing? Your perception, your emotions, your functionality in any respect?
Cynthia: You know, you mentioned Bill Bellman, and one time he said to me, something which seemed paradoxical and impossible, He said, “You know, the house of the infinite has many rooms,” and I thought, “How can nothing have rooms?”
Rick: Jesus said “in my father’s house there are many mansions,” or some such thing.
Cynthia: And yet, I seem to be getting… it’s like that divine light shining through the crystal, more and more, it’s a magical exploration. I don’t know how to describe it, but more possibilities come in. It’s hard to find words for them, but for me, it’s all ways to help people. That’s really what I’m doing here now, ways to help people. In terms of how I experience myself, I don’t know what to say. I am so unlocalized. But I manage to drive my car, you know, and shop for food, and I’m taking a trip to England, and I’m going to do it, you know, I’m going to make it.
Rick: And if you whack your thumb with a hammer, you don’t think, well, that’s happening in China. No, actually.
Cynthia: No, no, no. (laughing) If I bump into something, I go “Ouch.” Yeah.
Rick: Yeah, good. Okay, well, just to reiterate the last part of her statement or question, “my idea of the divine light, of divine light is that in letting go, we perceive it, not by working at it.”
Cynthia: Right, we become it.
Rick: Yeah. I’ve noticed a number of spiritual teachers talking more and more that way. Rupert Spira just put out a video, and Adyashanti seems to talk that way. There’s more and more appreciation of effortlessness and just, sort of, you know, “let go and let God” kind of thing.
Cynthia: Well, you know, the thing is, if something is meant to be, it’s never just going to be shared with one person. It’s going to be shared with lots of people all over the planet so that, you know, it gets shared properly and as much as possible.
Rick: Yeah. Hmm. There were some notes you sent me. As we go along, excuse me, if anything comes to mind that we’re not talking about that you’d like to talk about, just plunge right in and we’ll talk about it. But there’s some notes you sent me, and we talked a little bit about new light, and then there was one here, “transmuting suffering into bliss.” A lot of people are suffering, you know, they’re on drugs or they’re going through difficult times financially and in relationships and all kinds of things. It would be Pollyanna-ish to not recognize that there is suffering on the planet, lots of it.
Cynthia: Right, right.
Rick: What do you mean by transmuting it into bliss? How can that be done?
Cynthia: So, what causes suffering, we could say, is an experience, like hammer on my thumb, and an interpretation of experience. So it’s out of our interpretation of experience that suffering continues. So a trauma, I believe by definition, is something that happens once, but then it makes such a deep impression, that it affects our experiences over the course of a lifetime. It keeps coming up and coming up.
Rick: Yeah, like PTSD.
Cynthia: So it becomes an interpretation, and that interpretation then gets more and more impressed into the nervous system and into the cellular chemical functioning, all of it, you know? And so, what happens is, When this divine love and divine light go to work, they begin to dissolve the holes that that interpretation has. And it works physiologically, you know, not just mentally. So that eventually we come to the point where we can remember something, but it has no charge left, okay? It’s just, everything just is. I don’t know if I shared this in the first meeting we had, but I’ll just give it as an example. I came to this point, I was with Bill Bowman, where, you know, it was all gone. You know, the charges were all gone. And the way I envisioned it, what came to me inside, was a stage and a curtain came down, like a curtain coming down on a show. And I heard inside, “This personal history no longer exists.” So I can remember, you know, as much as anybody my age can remember very well, various incidents in my life, but they’re just events, okay? They’re just events. So that possibility exists, and the transmuting of suffering into bliss is the gradual dissolution of all the levels of imprint from physiological to psychological to emotional to nervous system to chemistry in that person’s life. It’s a transmuting. And how do I suggest we do it? We ask for help.
Rick: Hmm. So, you ever think back and feel guilty about something you did or hurt by some things that happened, that’s already, all that has lost its oomph.
Cynthia: Yeah, there’s no impact.
Rick: Yeah. There’s, I think, an analogy that Ramana Maharshi (or somebody) used about how, you know, a rope can be burned up and if you look at it, it still looks like a rope, but it’s just ash. If you try to do anything with it, it just disintegrates. So it’s kind of like, you know, just like what you said, you can remember what happened to you in high school, but it doesn’t have any grip anymore.
Cynthia: No. No. It’s like a book you read or a movie you saw.
Rick: Yeah. You don’t take it personally because there’s no person to take it.
Cynthia:Right. That’s it, brother.
