Gina Lake Interview

Gina Lake Transcript: Channeling, Awakening, Essence, and Radical Happiness

Key Takeaways

• A sense of not belonging can reflect a deeper spiritual sensitivity, not a personal defect.
• Suffering can become the grist that pushes people toward healing and awakening.
• Inner guidance must be discerned carefully, because not every voice or impression is trustworthy.
• Technology can support awakening, but spiritual growth must catch up to prevent imbalance.
• Compassion and care for others are signs of more advanced consciousness.

Questions This Interview Explores

• Why do some people feel they do not belong in this world?
• How can spiritual awakening emerge from suffering and a difficult childhood?
• What is the difference between intuition and misleading inner voices?
• How can technology and spirituality evolve together?

Full transcript, edited for readability

Introductions and first impressions

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest this week is my old friend, Gina Lake. And I say that because, although this is the first time we’ve ever spoken outside of emails, when I got the first email from Gina four or five months ago, it was like an old friend sending me an email. There was such a sort of camaraderie in terms of her understanding of things and her kind of broadness of awareness and depth of appreciation and non-fundamentalist way of thinking that I just really felt like I knew her. In fact, since then, every now and then I’ll send Gina an email and say, “What do you think about this?” and “How was that interview?” and “Did I come across too fanatical?” or whatever, and she’ll always bounce back some sage advice. So I’ve really appreciated that, and I’ve really been looking forward to this interview.

Gina: Well thank you, Rick.

Rick: You’re welcome.

Gina: I’ve been looking forward to this interview too, for all the same reasons.

Rick: And Gina lives down in Sedona with her husband, Nirmala, who I’ll also be interviewing in a month or two. And she’s a prolific author. She’s written about eight books now, “Radical Happiness,” “Embracing the Now,” “Son of Now,” “Now Meets Godzilla.” I’m just kidding about those last two. She’s written a whole lot of books, which I’ll be linking to from www.batgap.com. I find her books, at least as much as I’ve read so far, to be as mature in their spiritual wisdom as Gina herself has proven to be, in emails and in all the audios I’ve been listening to. So I’m really buttering you up here. You’re going to have to live up to all this. So we have plenty of time, as you know, in this interview.

So I’d like to really explore everything that you consider to be meaningful and relevant in your own spiritual journey, and in your work as a counselor and teacher with many other people, and anything which occurs to us as we go along. So perhaps it usually works to start with a biographical sketch, a retrospective on how you came to be where you are today.

Gina: Okay, well I’ve been thinking about that a little, because I know that you ask that question, and I’ve so rarely talked about it, actually. I’ve been kind of quiet about it. I don’t really think I have that interesting a story, but maybe there are some aspects of it that are interesting to listeners. Just basically, starting off, I’ve always been a lover of God. As a child I was brought up Catholic and I loved going to church because of the feeling in church, the feeling I got, the connectedness it gave me, the sense of being connected to something bigger than myself has always been present. And, of course, being Catholic, I thought about being a nun at times. And eventually, though, when I was 18 and started thinking for myself, I just couldn’t stay with it.

It was too guilt- and fear-based for me, and I started to see that other people actually were comfortable not believing what I believed, and that they didn’t think they were going to go to hell, so maybe I could actually venture out into just questioning some of those beliefs. And then I moved into a phase, this was college, when I felt a little lost because I missed the spirituality that I got from my religion, and I felt a little sad about that. And then when I encountered Eastern religions, I was so thrilled, I just was so thrilled that there were other paths out there that resonated with me more than my Catholic upbringing. So I started to study those kinds of things, and I’ve always been interested in psychic things also, being a Pisces. We’re all very otherworldly, we Pisces, and so I’ve always been more attuned to other worlds than this world.

And in fact, growing up in a fairly dysfunctional family, I really didn’t feel like this earth was the place for me, and there was a deep longing to not be here, really, and a lot of depression in high school. And I just got lost in playing the piano, and music, and singing and dancing, and reading. And so I found ways to appease myself, to find some peace within a very disruptive, angry household that I was growing up in. I just had to withdraw into myself, which was my natural thing to do anyway.

Feeling out of place

Rick: You know, it might help some people to interject here about this feeling that you had of not belonging here, because there are a lot of kids these days that commit suicide and everything, because they don’t feel like they belong, or they don’t feel like they fit in. In fact, Lady Gaga has this whole campaign, now called Born This Way Foundation, where she’s trying to give kids confidence that they’re fine just the way they are, and so on. And I had a very dear friend who was a highly spiritual and highly awake guy who killed himself a few years ago. He was a young man, about 25, because he just didn’t feel like he belonged on this planet, and he thought he could just check out. But, if it by some chance saves a life for us to touch on this point, that in a sense, none of us belong here.

We all have a much higher dimension to our existence than we appear to have in ordinary, mundane life, so we’re all in the same boat that way. But on the other hand, we all belong here, because we’re here, and there’s a purpose to our being here.

Gina: Okay Rick, let’s get into some radical ideas right away then.

Rick: Yeah, and we’ll continue the chronological sketch too, but we can dive into little eddies as we go along.

Gina: Yeah, well it seems that, as you said, we’re all from somewhere else, anywhere, anyhow. But some of us do especially feel like we don’t belong here, that we can’t relate to the war and the violence and the hatred that goes on here. I’m a very sensitive person, and so many of the people on the spiritual path, probably all of them, are similar. They can’t relate to this planet. It seems like the planet of the apes, right? They’re killing people, and they’re hating people, and there’s so much horror going on here, and things that we would never consider doing. And I remember growing up in my family too, and hearing my parents argue like children with each other, and feeling like, “Wow, I’m more mature than they are.” And it was a strange thing to be a child and to feel like you’re more mature than your parents.

And they were good people, of course, but I just couldn’t understand how they could so cruelly interact with each other. And in all of my metaphysical studies, I came across the idea that there are a lot of people here today, and this may account for all of the awakenings, which is such an amazing phenomenon that’s going on on this planet, but there are a lot of people in the body today who really didn’t have to come to earth, but they volunteered to help earth at this very critical time because they are of a higher consciousness, they already are enlightened, if you will, and are existing on higher dimensions and did not have to be here on this third dimension.

But they loved the earth and they said, “Okay, I want to volunteer and I’m willing to become fully human so that I can really relate and really understand the human condition, and then I’m going to wake up at a certain point in my lifetime, and I’m going to bring forth the wisdom, the knowledge, the information, the higher consciousness from the realm that I came from.” And I think that that may be why, and I haven’t really heard this come out in any of your interviews, but when I’ve been listening to some of your interviews, I’ve wanted to say, “Well, the movement, this movement of awakening, which is so phenomenal, where there are so many people awakening, and awakening easily, there is something going on here that is quite mysterious.” And also, if you do look at what’s going on on the earth, it’s really at a critical point, and it seems to make sense that if there are guiding forces guiding this earth, that they would perhaps want to intervene, that it’s their job, it’s my understanding, that beings on other levels do take it on to guide planets and to help the evolution of humanoids on those planets.

And this is one of the main ways that I’ve been told that they do help, is by sending emissaries into a certain dimension. And you could say that Christ was an emissary, right? Buddha, the avatars, what are they? They came in enlightened, an avatar I think by definition comes in enlightened.

“Okay Rick, let’s get into some radical ideas right away then.”

Rick: But they didn’t realize it. I mean, Buddha struggled for years before his enlightenment was realized. And Rama, of Ramayana fame, he is said to be an avatar of Vishnu, and he was miserable and seeking, and “Oh, life sucks, nothing is worth it,” and then he worked with Vasistha, his guru, and ended up having his awakening. So if we accept the possible validity of all these arguably mythological things, then if even God himself, who decides to incarnate as an avatar, can come in ignorant and have to somehow wake up at some point, then what to say of the rest of us?

Gina: Yes, so I think this is a fascinating idea that, when I encountered it and began to talk with other people about it, they really relaxed, because I was teaching some New Age ideas in the 90s, and this was one of the things I was talking to people about, and the people who would come to talk with me were generally oddballs.

You’re unconventional, strange, people who didn’t fit in very well, who often had unusual experiences, maybe mystical experiences even, and who often came from dysfunctional families, which is quite interesting because many of the therapists and healers and helpers that I’ve counseled in the past have come from very dysfunctional families, and it seems to me that many of these more advanced beings who came to help planet Earth also chose to come into a wounding environment, because that can be the grist for the mill, to motivate the suffering that comes from that, motivates people to study psychology, to get on the spiritual path, to do the work, to do the healing work of waking up.

So suffering often wakes us up from the nightmare, so that seems to be another characteristic of people who might have come here, or beings who came here from another dimension who became regular human beings and are awakening now. And the pace of awakening seems to be rapidly increasing. It seems that the higher plan was perhaps to infuse individuals, especially born in the late 40s, like yourself, early 50s is myself, certainly before then too, but there were a lot of us who came in then, who came of age in the 60s, and the whole hippie movement, and the peace and love and the drugs, also played a part in opening up people’s consciousness. And there were problems with drugs, of course, at times, but I think that drugs have actually been, in a sense, a part of the plan of awakening, and they set the stage for now, all of us are in our more mature age and awakening.

And of course there are younger people who are awakening too, but I’ve just seen this whole generation that I’ve been part of go through the seeking and the spiritual path and the healing work and the meditation and all of that. And now, then in the 90s, finally the teachers really started showing up, and the East and West came together in a way that it hadn’t in the 60s. And then the pace of awakening just so rapidly is increasing exponentially, probably because the more people who are awake, the easier it is to awaken. And then, also, we have this technology, and I think that the internet is so key to the possibility that we actually can turn this world around.

Without technology like the internet, without the ability to communicate, to share ideas, to share consciousness through technology, I’m not sure that all of this high consciousness coming in could even make a difference, but the internet is all part of the plan. And who brought the internet in? I bet you anything, they’re little geniuses from other dimensions.

Rick: Al Gore.

Gina: That’s right, oh I forgot!

Rick: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it’s an interesting point. Very often when I’ve watched certain movies, like Star Wars or Close Encounters, or different movies like that, which you come away from feeling really inspired, I just sort of feel that the guys who made the movies were … it wasn’t merely their individual localized intelligence that was orchestrating the development of such a movie, which is going to have such an impact on mass consciousness, but rather that they are serving as instruments to introduce certain ideas to a much larger audience, perhaps even unaware that they are doing so. And the same thing, as you say, with the internet and with all kinds of other things. I mean, obviously it can be used for all kinds of creepy things too, but the growth of technology does seem to be keeping a pace with the growth of spirituality.

I’m not sure which is the cart and which is the horse, but as you say, spirituality I don’t think could be growing in today’s world as rapidly as it is without the technology, and perhaps vice versa, because we may have blown ourselves up by this time with technology alone, without a counter-balancing spiritual development.

Gina: Yeah, well that is the problem with earth right now, is the technology has outstripped the spiritual evolution, and so that’s what has to change, so there’s more of a balance. So the beings who came into human bodies, they’re working in all sorts of fields, not just as spiritual teachers. They’re working as musicians, as artists, as filmmakers, as politicians even. Oh, imagine that, I don’t know.

Rick: Well, I don’t know, I don’t hide my liberal tendencies, but I’ve met Obama face-to-face three times now, and boy, he really has a lot of light, a lot of inner awareness and radiance. It struck me the first time I met him, early in the campaign, before he was even the nominee. Of course, there are plenty of politicians who don’t have that, and there are plenty who would completely disagree with what I just said. Even people I know who have been meditating for 40 years hate him, so there’s no accounting for political taste. But on that point, it almost seems like when times are really dire, great souls come along to help us through it – Lincoln, FDR, and perhaps Obama.

Gina: Yeah, yeah, well I feel that way, too, about Obama. He’s a horse of a different color, he’s a politician of a different color in more ways than one. I mean, who would ever have guessed that someone like him would come to the forefront? So things had to get worse before they got better, in my way of thinking, so they got really bad under Bush. I couldn’t understand why that was happening. But anyhow, politics, that’s a dangerous subject.

Rick: It is, and you know, there are plenty of very … I mean, Francis Lucille is very conservative, he really liked Bush. So there are plenty of people who are highly enlightened, who don’t necessarily have liberal political leanings, and that’s cool. But, whatever, just to emphasize that, because it would be narrow-minded, I think. Although I had a discussion about this with a friend the other day, we were taking a walk and he was saying, “You’re too balanced when you bring up politics during these interviews. I mean, there really is a more compassionate, progressive wing of the political spectrum, and another which is rather hard-hearted and repressive, and you should mention that.”

🛤️ Religion, metaphysics, and early seeking

Gina: Yeah, you know, I have a metaphysical background, and having that background, I tend to see things as old souls, young souls. This is … the earth is like a schoolroom, a one-room schoolroom, with all different age souls in it, and they have different points of view. And from their perspective, it makes total sense to them, and it is part of their evolution to see things that way, and it makes the wheels go around in this world. It creates the conflict and the growth, and all of that. So there is a place for it, but I do think that compassion is a sign of a more advanced consciousness and love, and the willingness to take care of others, to see the world as one family, and reach out and create a society that supports individuals, even the weakest.

Rick: It certainly is a very Christian thing to do.

Gina: Yeah, it is.

Rick: Okay, so where were we?

Gina: History? My history?

Rick: Yeah, let’s do a little bit more of that, and then I’m sure we’ll diverge again. When you started getting into the Eastern things, when you were in college, in what sense did you do that? Did you learn meditation? Did you visit a guru? How did you glom onto the Eastern knowledge?

Gina: Well a really funny thing happened, not much farther into Eastern things. I got involved with some Catholic priests who were psychic and mystical, and then I began to go to Mass at 5 o’clock every morning. And it just was so deeply, it just was such a deep experience for me. And so it was very odd to find it again within the Catholic Church, and it’s not that I ever went back to the Catholic Church that I had known as a child, but to discover that there is an esoteric side, a mystical side, to Catholicism, and of course to many other religions, Sufism in Islam, for instance. So there is that side, and so I was happy to find those people. And then I got more interested in psychic kinds of things, because this person could see auras, this priest could see auras, and I found that so fascinating, and of course I wanted to see auras.

So I started reading about psychic things, and you know, I was very young. It’s natural at that age to be interested in that kind of glamour. And I was meditating a little bit, but that really … my spirituality, until I was much more mature, my spirituality was what I would say is kind of typical of New Age spirituality. It was about getting a better me. And I wanted to be happy, I wanted to not suffer, and a lot of the New Age technologies helped with that. But anyhow, it was rather short-lived, the interest in metaphysics, or the interest in Eastern religions, and that period of my life sort of quickly got swallowed up by getting married and moving back home to a more conventional atmosphere. And my husband at the time was working for his father, and oh, we just dropped all of our spirituality at that time, and I missed it.

And the time I was married to him, it just wasn’t really prominent. And then, about ten years later, I started reading Carlos Castaneda, and I was having an entire shift again, spiritually, where I just was so unhappy with my life, and I just wanted more, and I wanted to see what I could do, what I could create, because I had been living my husband’s dream. And so I left that marriage, and I got a Master’s degree in psychology, started studying astrology, because I wanted to be a really good astrological counselor, which is why I went to study astrology. And so then I really poured myself into the study of psychology and metaphysics. But the most significant thing happened in 1986, which all of a sudden, one day, I realized that, when I asked a question mentally, I got an answer clear as a bell in my mind, and it was a wise answer.

And so I asked another question, and another, and another, and I just couldn’t believe that I was able to communicate so easily with something that was beyond myself. And that changed …

“I’ve always been a lover of God.”

Rick: Are you sure it was beyond yourself, or could it have been within yourself, some deeper level of yourself?

Gina: Well, there’s a tonality in voice that comes through, there’s not so much of a personality, but there’s a feel, an energy, that’s attached to the mental voice that to me is clearly not mine. And so it never was a question to me whether it was within me. Besides, I believe there were beings in other dimensions. I’ve always felt that. I don’t know, it’s just beyond a belief, it’s just something I always knew in my heart was true. And so then that experience of beginning to channel, because that’s really what it was, it’s a conscious channeling, I could have that kind of communication in the shower, walking around, doing anything. I didn’t have to sit and meditate or be quiet or do anything to make that happen, it just was as simple as could be, and it always has been since then, it’s never changed.

Rick: Could you sit there for an hour and give a whole lecture dictating what this voice was telling you, or was it more like little snippets?

Gina: No, yes, I do that all the time.

Rick: Yeah.

Gina: But what happened though, in 1986, the first year that my channel opened up, I wasn’t grounded enough to reach higher level beings all the time, and so I started getting some little lessons. I started getting tricked by astral beings who wanted to tell me what to do and tell me the future and all the things, feed my ego, tell me all the things I really wanted to know as an ego. And I also wanted to be told what to do at the time, because being a Pisces, that was my dream come true – tell me what choice to make, tell me what to do.

Rick: How did you know there were astral beings, just different voice, or because they’d give you wrong advice?

Gina: Yes, at the time I didn’t. At the time I couldn’t discriminate between the higher level beings I was talking to sometimes and lower astral beings that I was talking to, so it was very confusing and very tricky because I was getting wisdom much of the time, and then there would be wrong stuff, there would be inappropriate meddling in my affairs, which I allowed, you know, I gave my power away because that was my lesson. And I gave my power away one too many times and realized at a certain point that I am way too gullible to do this. So I stopped channeling after a really bad experience that first year, ultimately it culminated in a bad experience.

Channeling, deception, and discernment

Rick: Would it be interesting to hear what that was, or would you rather not go into it?

Gina: I can tell you just very, very, yeah, okay. It was one of the worst things that ever happened to me, really, because it was devastating to me, because I was very involved with getting information and learning and growing and getting wisdom. So it was very devastating to realize that I had been also deceived. And so I had been told some things that, and I don’t want to really go into that, but I had been told some things that were inaccurate, and I had made some choices that were pretty critical choices in my life, based on that information. And then I discovered that I had made these changes in my life based on false information. And it was problematic for me in my life. As a matter of fact, I quit a job because of it, and it was a very big mistake to do that.