Rick: Yeah. I’ve interviewed Bill Bauman, so if anybody wants to listen to that, you’ll find that On BATGAP. Okay, and you said “Ask for help and it’ll come.” And obviously, there are more serious degrees of sufferings, you know, very overwhelming, you know, compelling, gripping, you know, people who really go through stuff. It seems like it might take a while to get out of that intensity of suffering. How does one maintain the sort of confidence and inspiration to do that?
Cynthia: And I also would not use only one system, okay? This is a great system, but some people are more put together to effect the physiology more, you know, to really remove trauma in a more, you know, physical way or energetic way. You know, I refer people to other people all the time because I know what I’m equipped to support, which is this bringing in this divine light and divine love as a powerful tool for shifting things. But I would never say that’s the only thing you should do.
Rick: Sure. Yeah, I talked to a psychiatrist yesterday who had listened to an interview I did a month or two ago in which the guest said something about, you know, just her negative opinion of any kind of therapeutic drugs, psychoactive drugs that are used in therapy. And she said she really wanted to set the record state, so I might as well just reiterate what she said, because it pertains to what we’re saying right now. She said that going through years of prolonged depression or other forms of mental illness actually damages the brain. And if you can nip things in the bud these days, they’re much more skillful in the use of various drugs. And she included the hope and promise of microdosing and psychedelics and stuff like that. Just even the drugs that they legally use now, she said, she’s seen remarkable results with, just snapping people out of deep depression or other troubled states; and they end up living happy, productive lives. Whatever minimal, if any, negative side effects the drug had are insignificant compared to the effect that remaining in that depressed state would have had for long, long periods of time. So, it’s good to sort of be open-minded to these possibilities, I think.
Cynthia: It’s all God.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Cynthia: It’s all God. You know, however God wants to help you, whether it’s through a chemical or whatever, just, you know, find your way. Listen to your heart and your common sense. I know some people who are very beautiful beings and, you know, very, very far along their spiritual path. But because of their chemistry, they had to, you know, take something to correct.
Rick: Yeah, some depression or whatever.
Cynthia: Right, right. And it was night and day, and then they could just get on with their lives. So, it’s all God. You know, it’s all God.
Rick: Yeah, I’ve seen examples of that too. So Sarah, if you’re listening, I put in a plug for you, what you told me.
Cynthia: Yeah, whatever you’re drawn to, whatever your heart tells you, follow through with it. Okay? That’s why there are so many things available to us, because we’re each such different packages, find what you need.
Rick: Yeah, actually, you might have been there. I remember on the Santa Barbara ATR course, Maharishi said, “We’re not fanatics.” He said, “Whatever works, we’re in favor of that.”
Cynthia: Whatever works, absolutely.
Rick: Whatever works, let’s do it.
Cynthia: Yeah, right.
Rick: Yeah. Okay. Here’s another little thing in the notes you sent me. Lady Julian’s visions, what were those?
Cynthia: Oh, okay.
Rick: Is this some Christian saint or something?
Cynthia: I have a crush on Lady Julian. (laughs) I discovered her in a silly way, I won’t go into it, but she was a 13th century woman who was educated, which was very, very rare for that time. I don’t know that she was overly religious. And of course, in the 13th century, it was a very hellfire-and-brimstone version of Christianity. Well, she got very sick. And finally, I think she’d been sick for a couple of months, and she fell into a place where they thought, sure, this was the end, and the priest came to give her last rites and all that thing. But instead of dying, she had these gorgeous visions called “The visions of divine love.” And she came out, of course, she was fine, you know how those things go. And then she was able, because she was educated and could write, she wrote those visions down. And then she did commentary on them. So 20 years later, she did a more expanded commentary on them. And then she became what was called an “Anchorite” in those days. And an Anchorite was somebody who had a small cell built on the outside of a church with just a small window in so that she could experience the Mass and get food and all that. But anyway, I found her when I was 16 years old in a romance novel. And I’ve been her fan ever since. And I even ended up living in Norwich for a year, which is interesting.
Rick: Oh, Julian of Norwich, of course. I’ve heard of her, yes. I didn’t think it was Lady Julian, yes.
Cynthia: It was all about God’s love. God is love, God is love, God is love, God is love. And no judgment, you know, nothing like that. And she was amazing.
Rick: So, she had a near-death experience, which these days a lot of people are having, especially with modern medicine, which brings people back from heart attacks and stuff. And what’s that you have there?
Cynthia: I found this quote from her, just in case there was an opportunity to share it.
Rick: Oh, go for it.
Cynthia: So, this is 13th century. “Not only will we receive the same joy that souls previously have had in heaven, but we will also receive a new joy which will be flowing copiously out of God into us, fulfilling God.” So, it’s the same message, really, you know.
Rick: Have you ever had meditations or anything in which it was kind of like a near-death experience, although it wasn’t a physical near-death, where you sort of went off to some other realm and kind of communicated or interacted with, you know, this or that, and then came back and could talk about it?
Cynthia: No.
Rick: Okay, just curious.
Cynthia: You know, when I expand, I’m all of it, you know, the body of Paroosh where the whole universe is inside you and all that kind of thing. But I never went, so it was an expansion of me, not a departure from me.
Rick: Right.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: And when that expansion takes place, does it begin to shine a light on, or incorporate things that have some specificity to them? Or is it more like pure, abstract, unbounded awareness? (long pause)
Cynthia: I think you’re going to have to ask that again.
Rick: Well, is there any kind of cognition thing that takes place where awareness expands and you’re in this, kind of vast ocean and then you begin to see the fish in the ocean. You begin to sort of cognize impulses or something that reside in that field.
Cynthia: Right, right. Yes. I think I might have described one experience I had meditating with Bill. It was about miracles. So is there a question coming up you’d rather address? Bill was doing this big event and he said, “Okay, we’re going to have a meditation on miracles.” I said, “Fine.” I just, you know, sit there and whatever happens, happens. Suddenly it’s like I was in this vast ocean of myself, okay? And I don’t know how it was exactly, but this understanding came in and there were some visuals to it. So from the time we’re born, we’re very sensitive beings and we have no language or anything else to help us interpret what’s going on in our environment. Mom and dad are doing great. Mom and dad are screaming at us or, you know, but we feel all these things and because we don’t know what to do with them, this is just in my vision, we develop what I’ll call cellular defenses that’s set to protect us from maybe angry input or fearful input. And those cellular defenses come in at such an early pre-verbal stage that we’re not even aware that they’re there. And yet, they maintain, on the level of our bodies and our cellular functioning duality. There’s a “me” and then there’s that which I have to protect against. So it’s like separation and duality is built into the body. And now, of course, I’m all about getting the body to dissolve all that. So I become very aware of that. And as soon as I become aware of that, I feel just through grace, I mean, it’s a meditation for a miracle, I feel it all dissolved. And I’m all of it. And then it’s, I’m this ocean of being and… I have a very, I have the kind of mind that if I think I’m an ocean of being, I see an ocean. And I see coming up in this ocean, all this debris like shipwrecks, you know. And I get that as I’m meditating, oh, this is all of the debris of whatever’s messed up in human consciousness, okay? But it’s all me. And as soon as it’s all me, it dissolves. And then another wave of debris comes up, but it’s just me and it dissolves. So that was just an example of something that could come up in a meditation.
Rick: Well, that’s interesting because as you started saying that, I started thinking, well, wait a minute, she said she already cleared out all this stuff, but what you’re saying is that you function as a washing machine for debris and collective consciousness.
Cynthia: In that moment, but it was more like… It wasn’t like it was moving through me and I was trying to fix it, it was just…
Rick: No, it was just spontaneous.
Cynthia: Because I perceived that it was me, it dissolved.
Rick: Interesting.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: And if you had perceived that it was something other than you…
Cynthia: Then I might have to defend against it or do something to it.
Rick: Yeah, there’d be an I-thou kind of tension.
Cynthia: But that cellular, that old habit of myself saying “there’s me and then something I have to defend against,” that had been dissolved.
Rick: Yeah.
Cynthia: It just happened.
Rick: I kind of sometimes think that that must be the way Amma functions, you know, where she sits there for a dozen hours, you know, hugging people one after another.
Cynthia: Exactly, yeah.
Rick: If there was sort of any kind of duality in her awareness, it would be exhausting.
Cynthia: Oh, yeah, she can’t. It’s just, she’s just being light, infinite, yeah. She’s nothing doing nothing, right?
Rick: Yeah, yeah. In fact, she said one time, she has all these humanitarian projects, especially in India, and some Swamis were talking to her about all the things that they were doing and they were saying, “Well, what more can we do to help the world?” And she said, “What world?”
Cynthia: (laughing) It’s the dream, it’s the dream of life, right?