And so I was devastated when I discovered this, and then when I discovered it, I confronted the astral beings, and the astral beings … I could hear a group of them, I could actually hear a group of them all laughing. And my channel at that time was blown so open, it was blown so open that I couldn’t shut it, and I couldn’t close off the sound of their voices. And they started telling me that I should commit suicide.

“I started getting tricked by astral beings.”

Rick: Interesting. You know, I was going to ask you whether they were malicious or just stupid, but it sounds like you just answered that question.

Gina: They became extremely malicious, once found out, and I’m sharing this because it might be enlightening for people who have gotten involved, whether they even knew they have a channel or not. Some people get voices in their head that are so demonic, that aren’t them, they aren’t part of them, and it is possible for demonic voices to come into a person’s mind and tell them to commit suicide. There’s nothing more they would love to do than to have that power to do that to a human being. They like that. So there is that level of negative entities in existence that find pleasure in doing that. And so here I am, channel blown open, can’t quiet them down, and so I go to a shamanic healer friend of mine, a good friend of mine, and he said, “Come stay with me and I’ll help you close your channel.” And it just did close in the course of a day or so, it just did.

And so fortunately I was able to close it down and I was able to just get grounded again, but it was a very harrowing experience.

Rick: Did you shut out the wise ones too?

Gina: Yes, absolutely.

Rick: Shut out everybody.

Gina: Yeah, I did not want anything to do with that. I just knew I was not ready for this, I wasn’t ready, and that had shown me. But you know what, when you have an experience like that, it changes you, and it was a very powerful learning for me. But what happened next is that…

Rick: Let me just interject to say that some people listening to this are going to say, “Well, she was just crazy, there are no beings, it was just her biochemistry was haywire, or she was just mentally unbalanced or something, and somehow or other.” And I don’t think we can address that level of skepticism in this interview.

Gina: Well, I’m a perfectly functioning human being, so I was choosing to communicate with these beings, good or bad, whereas people who have schizophrenia or who hear voices, it isn’t a choice.

Rick: Right, it just dominates them.

Gina: It dominates them.

Rick: But it started to dominate you until you decided you’d better shut it down.

Gina: Yeah, for about two days. For about two days it overwhelmed me. And so then an interesting thing happened. A friend of mine said, “Oh, you should call so-and-so, he’s a healer, and he can help you close your channel.” And this was before it was entirely closed. And I called him and he didn’t happen to be home, and then he called me back a week later, after my channel was already closed. And I had this wonderful conversation on the phone with him, and he said, “Well, why don’t we meet for lunch?” And we did, and I fell in love with him, and we immediately moved in together. And I started working with him. He was an energy healer, and he was clairsentient. Also, he could feel in your body where your energy blocks were. And I began to work regularly with him, and that’s when I began a really serious practice of meditation. And I used to meditate about two hours a day then.

And so, for the next two years, I did a lot of personal work, healing work, you know, clearing of emotional issues with this individual, who I married after two years. And the meditation was very strong in that period for me. And so, two years after this very negative experience, I’m sitting one day and I hear a voice, a very respectful voice, say, “May we speak to you?” And I thought, “Huh, that’s interesting.” And I thought, “Well, as long as I’m discriminating or I don’t listen to personal information, I guess I could see what there is here to find out.” So I began to communicate with this particular being, and it was all informational about the world, about transformation of consciousness that’s happening on the earth, about the infusion of beings from higher dimensions coming here, and that kind of thing.

And so the purpose of the information that I was given was to help ease the way on the planet, to help raise consciousness. And so I continued to have a relationship with this particular individual, and from that point on I never spoke to another being except this individual. And it was always clear to me that it was this individual because there is a certain experience, tonality, energy.

Rick: Does this individual have a name?

Gina: Well, he gave me a name at the time to use, and of course they don’t have names because they have energies and they recognize each other by energies, but the name he gave me at the time was Theodore, and Theodore or Theo, so that’s what I’ve called him, from the 6th dimension.

Rick: Hang on, he’s from the 6th dimension, so wait a minute, we have 4 dimensions in our ordinary world, right?

Gina: The 4th dimension is the astral plane.

Rick: Oh, wait, I’m mixed up, I thought 4th was time. So the 4th dimension is the astral plane, okay, 5th is?

Gina: The 5th is the higher astral, where spirit guides, where guides for individuals reside, and the 6th dimension is where guides for earth reside.

Rick: For the whole planet?

Gina: Yeah, for the whole planet.

Rick: And there’s some above that?

Gina: Sure, presumably there are guides for the 6th dimension, I’m not sure what goes on beyond that, but it seems that Theo and I have some kind of a, maybe agreement, to do work together in this lifetime to bring through information and understanding that’s helpful at this time. And initially, in the 1990s, the information I brought through was more New Age, like what we’ve been talking about, this metaphysical transformation of consciousness on the planet. It was more like what a lot of channels have brought through. And also I’ve been helped with my astrology. This being is always with me, always blended with me, and more and more so as time has gone on. And so we’re like a fused pair, and right now me speaking to you is, you know, I can’t tell if it’s me speaking to you or us speaking to you, or them speaking to you.

I can tell the difference, if I’m in my ego I know it’s not that fused energy. But other than that, this sense of being connected with this being is a sense of presence, it’s a sense of being connected to who I am. So it’s kind of interesting because when I awoke, I knew myself as what I experienced in meditation and what I experience, I could say, when I’m channeling. And it’s all very mysterious, isn’t it?

“I hear a voice, a very respectful voice, say, ‘May we speak to you?'”

Nonduality, essence, and the reality of other dimensions

Rick: Yeah, I just want to say to the strict non-dualists who may be listening, hang in there with us because we’re going to discuss the doubts that you probably are having in your mind from your perspective as a strict non-dualist, you know, there is no one home, and so on and so forth, no person, no choice, and the whole discussion of entities on different levels sounds alien to you, but we’re going to juxtapose that, we’re going to investigate that and hopefully resolve some of the issues that come up around that kind of thing in non-dual circles.

Gina: Yeah, it never seemed to be a conflict to me to include other dimensions, non-physical beings, in this reality, because my experience and the experience of many other people who have six senses, who are able to see beings, I can speak to them but people can see them. To me, that there are beings who exist in other dimensions is a given, it’s pretty obvious, and so they are also evolving, they are also involved with physical dimensions and helping us on this plane, and when we evolve beyond this, we’ll be helping others in other forms, too. So why isn’t it possible for this Oneness to manifest as physical and non-physical beings, or to manifest a universe that evolves from physicality to non-physicality?

Rick: I don’t have a problem with it. Tony Parsons for instance is fond of saying that everything is just … he says, “Being is just wall-ing,” or “Being is car-ing,” or whatever. In other words, everything that we see is just a manifestation in a dream-like state of the same essential substance. And I’m cool with that, but if that is true, and we see how audibly diverse the universe is, even here on this planet, go watch the Discovery Channel and look at how incredibly creative and diverse nature is, then why can’t there be subtler realms, which we don’t necessarily perceive with our gross senses, but which are just as real, if we want to attribute reality to anything, as the concrete stuff – cars and trees. And that opens up a whole world of possibility. And if we have any respect for traditional knowledge, virtually every tradition talks about this stuff.

I mean the Vedic tradition, which is really the source of Vedanta, the source of non-dualism as it’s popularized in the West, is just replete with discussions of … there’s categorizations of all the different types of beings that exist on different levels, and descriptions of them, and all kinds of stories about people interacting with them, and so on and so forth. And the founder of non-dualism, Shankara, probably would have said, “Well, ultimately the world is Brahman,” he did say that, but he probably wouldn’t have disputed the legitimacy of those other scriptures which discuss all that stuff. Vedanta is the end of the Veda, that’s what it means.

And there’s a saying in the Gita, “For the enlightened Brahman, all the Vedas are of no more use than as a small well in a place flooded with water on every side.” But that doesn’t mean that all the other Vedas and all the other spiritual literature – and we don’t even have to stick to the Indian, we can go to all the traditions – are invalid just because there’s a sort of pinnacle to it all. There’s all sorts of stuff as you go up the mountain.

Gina: Yeah, it’s such a big mystery, and I think how you described Tony Parsons’ philosophy about the Oneness and being and everything, that isn’t contradictory to what I’m saying. And so I think that we’re trying to put into words this great mystery, and each of us maybe speaks a part of the truth. But it’s …

Rick: You know that saying, “Neti, neti, not this, not this?”

Gina: Yes.

Rick: I’d like to find out the Sanskrit for the opposite of that, which would be “this, this,” which is the way I kind of go about it, which is not to reject everything but to say, “Okay, yes, this is also true, and this is also true, and this is also true.” And the truths may be paradoxical to one another, but each one is a facet in a much larger gem than people ordinarily encapsulate.