Rick: Yeah. So, you sent me these notes about some things that you’ve… Is it useful and interesting to bring up some of the points that you talked about in some of these seminars? It’s providing little talking points here for me, but do you want to go through some more of these, or what?
Cynthia: How about, do you think it’s, are we going too long?
Rick: No, no, we could go another half an hour or so.
Cynthia: Okay, let’s go for it.
Rick: If you like. So, you gave a whole thing about black holes and intention and creation, what was that about?
Cynthia: So that’s another thing, see, remember I mentioned earlier, I never know when I’m doing these teleconferences what’s going to show up. So right before that particular teleconference… I can’t believe it … Anyway, you know the guy who’s the expert on black holes? My brain is
Rick: Stephen Hawking.
Cynthia: Stephen Hawking, he died, Okay. So there were all these articles about Stephen Hawking and black holes. And I love Science, so I was reading it and what he found was that, sometimes we think that black holes just take everything in and turn it into nothing. Some people think it goes to another universe. I mean there’s so many theories. But he said, he found that black holes actually emitted something.
Rick: They do, they emit a lot of intense radiation, yeah.
Cynthia: So I was able to, or I shouldn’t even say I, it came to me how to give people that experience. So more ways are always coming to dissolve individuality, both physical, cellular, and consciousness and to recreate a new version of that person which is without boundaries, okay. You know, be made of light, be made of consciousness. So it came to me that, a meditation came that using that knowledge of black holes we could do that. We could dissolve into the black hole and then out would come this reorganized version of ourselves empowered by, you know, the quantum world.
Rick: And in this case, was the concept of black hole somehow metaphorical? Because you couldn’t literally go into a black hole without having all of your molecules ripped apart.
Cynthia: It’s consciousness, it’s intention.
Rick: I see.
Cynthia: It’s what happens, it’s an awareness. It’s “as if,” I guess we could say. And yet, the same effect could be there, dissolution and recreation. I mean, people go into these meditations and they can’t come out, so I know something’s going on.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay, how about this one? “Birthing a quantum-based human paradigm.” What was that?
Cynthia: It’s really functioning from wholeness, okay? It’s recognizing that even though we are… We’re the dream, okay? So we’re each a different version of the dream of light, we’re each a different expression of the infinite creativity and divine light. And we want to celebrate this vast garden of possibilities that we all are. It’s not all roses, it’s dandelions, it’s, peonies. You know, a lot of people love dandelion root. It helps them a lot. So everything has a purpose. Even though, on the outside, we’re appearing to be an activist or be a meditator or be this or be that, we’re taking all these different forms and expressions – artists, engineers, cooks; even though we’re doing all these different things, the quantum-based universe or the quantum-based person, their inner reality, is that they are nothing doing nothing. They’re playing, just as the universe is playing, by creating all of us.
Rick: Yeah, you know, sometimes people criticize the use of physics terms and quantum mechanics terms by consciousness people. They feel like it’s not a realistic correlation there. We’re just borrowing terms in order to try to explain something that actually has nothing to do with quantum mechanical realities. But I don’t think that’s true for a number of reasons. I mean, the very foundation of quantum mechanics was the discovery that the observer influences the phenomenon; such as, what is it called, “the two-hole experiment,” where a beam becomes a particle if it’s observed, but a wave if it’s not observed. So there’s definitely some kind of deep correlation between consciousness and the behavior of creation. And… Go ahead, you want to comment on that?
Cynthia: No, I’m just saying I’m grateful for the vocabulary.
Rick: Yeah, but it’s not just a metaphor, there’s some kind of actual reality to the connection.
Cynthia: It’s so difficult to explain these things, that the language of science is a huge blessing, to be able to explain these things to people or talk about them.
Rick: It is, and it’s told us that creation is fundamentally unified and superficially diverse, just like our experience might reveal to us through spiritual practice. You know, we start from the field of diversity and we end up in a field of unity and that’s what physics does as it goes to more and more fundamental levels of nature’s functioning.
Cynthia: Right. In those words, it’s a field of pure potential. It’s wonderful.
Rick: Yeah. Now one interesting consideration is physics tries to get deeper and deeper into nature’s functioning and hopefully arrive at sort of the ultimate theory of everything, an understanding of the ultimate reality of the universe. Spiritual pursuit does a similar thing; and we’re told that ultimately we are consciousness or we are wholeness or we are a Brahman and so on. We’re not just these bodies. But it kind of begs the question: Could there be two ultimate realities? The one we experience subjectively, if we realize that we are the totality, and the one that physics or science can study? I’ll let you take the answer to that.