Gina: Yeah, and to me what’s important is, what’s true is that the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in, does the wisdom or the truth or the belief that you have, is it working for you? Does it bring you closer to love? And that’s what I mean by “working for you,” really, is does it bring you closer to love? And that’s my measure. And if my experience with being from another dimension did not improve my life and the lives of others, and I don’t just mean my story, my life, but help evolve me, and others, move us forward towards greater love, unity, and the experience of oneness, well I wouldn’t be interested in it at all, because I am interested in the truth more than anything. And I used to be interested in getting a better me, but I grew up, I matured, my spirituality matured, and I became more interested in the truth.

And the good news is that the truth is that love and goodness is behind all of it, and I’ve always known that. I’ve always had this core of goodness that I was connected to, that I honored, that I loved, that I loved myself for, that I loved others for, that I saw in others, and that’s the truth. And anything, any belief or idea about the truth or philosophy that brings you in touch with that goodness, with that God within, with that love within you, I say that’s the right direction. And so I think anything can serve. Astrology has served me in counseling other people, it’s helped to give people a bigger perspective than their ego’s perspective, and help them move into what I call the place of essence. So if metaphysics can be used to help people see that they are God, see that they are goodness, that they are love, then more power to it, then use it.

And if it’s getting in the way of that, then throw it out.

“The proof is in the pudding.”

Rick: Yeah, well even if we don’t regard some of these things as being the ultimate truth or the ultimate reality, even if we regard them as being sort of relatively real but not ultimately real, then you know, it takes a thorn to remove a thorn. You know, at some point you cast away the thorn, but the thorn can be useful to remove other thorns. That’s a common saying, Ramana Maharshi used to say that, and various predecessors of his.

Gina: Yeah, absolutely, whatever works. And so when we’re meeting people who are lost in their ego, we have to find a way to touch them, to help move them out. And sometimes it might be the truth that Tony Parsons speaks, it might be that very thing, and sometimes it won’t be that, it will be something else. And the good teacher, the best teacher, the best counselor, will be someone who is able to intuitively know what to say. And when I say intuitively, really what I’m talking about is being connected to essence, to the awareness, the presence, the love, the oneness that we are, because we are that beingness, that’s who we are, we are the beingness incarnate. And when the ego gets moved out of the way, we can begin to speak as that and move as that, and that’s the whole purpose.

It’s not to wake up and get out of the world so you don’t have to mess with those nasty little egos and you’re all free and you’re done with it, that’s not the point. The point is that God must want to be here, the Divine must want to be here, because look what it created, and it’s wanting to wake up in this beautiful creation and to live as the individual that we’re meant to be within this creation. So I do also feel that we all have an individual purpose, a certain life, a certain destiny, you could say, that has lots of wiggle room for us to create, to co-create with the Divine, but we each are set to have a certain kind of destiny. Maybe it’s to be a teacher or maybe it’s to be a wonderful mother or to be a politician. And so this is one thing I get from the astrology, it seems very clear to me.

Astrology is this wonderful tool that gives you a description, to some extent, of the life purpose, of the lessons, of the difficulties, and of the timing of the unfolding of the life purpose and the life work, and what can get in the way of it, and what kind of karma you might have, and that kind of thing. All of this can be very helpful to guide a person along the way, and that guidance is always meant to just keep pointing them to the bigger picture of who they are, and away from the small character or ego, especially the ego that they are. The character is still always there, even when we wake up, right?

“The point is that God must want to be here.”

Rick: Yeah, I’m on Eckhart Tolle’s email list and he sends out these little present-moment reminders every week or so, and there’s one that came this week in which he said, “Ultimately we’re not a person, we’re a focal point through which the universe can be aware of itself.” And I thought of our conversation that we would have when I read that, and I thought to perhaps take it another step, and I bring it up now because I think it’s germane to what you were just saying, which is that the universe ultimately is a focal point through which consciousness can know itself. It’s not that the universe is knowing itself, it’s that consciousness is knowing itself through the instrumentality of the universe, which contains trillions of focal points, if you want to see it in a particular way rather than as a whole. And each of us is one of those focal points, we’re each a sense organ of the infinite.

And as you say, each sense organ is different, each sense organ serves a different function, a different purpose, has a different role to play, a different dharma.

Gina: Yeah, I love that, I love that description. It’s exactly how I feel about life, how I experience it, and when you are in that place of experiencing it that way, it is so delightful, it’s so beautiful. And this place of being very present is a place of just seeing beauty in everything and seeing the rightness of all of it. And so whatever experience we’re having is really the right experience for that point in time, and then it always shifts and changes, and it’s such a great dance. And I think one of the things I wanted to say in this interview, because so many people ask me questions that seem to assume that after you’re awake everything is so wonderful and you must be so perfect and happy all the time, and that kind of thing.

And what I really want to say is that everybody, wherever they’re at in their consciousness right now in this moment, is exactly where they need to be, it’s exactly the right place. And I came to see this because I write a lot about the ego, and if I didn’t still have an ego to the level that I have it, I would probably not write about it, I would not be that interested in it. And I think it’s very helpful, the way I write about it, it’s helpful for people who have egos, it helps them move out of the ego to understand it, to know its tricks and what it’s up to. And if I didn’t still have it, how could I write book after book after book about it? I must be very fascinated by it, I am interested in it, I’m interested in helping people with that.

And my particular niche of consciousness, whatever that is, however deep or un-deep it is, it’s exactly the right place to do the work I came here to do. And I would say that your consciousness also is in exactly the right place to do this work, which I’m sure is very much a part of your soul’s desire, your deepest soul’s plan. And so we all are in exactly the right place, and the whole timing of our unfoldment, there is a perfect timing of it. There is an intelligence that is in control of the unfolding of each of our lives, and it’s doing it beautifully. And so we can’t hurry it, and that’s called grace, right? Grace is unfolding it and it comes as an awakening moment when it’s time for that, and no sooner, no later, and there still is some place for spiritual practice and some place for free will in there.

“Everybody, wherever they’re at in their consciousness right now in this moment, is exactly where they need to be.”

✨ Ego, awakening, and the gap between thoughts

Rick: Well you know, you don’t help a flower blossom any sooner by breaking the bud open to see how it’s doing. And you know, this whole thing about ego, there are some spiritual teachers who say, “Well, there couldn’t be reincarnation and there couldn’t be karma,” and so on, because that implies the existence of a person or an entity who would reincarnate or who would receive the karma, and so on. But think about it this way, even if we acknowledge, which all the great teachers have said, that ultimately the world is a dream and that ultimately all of this can be boiled down to its essence as pure, non-dual oneness, nonetheless, we have apparently a body which has all sorts of intricate mechanisms in it.

We have apparently an intellect, apparently senses, apparently a mind, all these are just faculties through which we function in this so-called “dream world,” so why not also apparently an ego, some identity which ultimately isn’t real but which is as real as anything else is, as one of the faculties which enable us to function?

Gina: Yeah, and the ego, it was programmed into the human being.

Rick: Yeah, like your nose, or whatever.

Gina: It’s part of it, without the ego we wouldn’t experience ourselves as separate, so in order to create this illusion, the Divine had to create something that would make it seem like we’re separate, when we aren’t.

Rick: Well having said that, of course, people have these radical, non-dual realizations and they feel like they can’t even find any shred of ego left, it’s been blown away, there’s a profound sense of impersonality.

Gina: Yes, but they still answer when their name is called. So they still do have the level of ego that’s necessary to function as a separate human being, but you don’t need the egoic mind, you don’t need that chattering in the mind, that commentary that is so constant in the human condition which causes suffering. You don’t need the egoic mind, you may need an ego to some extent to continue having a sense of individuality and function as an individual, but you don’t need the commentary in your mind to function, and that’s what they discover.

Rick: Yeah, let’s talk about your awakening that happened in the late 90s and then let’s use that as a springboard for talking about functioning in the egoic mind versus functioning free of it.

Gina: Okay, well in 1999 I was a New Age teacher and I was counseling and I just felt that there was too much ego still, and I started to withdraw from my work some because I just knew there was something missing, and in a sense I don’t think I could put it into words at the time but I felt I needed a teacher. And there was such a synchronistic, funny way that I ended up encountering Adyashanti. I had been to a few other non-dual teachers before, like Gangaji, but there were three or four hundred people in the room, and as wonderful as she is, I just felt, “This isn’t my teacher, she can’t be my teacher.” And so it was just a very strange occurrence that Adyashanti came up to Santa Rosa and did a very small satsang there, with only six people in the room.

And my boyfriend at the time, he said, “Oh, this guy named Adyashanti is going to be talking on Sunday morning, do you want to go?” And I said, “Oh, okay, sure.”

“You can awaken, anyone can awaken.”

Rick: God, I was there then, I wish I had known about it. I was visiting in-laws in Guerneville, so I could have easily come over then.

Gina: Oh, that’s so funny.

Rick: Yeah. Anyway, I’m sorry, go ahead.

Gina: And there was something about sitting in this room, six people, this very unassuming young man, a little younger than me, he just said, “You can awaken, anyone can awaken.” And that was very powerful for me. That was a very powerful message. He also pointed out that New Age seeking was seeking a better me, and it wasn’t transcendent of the me. And of course, I guess I must have encountered that message before, but I wasn’t ready to hear it. I wasn’t really ready, you know, it takes a certain readiness to decide that you want to move beyond that me. And I was like a ripe fruit at the time. And then after that satsang, I signed up for … oh, my boyfriend and I immediately broke up after that satsang. It was so funny. And we both went on a retreat, about two weeks later, we went on a retreat together.

Rick: With Adyashanti?

Gina: With Adyashanti, right. But I had already just moved on, and about another month later I was at a satsang with someone named Vartman, he was an Australian.

Rick: I’ve heard of him, yeah, sure. He’s on my list.

Gina: Yeah, and we were doing a dyad of … we broke up into two people, you know, and a dyad is two people. And we asked each other the question, “Who am I?” Right? This was just part of the workshop. And when I was sitting there across from this other person, it just suddenly … my identity shifted. It just dropped out of this place that I’d been living in and moved into another place, a place I was familiar with from when I channeled, from when I meditated. And the room also filled up with light, golden light. And I said something to her that she totally didn’t get. I mean, I was on such a different wavelength that I must have been … it was sort of a crazy interaction, but it didn’t last very long anyhow. And then I went home from that and I just couldn’t think a thought for five days. There just was no thought coming into my mind, and that was so surprising.

Rick: Nothing?

Gina: Nothing, just nothing.

Rick: So like, as you were making dinner and stuff, there wouldn’t be a, “Okay, I’ll now go get the knife,” or something. It would just be complete, spontaneous action without any apparent mental activity?

Gina: Yeah, it was just so surprising, and I was so happy.

Rick: Didn’t have any songs going through your head, or any, “What should I wear tonight? Do I need any vegetables? Should I go to the market?” None of that?

Gina: Nothing, nothing.

Rick: Okay.

Gina: It was just very strange. And then the mind slowly came back, but then you’re onto it. You’re so much in this deeper place that the mind is seen differently. It’s seen as separate from you, as not a part of you, as if it is just some distant voice. And so it wasn’t very hard to not get involved in it. And so I think that over time it comes back to some extent, and then if there is some emotion triggered, it’s there and the conditioning is triggered. So after that five days it came back to some extent, but it’s never the same. And so I’ve never had this experience that some people talk about as “lost it, found it, found it, lost it.” Something shifted in that moment in time; it was permanent and it was clear to me. So I never had a question, “Was that it, or wasn’t that it?” Now I know some people do, and I think it can happen that way, but for me it was always very clear to me.

And then I moved into a phase of a honeymoon period, and of course there was a lot of happiness over having awakened, and then there’s the next little trap, right? It’s “I’m awake, whoopee!”

Rick: Got your merit badge.

Gina: Yeah, yeah. So I think that is the next phase in awakening, is that then you feel there’s a certain ecstasy or happiness that is just the ego going, “Woohoo, I achieved something here.”

Rick: Yeah, I’m taking this little course with Adya right now on the internet, this Wednesday night course for four weeks, and he’s talking about the spiritual traps, and that’s definitely one of them, is like, “Oh, aren’t I special? I am awake now, isn’t this cool?” The ego kind of tries to creep back in and appropriate it.

Gina: Yeah, and it’s also just such a normal phase. Maybe most people have to go through that. I hesitate to say everyone, maybe everyone doesn’t have to, but I would be surprised if most people didn’t go through that. And so that whole first year was pretty wonderful, and it was also colored by the fact that I met Nirmala two weeks later. Two weeks later I was at a satsang with him and I met him, and then two weeks after that we were both at an Adyashanti day long, day long. And he was sitting behind me, and I remember him and he remembered me from having met each other, and during the break we all got up and I turned around and he gave me a big hug, you know, saying hello. And I thought, “Oh, hmm.” And then I sat down again and I could just feel him behind me, and I wasn’t even at satsang to look for somebody, I really wasn’t.

But I could feel him behind me and I thought, “Hmm, that hug felt really good. Hmm, what’s up?” And then there was another break and another break, and we just kept hugging each other. He’s a huggy person. And then I emailed him afterwards and I said, “Can we meet sometime?” And so then we spent a little time together, and then he went off traveling and I didn’t see him again. So this was about four months when we just talked on the phone and I was falling in love with him. So here we had the honeymoon of awakening, plus my own little personal honeymoon thing going on with this man I’m falling in love with. It was a pretty good year, you could say.

Rick: Yeah, like little swarms of cupids flying all over the place.

Gina: Yeah, but I’ll tell you one more thing that happened this year that wasn’t so great in this first year, and it goes along with what Adyashanti has mentioned also, as sometimes what can accompany awakening is shortly after I had a lot of energy, so I was exercising more than usual. I was running up and down these mountains in Santa Rosa. I love that there’s this mountain with a lake on top. I’d run up to the top and run down, running on these rocks. I was doing sit-ups, just more than I was used to doing, and I got into this pattern of back spasms, where my back went out. And it was so severe that for about three months I could barely take care of myself, and I was in constant pain and it was horrible.

And Nirmala came at the end of that four months, he finally came to see me, because on the phone we finally said, “Well, I think we need to see each other.” And so he said, “Okay, I’m going to be in California, so I’ll come and visit you.” So this was the first time we’d seen each other after four months, and he didn’t even remember what I looked like anymore, so he had to see me. He’s like, “Gosh, you know, I better check.”

“You can awaken, anyone can awaken.”

Rick: You’re practically paralyzed at this point.

Gina: Yeah, so he showed up at my door and he told me about how back pain can be stored anger, because he was a massage therapist in the past, and he had read this book Dr. John Sarno wrote about things like back pain and other kinds of pain can be caused by the body storing emotion, and then you need to tell your body not to store that emotion. So I read the book. By the time I was done with the book, my body was getting better, and I recovered within two weeks of finishing that book, but I also did some work on anger then, and I did some inner work and I recognized what that anger was about, and I did some releasing work on it. And so it goes along with what Adya has said about how after awakening there can be conditioning that comes up big time that needs to be released, and it can manifest as physical issues.

And I didn’t even make that connection at the time, I’m not sure I understood that, but I think that it does fall into that category because it does seem emotionally based.

Rick: You know, I was going to ask you, before you started talking about this, whether since that awakening in 1999, you had encountered any really serious, challenging, difficult situations and whether that had perturbed the awakening or overshadowed it, or something like that. So we can talk in a minute about the need to do some housecleaning after awakening, but in terms of when you were in the throes of that back pain, when it was at its worst, was there still that sense of inner awakening, or was it sort of so beleaguered that you lost it or appeared to lose it?

Gina: No, I didn’t feel that I lost it.

Rick: So it was quiet, still, inner wakefulness, despite the pain?

Gina: Yeah, yeah, and the fears coming up, I noticed that. I noticed the fears, noticed what’s going on, but I never lost that sense of brightness, awakeness, that came with that.

Rick: So how would that be different then, if the same thing had happened to you before awakening?

Gina: Well, I think I would have been openly angry and feeling victimized, yeah, that’s what I like to go to, that’s what I used to like to go to – victimization. I would have felt, “Oh, poor me,” I would have been crying, angry.

Rick: So there would have been a sort of small self-obsession?

Gina: Yeah, I would have felt powerless and weak and vulnerable, powerless.

Rick: Whereas after awakening, not to put words in your mouth, was it more like the sense of personal self was more dissolved or diffused, or in addition to the sense of personal self, there was sort of an impersonal, which simply wasn’t touched by all the difficulties that you were going through?

Gina: That whole sense of what I was like before, how I was in the world, I couldn’t find that same me anymore. It’s like my self-images changed, you could say, it was like that. I didn’t have the same self-images anymore. And I think probably I took on self-image of “I’m awake,” too, and that’s a lot happier one. So there was probably that mixed in there, and so I wonder how possible it is to hold no image at all, because I experience myself as no image, but it’s very insidious, those images, and I think there are unconscious self-images that we hold. And I certainly have been, I think, in the process of waking up out of a self-image of me as a spiritual teacher. That’s a big one. How do you not take that on? It’s hard, other people see you as that, you present yourself as that, so there is a certain level of taking that on.

But I think the key is how tightly you hold that, or how lightly you hold that. So it’s holding all self-images lighter, and being aware of the self-images that you are holding, because once you are aware of the images that you are holding, then in a sense you are not holding them so tightly. So I think it always requires a certain investigation of where I might be holding an image when I’m not even realizing I’m holding an image. You know, it could be holding an image of “I’m nobody,” you know, “There’s an image,” you know, right? I mean, the mind is always landing somewhere, there’s always something going on, and being aware of it and holding it all lightly is, I think, the key and the best we can do with it all.

Rick: Yeah, interesting. I’m kind of reminded of my own case where in my 20s I was giving all these lectures on meditation and traveling around and speaking to 500 people and teaching courses and all this stuff, and then because I was in a spiritual organization that would shuffle people around from this, that, and the other to different things, the next thing I would find myself cleaning toilets and shoveling cow manure and building fences and stuff, and it was really kind of good to swing back and forth between those kinds of roles to de-inflate any sort of sense of being the great teacher.