Cynthia: (laughing) I think there are all possibilities. One of the most fascinating things I ever saw was a TV show, you know, Nova? He was talking about how, for string theory to work, there needed to be a minimum of twelve, there needed to be twelve dimensions.
Rick: Dimensions, right.
Cynthia: Yeah. Now, we as human beings are only put together to perceive the way our brains were, three or four dimensions. That’s just how we are. So, he said, you could be living right in the middle of a nine dimensional universe and not know it because you’re not equipped to experience it. Well, I love that. (laughs) So I don’t think I can answer your question (laughs) because there could be a different answer from all twelve different dimensions.
Rick: Yeah, well a housefly can be caught in your car as you’re driving down the highway and listening to Beethoven on the radio and the housefly has a reality that is very real for the housefly, but it has no inkling whatsoever of the reality that you’re experiencing.
Cynthia: I absolutely know that I am not equipped to explain all this stuff, I’m just not. And you know, sometimes when I was with a teacher, especially my Lakota teacher, I could tell that his experience was different than mine. And I’d follow him this far, this far, this far, and then I would feel literally like my brain fell off a cliff. I couldn’t follow any further. So it’s kind of like that. I can only go until my brain falls off the cliff, which it’s happy to do it as a mind falling off cliffs.
Rick: Yeah, well there’s some real nice cliffs around Santa Fe, that area.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: Some up in Taos also. Well, we’re sort of getting to something here because I’ve had this discussion with my friend Dana Sawyer, who feels that there isn’t necessarily one ultimate reality that people throughout the ages and all cultures have experienced. But that there’s always going to be really quite a unique flavor of what people experience as being ultimate that will vary from time to time and place to place. And I usually take the angle that there’s got to be this perennial philosophy, there’s got to be sort of a more uniformity in the experience because if we’re really talking about experiencing what is ultimately real, it doesn’t make sense that there could ultimately be a plethora of realities if they’re really ultimate; because we have this intuitive sense that it all boils down to one fundamental thing.
Cynthia: You know, it’s like nothing is true and everything is true. So to us, here we are in this third dimensional world with our brains, which you’ve done the best to expand and to grasp bigger and bigger realities. You know, it’s not something I haven’t thought of. So this…
Rick: You have thought of it, in other words.
Cynthia: Of becoming infinite, becoming nothing. It seems like that would be it. But I couldn’t tell you for sure, because I know that there are millions of universes being born all the time. And twelve dimensions? I mean, there could be way more than that. And I just don’t think there’s one truth. You know, I just think it’s, you know, like Vishnu lying there dreaming the world, but he dreams many, many, many, many worlds simultaneously, and I only have access to this universe.
Rick: But what if there’s one truth and Vishnu has access to it, but none of the inhabitants of his worlds have access to it to the extent he does? We little human beings, you know, although we might have a sense of infinity and vastness and oneness and nothing happening and all that, that could still be a far cry from what some highly evolved being on Alpha Centauri is experiencing.
Cynthia: Right. But if you become one with Vishnu or the source or the infinite, you cease to know anything. You just cease to know anything. You realize you don’t know, I realize I don’t know anything, except what I’m given in the moment, like I got a call, Rick, at 1: 30.
Rick: Yeah. It looks like Irene sent a question in about the housefly. How do you know flies don’t listen to Beethoven? Well, I’m sure they do, but I don’t think they interpret it as Beethoven. If the fly’s in the car, it picks up the vibrations of the sound.
Irene: It was a joke.
Rick: Oh, it was a joke, okay.
Irene: For you.
Rick: For me. I think it’s a good question, it’s a good point actually, because the housefly is actually, it’s actually getting some sensory stimuli from the sound coming out of the radio, but it has a radically different interpretation of it than we do.
Cynthia: Absolutely, and then take it up to the human level. You know what you need to know to do, to bring fulfillment to the package of the infinite that you are. And I know what I need to know to bring fulfillment to the package of the infinite that I am. But that’s it.
Rick: That’s nice. There’s a kind of a humility implicit in what you’re saying, which I find refreshing and helpful. You know, this sort of, I think it was Nisargadatta or somebody who said that enlightenment is like free fall. It’s like free fall.
Cynthia: It’s free fall, yeah.