Gina: Oh yeah, I still clean toilets.

Rick: Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about … I’m sorry, go ahead.

Gina: I just wanted to say that in our ordinary life, we’re so ordinary, you know, you don’t carry around that image of spiritual teacher in your ordinary life. It’s so … you know, the thing about awakening is what you discover is that it’s so ordinary. The experience of your beingness is the most ordinary thing and it’s been with you all your life, and there’s nothing special about it at all.

Rick: And as Ram Dass says, “If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents.”

Gina: Yeah.

Rick: That’ll deflate you. So let’s talk a bit about the…

Gina: You did ask a good question there a minute ago, if there was anything that had shifted me out of this.

Rick: Yeah, was it invincible or could it be overshadowed by the most trying of circumstances?

Gina: Well, I did have an experience after that honeymoon period of moving into about a five year period of dryness, and now what, so what.

Rick: Yeah, flat.

Gina: Flat, and at that point, after I awakened, I stopped channeling because I had no questions. And I also was influenced by Adya’s attitude towards New Age things, and thinking that it wasn’t necessary or it served no purpose, or somehow it wasn’t right or it didn’t fit. So I actually stopped channeling for five years, and I just didn’t even talk at all for five years. It was amazing, and in those five years it was very dry. And at that point, Nirmala and I had moved in together, and we had moved to Arizona, but I just felt like, “Wow, I have no motivation to teach or to write or to do any of the things that I used to love to do and was so driven to do.” I couldn’t imagine what I had to say to anybody about any of this, and I couldn’t imagine where this was all going and what was going to happen. There was no future, no sense of goals or future or any of that.

And so there was a part of me that wasn’t happy about that. That’s where the dryness comes in. It’s like you have one foot in the truth and one foot is still back in the old way of being, except that you can’t find that old way of being anymore. So it’s like you’re stuck in this limbo place. And… do you know that place?

Rick: Yes, yes.

Gina: Yeah. So it was hard, and then one day Nirmala said to me, “You know, Theodore was so helpful to you. Why don’t you see if they have something to say about awakening?” And sure enough, the words started flowing, and I haven’t stopped since. So all of the writing and teaching that’s come forth has been in a new vein. It’s come from the new place that I’ve been living from, and it’s come through in a different way.

Rick: Did you write all eight of your books since then, or were some of them before that?

Gina: Yes.

Rick: Oh really? Wow, so you’ve really become prolific.

Gina: Right. So I know that’s what I’m here to do, is be a writer. That’s what I do best. And I like to talk, as you can probably tell. I like to talk and teach, but I love to write, I love words, and I’ve enjoyed counseling, too, but I’ve just set that aside recently.

Rick: So do you feel like your books are largely inspired by Theodore, or is it more like you said before, you really can’t separate the two and know which is coming from where?

Gina: Well, they really are just given to me, and so I do take credit for being the instrument and for having the consciousness, the awareness, the knowledge base, to be able to bring through that in the way it comes through. And so, I couldn’t have written these books, I couldn’t have brought these books through, before I had an awakening. So it is a necessary thing for me to be, I am part of it, I’m definitely part of the process.

Rick: You’re the instrument.

Gina: I’m the instrument, but it is literally just given to me, word for word, nonstop flow from cover to cover.

Rick: That’s great, so you don’t actually sit down and work out a whole logical structure and kind of agonize over it, it just flows right out of you, huh?

Gina: I’m told what it’s going to be about, I’m given a table of contents and the introduction, boom, boom, boom, boom, it is that way. Everything I write is that way, and when I teach in my intensives, it’s that way. I invite my helpers, my helping presence, and open my mouth and there it is. So I’ve been trying to not call it “channeling” because that just seems to be so limiting and it sends a lot of people away, so I put that in the background, but I’ve never really tried to hide it from people. I’ve always been open that this is how it is for me, but I keep it in the background on my website because I want my books and all to reach as many people as possible. And I also like to say, in defense of channeling, if you are not channeling something beyond this little you, this false you, then you are channeling your ego.

If you’re not channeling … I mean, I think that this phenomenon is more broad-based, it’s pretty universal. Musicians channel music, artists channel art, people who are operating at a high level are bringing something through from whatever you want to call it. And just because I…

Rick: Yeah, like you were saying earlier, George Lucas channeled Star Wars, you know?

Gina: Yeah, just because I happen to have a name attached to it and happen to be called “channeling,” then it gets put in a certain category. And part of the problem with channeling is that, as I experienced early on, with some channeling it does not all come from a higher level, and it’s not all helpful, and not everyone is able to discriminate that. So that kind of gives it a bad name, like anything else, there are levels that are more valuable than others. But to throw out the whole thing just because not all of it is true and good and worthy, is silly. And I also often say, “If anybody had the experience that I’ve had with this being, they would not turn their back on it, they would not walk away from it, because it’s such a blessing.”

Rick: I should say that your books are very enjoyable to read. I’ve read a little bit of channeled material from Ramtha and things like that, and my impression is, “Jesus, this guy couldn’t even pass a high school English exam, why does he have to speak in such a convoluted, pretentious manner? Can’t it just be simple, well-written prose?” And your books are written that way, they are very enjoyable, well-written, sensible, you don’t get any sense of “ooga-booga” moody kind of verbiage in them.

Gina: Yeah, that’s why we’ve fused. In a sense, Theodore learned to speak in a way that was more human, and we learned to have a voice that is my voice. We learned to put these things into a voice that is my voice, and the words are given to me in my voice. And I also am as equal a teacher of these things, so it’s not that I’m just a channel who couldn’t teach without this, it’s just that my teaching was developed by being given all of this writing. It’s like, “Oh, this is the body of knowledge I came to teach,” and it feels so right. And it took me 60 years, Rick, to find my niche, you know, to find my niche.

Rick: Me too.

Gina: And I know, it’s such a blessing though, it’s such a blessing, but whoever knew it would take that long, right? It’s a good thing nobody said it was going to be that long.

Rick: Well I see life as a continuum, you know, so if I were to die tomorrow, that’s just a little milestone, a little mile marker on a much longer continuum, so it’s not a big deal. I don’t feel like, “Oh dear, I’m 60 now and maybe I’ll have 20 years left, and how can I …” you know, there’s no sense of that, it’s just like an ongoing adventure. Now a minute ago you said, “If you’re not channeling somebody, you’re speaking from your ego,” so would you say that it’s really that black and white, it’s really that either/or?

Gina: Well I think that this body-mind, which is programmed with an ego and also programmed with a personality, can be used by the false self, the ego, or it can be used by essence, which is the word I use for the Divine as it’s expressing as an individual. And then I think it can go back and forth so quickly that it seems like a mixture, so in one second your ego is kind of running it and the next second the essence comes forward.

Rick: Yeah, and it can be more mature and integrated so that the two are functioning harmoniously without any seesaw effect.

Gina: Yes, yes, and then the more realized we are and the more we are familiar with living from essence, the more that just becomes the place we are primarily coming from.

Rick: Yeah, but when you say “channeling,” I mean, it’s one thing, most people would relate to this idea of speaking from essence and living in essence and operating from essence and so on, but that’s different than Theodore. Theodore is an individualized entity, like we are individualized entities, just maybe of a higher order, and that’s what I think of when I think of “channeling,” I think of speaking for an individualized intelligence rather than just being reflective of cosmic intelligence.

Gina: Yes, but when a being is highly evolved, then there’s not a lot of difference between what they would say and what your own essence says.

Rick: Yeah, because they are so fully embodying that same essence.

Gina: Yeah, and in fact, what I’ve come to understand is that, and other people have said this too, in fact you mentioned this in one of your interviews, that beings like Theodore are intermediaries between the oneness and the more individualized form that we are, and so spirit guides and higher dimensional beings are working with human beings, through their intuition, to help them fulfill their task in this world. So they are facilitating essence, so these higher beings are facilitating our expression of essence.

Rick: You know there’s a verse in the Vedas, I don’t know the Sanskrit, but the English is “the riches seek out him who is awake,” and “the riches” means the verses of the Veda actually, but those are understood to be impulses of intelligence, which are the sort of fundamental seed impulses which ultimately give rise to the whole universe. And so it’s said that those impulses of intelligence seek out him who is awake, and I don’t know what all the implications of that are, but what you’ve been saying reminds me of that. And when you think about it, if we are that cosmic intelligence, which we are, essence if you want to call it, then Theodore and the riches and the Devatas and everything else are all contained within what we really are.

And we as Gina or as Rick are just one individual expression of that, but it seems kind of like we operate in symphony with, in collaboration with, all these other impulses of intelligence if we’re open enough to do it and not locked into our individuality so rigidly that we can’t do it.