Rick: Free fall forever. The good news is there’s no ground, you’re not going to go splat, but there’s definitely this kind of continuous like, “I’m just free falling here, there’s no sort of, no place. Well, listen to what Jesus said, I mean, he said, you know, “For the birds have their nests and the foxes have their dens, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
Cynthia: Yes. (laughs) We just, it takes some getting used to, you know, and then you just laugh, “I don’t know.” (laughs)
Rick: You’ve been laughing ever since I met you. In fact, that was my first impression. I sat next to you, you were beaming and giggling, just like you are now. Alrighty, well, we’re rambling a bit, but it’s fun. Is there anything else you’d like to say that we haven’t said?
Cynthia: I just like people to tune into, at the very least, how much love there is for them everywhere, all the time. And how perfect and how beautiful they are, exactly as they are. If they could just tune into that, you know? I just want everybody to feel, in every cell in their body, how beloved they are. And then, ultimately, we become The Love, but that’s a first step. One of the things I – sometimes people come here for retreats – and one of the things I decided to do was to just put people outside. And I would say, “We all love to hug a tree, but this is about letting the tree hug you.” And I would say “Drop into your heart,” because that’s how I start everything, is (hitting something) whoops, I smashed that thing. “Just drop into your heart center and just be there. And then with your eyes open, focus on anything, a blade of grass, a flower, anything that’s alive, and just open to how much love is pouring into you from every living thing, however small.” And they do, they feel it and it’s gorgeous. It’s gorgeous.
Rick: Yeah. And, you know, that makes sense because, I mean, if God is omnipresent, if the divine intelligence is omnipresent, which it is, obviously, if you look closely at anything, then it’s in every little thing, like you say, every little blade of grass.
Cynthia: And it’s loving, everything is supporting us and loving us. It’s fantastic.
Rick: Yeah. And not just us. It’s this kind of infinitely correlated net of indra, you know, where everything is mutually sort of correlated with everything else. Well, that’s a good note to end on. So, what kind of activities do you offer? What can people do?
Cynthia: I have individual sessions.
Rick: Over Skype or something?
Cynthia: I don’t usually do Skype because I don’t like to sit in front of a computer. I usually just do it over the phone.
Rick: Okay.
Cynthia: I will, if people really want to, but most of my sessions are long distance. I have a mentoring group the last nine months. I’ll start another one in January. Each one has a slightly different theme, but that’s where the downloads come for me to share with people. And the mentoring programs include a mix of teleconferences and individual sessions. And then I have what I call once a year, I have to do something called “an earth retreat,” where I mix in, the beautiful things I learned from the Lakota tradition and with all the other stuff. Take people out on the land.
Rick: There in the Santa Fe area?
Cynthia: Yeah, in New Mexico.
Rick: Yeah, good. Alrighty. And so, I’ll be…
Cynthia: That’s on my website.
Rick: Yes, on your website.
Cynthia: And I have CDs and MP3s on there as well.
Rick: Okay.
Cynthia: Like the ones I sent you.
Rick: Yeah, yeah, good. I enjoyed listening to those. So I’ll be linking to your website, as I always do, and people can go there and obviously, find out about this stuff and sign up for email notifications and all the usual stuff.
Cynthia: All right. Rick, thank you for this and thank you for what you’re doing. I think it’s absolutely fantastic.
Rick: Yeah, well, I’m not doing it, right?
Cynthia: Right, right. But you know, you’re sharing.
Rick: Yeah, yeah.
Cynthia: What’s meant to come through you and it’s just so fun just to sit and talk with you.
Rick: It really is, yeah. So, next time I’m down in Santa Fe, I’ll definitely get in touch.
Cynthia: You better.
Rick: Yeah, I will. I’ll be in trouble if I don’t.
Cynthia: Yes, big, big cosmic level trouble.
Rick: Lightning bolts to the head.
Cynthia: Yeah.
Rick: All right, good. So thanks, Cynthia, and thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching. As you probably know, this is an ongoing series and I just encourage you to go to the website and check out the menus to see what you can do there, audio podcasts, email newsletters, things like that. And I just learned something the other day, which is: you can subscribe to a YouTube channel, but right next to the Subscribe button, there’s a little bell. And if you click on that bell, then it makes you a Super Subscriber or something. And it notifies you of everything that’s posted on the channel as opposed to just occasionally notifying you. And in my case, I don’t post anything on the channel except these weekly interviews. So if you want YouTube to notify you of each one, then click on that little bell and that’s what will happen.
Cynthia: Huge love to you, my friend.
Rick: Love to you. Take care.
Cynthia: All right. Take care.
Rick: Bye. Thanks.
Cynthia: Bye-bye.