Gina: Yes, we are meant to express the highest being that we are, and the being is … it is coming through our particular body-mind and our personality, and it has a certain mission and life purpose. And so, continuing to align with the being means that we’re going to move through life in a much easier and more loving way. And so, the beings that are working with us are just helping us facilitate our greatest possibility, our greatest potential to fulfill ourselves as the being that we are, and they’re working to help heal any conditioning that is in the way, any egoic stuff that is in the way, to speed along our evolution, our emotional evolution, our spiritual evolution. I think it’s a beautiful picture of life, and the fact that some of us can speak with, communicate with, and see individuals who acknowledge that that is what they’re doing, I think it’s a wonderful message really.

For me it helped me feel connected, that they’re connected to something beyond. And of course, I know now that I’m connected to something beyond, because I am that, and I know that, but the people I talk to don’t necessarily know that. And so, it can be a very powerful message to speak about these metaphysical realities. It can be very powerful for them to realize that they can pray to, or make an intention to accept healing, to ask for healing, from these individuals who are guiding our evolution. It’s a very powerful act to do that. And so, this is a very helpful message for people.

“We are meant to express the highest being that we are.”

Rick: Yeah, you know I’m reminded of coaches on a baseball team, like if you have the third base coach for instance, and he can see everything that’s happening on the field. So if a guy gets a really good hit and he’s coming up to third base, the coach can tell him whether he should slide into third and stay there or go for home, because the runner can’t see that because he doesn’t see the rest of the field, you know, he’s busy running. But the coach can see it, he can give him a little advice there that will make all the difference in the game. I don’t even have to explain the metaphor, it’s such an obvious parallel.

Gina: And when we as helpers or teachers, counselors, therapists, or whatever, are connected to the Divine within us, then all of the helpers that are helping everyone involved, work through us and deliver the information that’s needed for that person’s growth, to unlock that key for them to move into essence. So it’s so beautiful, we’re here to be that instrument for essence, and I’m just more aware of what that instrument is connected to, you know, and the whole process of bringing through some information. My intuition is so strongly developed that I don’t really even need to channel to know an answer or know what would be said, I just get it, you know, it just downloads into my body and then I say it.

So for instance, when I would do astrology readings, I didn’t need to channel, I wasn’t ostensibly channeling, but I would get downloads of, “Oh yeah, you have to say this, this, this, this,” you know, I just was pushed to say something and I knew the truth of it by how it came out, how it felt when it came out. And so when you’re very developed intuitively, you are literally a mouthpiece for what’s wanting to come through. And so where does that all come from, what is that all about? You know, I call it channeling, but you don’t have to call it that, it’s just how it all works. We’re all mouthpieces when we are aligned enough with that which is our true nature. And when we also have developed our intuition enough, because I think it is also a tool that gets developed through using it.

Rick: In Sanskrit it’s called “ritambhara prajna,” which means “that level of intellect which knows only truth.”

Gina: I love how you have all these Sanskrit words for everything.

Rick: Well I’m no scholar, these are just things I picked up over the years, mostly from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, you know, he always talked about these different things. Let’s talk a little bit about the housecleaning that took place with you and that seems to take place with a lot of people, that took place with Adya for instance, after an initial awakening. And maybe I could preface that by saying that some people seem to accomplish a lot of that before their awakening, so there isn’t a whole lot of fuss and bother after the awakening, but others not so much. And so in a sense, all hell can break loose after awakening when there’s a lot. But one way or the other, it’s like nature isn’t going to let you hold on to a lot of garbage, it’s got to be cleared out.

✨ Housecleaning after awakening

Gina: I agree, I agree. And I did a lot of healing work. When I studied psychology, I was in therapy, I was studying my dreams, I did any number of different kinds of therapies, rebirthing, and all sorts of things that I tried, energy work and besides regular psychotherapy. I studied Gestalt therapy. And then I also really have had this wonderful ability to dialogue with this inner teacher who has been like a therapist. And then I was married to that healer, as I said to you, and so I’ve had a lot of help. And meditation has also been a very important part of my spiritual path, and I think I’m always advising that people do that, because I really don’t know how you can quiet that mind down enough without meditation to get a strong enough sense of who you really are.

And so I think it’s very important to do meditation and healing work, and I do think that laid the groundwork so that I was able to just stay awake. Because I do think that some people have an awakening and it’s almost like they fall back to sleep, if that’s possible. They don’t feel much different than when they weren’t awake, and they don’t act much different, and yet they had an awakening. And I think that possibly the reason that happens is that their load of conditioning is still too heavy, and it pulls them back into that same egoic space. So I think a certain amount has to be cleared out so that you don’t get pulled back. And even so, there’s still conditioning that I watch, I look at, it doesn’t catch me up for long.

It’s so different now, it’s even hard to remember what it was like, because this is twelve years ago, and when I talk to other people who are still really caught up in their ego, I realize in a sense how far I’ve come, but the state that I live in is so ordinary and so easy to be in this state that I don’t really think it’s particularly unusual. And it isn’t really, it’s ordinary, but it’s more a matter of just noticing the thoughts and not being affected by them, and then if I do feel affected by them, I either do some inquiry and look at it, or I just move on to something else, because not all of my thoughts at this point need to be examined; they’re not that sticky.

If something is sticky enough to create feelings, then I think it needs to be examined, but if it doesn’t create feelings, I just turn away from it, I just get busy with something else, you know, and noticing it, “Oh, there’s that again,” you know. But there were certain pieces, big chunks of conditioning, that fell away after seeing them and seeing them and seeing them a hundred million times, I don’t know how many times, but that’s what happened after awakening. After awakening, because you have this perspective of witnessing the mind from a distance, you have so much distance from the mind after awakening, that it’s easy to see the conditioning, and it’s easier then to heal it. The trouble with before awakening is you’re so close to it that you don’t want to do the work because you just want to run away from it, you want to run away from your conditioning.

But when you see that your thoughts are not your thoughts, then it’s easier to say, “Oh, hello, okay, there you are, what’s that all about?” It’s easier to be curious about it because it’s not personal, and so that’s when it becomes so much easier to chip away at your conditioning because you’re not afraid of it, you don’t mind it. It’s like, “Oh, okay, I can look at you.”

Rick: And there’s this verse in the Brahma Sutras which goes, “The dweller of the house is seen far away in the distance.”

Gina: Ah, yeah, yeah, mine is a bad radio station.

Rick: Uh-huh, not quite tuned in.

Gina: Yeah.

Rick: No, that’s beautiful, I mean it’s almost like if there’s mud to be dissolved, if you throw it in a glass of water, the water gets muddied up right away. If you throw it in an ocean, you know, it just dissolves because the ocean has the capacity to dissolve it. So it’s like we don’t have the capacity to dissolve a lot of conditioning until a more oceanic kind of status has been realized.

Gina: Yeah, I love that metaphor. It’s just that people are so upset with their conditioning. They hate that they’re having their feelings, they hate that they’re having their thoughts, and they just want to get rid of them, and that’s the problem, right there.

Rick: Yeah, you create an internal battle.

Gina: Yeah, yeah, and so the awakening just allows you to be easy with thoughts and feelings, yours and other people’s.

Rick: Yeah, and I think to a certain extent it can work both ways. I mean a person can just culture the habit of being easier with things, pre-awakening, you know, and being more accepting of other people, and being less rigid or dogmatic or whatever. It’s like the kind of stuff Byron Katie teaches people and helps people with, and going through those steps of recognizing that your particular perspective is not absolute. It definitely helps people to kind of shift into a more intuitive, accepting kind of state.

Gina: Yeah, I kind of see it like, initially you have to help people put a wedge between themselves and their thoughts. If they can just take the tiniest step back, that’s like the hugest step in the world, to take the tiniest step back from your thoughts, because a lot of people don’t even know how to do that or haven’t done that, you know? Once you learn to take a tiny step back, then you can take a little bit bigger step back, and then it seems like you learn to increase that gap between a thought and reacting to a thought. That’s really what the gap is about. It’s like a thought comes up in your mind, and do you instantly identify with it, or do you see it for a second and then identify with it? Or do you see it for five seconds and then identify with it, or do you not identify with it at all?

There’s all a matter of how big a gap you can allow between when a thought comes up and when you identify with it, because the bigger that gap is, the easier it is to not identify with it. And so that’s what the spiritual progress is, isn’t it? It’s that gap getting bigger and bigger.

Rick: Yeah, I interviewed Karen Richards last week and she said a nice thing in one of her talks, which was that if you can catch a thought at an earlier stage of its development, before it becomes so manifest, then there’s more freedom, more veto power, as it were. And if we take that back even further, if you can reside in that place which exists before any thoughts arise, and if you can reside there consciously, then theoretically you would never be entrapped or overshadowed or identified with a thought.

Gina: Yeah, you know I experience thoughts sometimes as if they’re like humming, like they’re mumbling or muttering in the background. It’s like I don’t let them speak clearly, I just keep them muttering in the background. I hear that they’re muttering but I don’t tune into them to hear them clearly.

Rick: And they don’t compel you to action of any sort?

Gina: Yeah, I don’t give them enough attention that they come into focus. Yeah, so it’s interesting.

Rick: And like you said earlier, meditation is a good tool for that. The first verse in the Yoga Sutras is that “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind stuff,” “Yoga is chitta vritti nirodha,” so it enables the mind to kind of settle down and then you become familiarized with that settled state, and thereby you’re not so much a slave to the fluctuations of the mind.

Gina: Exactly, you have to practice going to that place. It’s like, I think there are actually pathways that get developed by meditation, and the more you travel to that place of presence, or essence, whatever you want to call that, the more you travel to that, the easier it is to get there. And so you train yourself to go to that place of presence. It takes training, and how do you get that training? Meditation is the best way to get that training because it’s a lot harder when there are distractions in your life, but the mind is a lot more activated when you’re moving around. Well, sometimes the mind is activated when you’re quiet too, but meditation is a way of training yourself to go to that place, practicing it.

Rick: Yeah, and just as a violinist or a tennis player or anyone like that, it’s not just a mental training, there’s a neurophysiological training that takes place, and they call it muscle memory in the case of sports. But they’ve studied the brains of long-term meditators and everything, and they function completely differently than the brains of someone who’s never done it. So the whole physiology gets converted into a different style of functioning, and when that happens, then there’s no question of volition or trying to manipulate things throughout the day or anything like that, it’s just as automatic as breathing.

Gina: Yeah, right, it is.

✨ Awakening, integration, and ordinary life

Rick: So we speak of an awakening, and sometimes people allude to awakening as being a real watershed moment, and it is, but there are awakenings as well. I mean, Adya, for instance, had an awakening when he was 25, and that was nice, and then he had a much more significant one when he was 32 or something. And also, if we look at the traditions of the world in terms of what is possible for a human being’s evolution, it seems there’s a vast span, a vast range. So I’m not sure where the question is in this, but I guess it’s more of a suggestion that in a sense we could always consider ourselves to be a beginner, no matter how advanced we are, because of the great potential for evolution that actually exists in life.

Gina: Well I think that there is just an ever-deepening of realization and an ever-deepening of integration after awakening. I think that awakening though is just such a critical, important occurrence. It’s so important, and yet it is the bare beginnings of this journey, really. And I know that I was not blasted out of the universe with the awakening that I had, and that was right for me. And it might be that I might be more integrated than some people who were blasted out, but I might not be as deeply realized. So it can be all different levels of integration and realization. And then Adya also talks about being open in the mind, open in the heart, and open in the gut, so you can be very free in the mind but not have your heart open. Or you could be very open in the heart perhaps and not be as free in the mind, and then that can vary from time to time, too.

Rick: And then for instance, you had this flatness period for five years, you know, dryness period, and then something more enriched blossomed. And then like others, Ramana Maharshi for instance, and other teachers have spoken of awakening as ultimately that one would actually never lose pure awareness even during sleep. We talk about getting overshadowed by our thoughts or identified with our thoughts. Well how about if it could be so enlivened, the inner awareness, that even in the depth of sleep, where you’re snoring like a sailor, pure awareness is perfectly clear.

Gina: Yeah, I guess that does happen, and it did happen to me for a while. I can’t even remember, I have a terrible memory, by the way. I think for about a couple of years.

Rick: All the time?

Gina: Yeah, I didn’t feel like I slept but I knew I slept because I was totally fresh, but there was something awake all night long. And even last night, I felt like I was awake part of the time, but I know that I was asleep. So that is more or less the case, I think that is something that some people experience. I don’t think it’s really anything special, but it is an interesting thing.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a verse in the Bible in the Song of Solomon that says, “I sleep though my heart waketh.”

Gina: Ah, you have a really good memory. Do you have cheat notes right there in front of you?

Rick: No, no, nothing, just your books. Well, I have a limited repertoire though, I mean, people who listen to a lot of these interviews email me and say, “Would you stop using the same quotes over and over again?”

Gina: I know something we could talk about. And I mentioned this in an email to you not too long ago, is that, here we are in the Western world and we’re waking up, and it’s not quite like the ascetic world of India. By the way, I’ve just listened to “Autobiography of a Yogi” on audiobook.

Rick: I’ve got it right behind me on the shelf.

Gina: I just felt moved to listen to that again, and now I know why spiritual seekers have all these fantastic ideas about awakening.

Rick: Oh, it’s all this wild stuff, yeah.

Gina: Yeah, because every page is a miracle. And that doesn’t seem to be really happening right now. It’s interesting, huh? Something a little different is happening, and I think one of the things is just that we’re in this very busy, egoic culture, and how do you be awake and stay awake within this very busy culture?

Rick: Yeah, you know it’s an interesting point. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi brought out this thing, the TM-Sidhi program, which you know what sidhis are, and one of those sidhis is being able to levitate, which of course relates to “Autobiography of a Yogi.” And he always used to say that the reason people weren’t actually achieving it is that world consciousness is so dense, and that if it weren’t so dense, that kind of thing would become commonplace. So as you say, here we are in a Western culture, and even in an Eastern culture, it’s pretty dense over there too. And who knows what it might be 50 years from now? Who knows what it might be on some other planet that’s a million years more evolved than ours? There could be stuff that would make our wildest movies seem simplistic.

Gina: And maybe we’re not even meant to have those, maybe this awakening is meant to look like this without those, so that it can be more normal. Also if all of these people who are waking up in these various professions and bringing in this new information, if they were to have sides, that would be distracting, wouldn’t it?

Rick: I mean, just think what Wall Street would do with that. So all is well and wisely put. And it’s funny to think, I mean, imagine yourself living in the mid-1800s or in the mid-1600s or something like that. All the people who lived there took that, or the Roman Empire, all the people who lived there took their society for granted, “Hey, this is normal, this is the way things are.” But if we were to go in a time machine and suddenly step into that, it would seem so different to us and we would seem so different to it. And the same is true of society now, and 200 years from now it could be more different, it probably will be more different than today, than today is from 200 years ago. And who knows, even in terms of the spiritual stuff, what might be accepted as the norm then.

But for now, it is what it is, and as you say, this is spreading like a contagion within a society that wouldn’t accept anything too weird. So people are learning how to live normal lives while attuned to this awakening.

Gina: Yeah, and I think that can be pretty challenging. I know my life is set up to support this awakeness.

Rick: Yeah, you’re in Sedona, for God’s sake, you can do anything you want there.

Gina: It makes a big difference, but I also really consciously have committed myself to that a long time ago, to that being the most important thing in my life, and to choosing from that place, making my choices carefully, that they supported that. Not everybody can do that, and I talk to a lot of people who are really struggling with, “Well, how do I be present in my job, which I don’t like or which is stressful, and what do I do about that?” And so it is not that easy to move from ego to essence, as I usually describe it. You know, this moving from ego to essence, it happens before awakening, not just after awakening, right?

So it is the teaching that is valuable for everyone, no matter where you’re at, no matter how ego-identified you are, as long as you want to see what that ego is up to and want to move from ego to essence, you can do it through practices and through learning about the ego and through making that conscious effort to be aware of your thoughts, and then you eventually get there. So this teaching about awakening is not just for people who are going to awaken or people who are awakened, but it is for people who may never awaken but who want to live happier, more fulfilled lives, because the more aligned you are with this peace, this presence, this love, essence that you are, the more aligned your life choices will be, and so the more fulfilled and happy you’ll be, the easier your life will go. So it’s really a very practical teaching.

Rick: It really is, yeah, and that’s not often mentioned. I mean, even sometimes teachers are asked that question and they say, “No, it has absolutely no practical significance.” I’ve heard Tony Parsons say that and some others, you know, “Don’t expect to get any kind of relative benefit out of it,” but that hasn’t been my experience, and so it obviously hasn’t been yours.

Gina: No, you know, in any moment you can have your ego express yourself or essence express yourself, and that’s the difference between heaven and hell, right there. Are you going to follow your mind’s ideas about how to live your life and what to say and what to do, or are you going to follow something deeper that doesn’t speak through your mind, that is this small, still voice, this quiet, intuitive sense of what your heart wants to do and what your heart is moving to you and what your spontaneous movements are? Are you going to pay attention to that, because that will give you the life that you’re meant to have, that you’re meant to be in this life. You’re meant to fulfill a certain potential, and it’s fulfilled by listening inside yourself, not listening to the mind.

Rick: Yeah, and lest people feel bad about themselves because they feel like they can’t live what you’re saying, it should be mentioned that it’s not always black and white, on and off. It’s not like an on-off light switch, it’s more like a rheostat for many people. You know what a rheostat is? It’s like a dial that you turn it up to get the light brighter and brighter by degrees, so it’s often not going to be a situation where one is completely living in essence and there’s no ego running the show, or vice versa. There’s usually some kind of blend, and you can favor the more constructive one, the more evolutionary one. There’s another saying for you, “That to which you give your attention grows stronger in your life,” so if you just steer the boat a bit more in that direction, then it will get stronger.

Gina: Right, right, and I’m glad you made that point because I do feel like, with a website called “Radical Happiness,” I don’t want to give people the impression that they are supposed to feel radically happy. Radical means root happiness, it’s the quiet happiness, it’s the happiness of contentment and peace of your true nature, it’s not the “whoopee” happiness of the ego. So I don’t want to give people the impression that they are supposed to, they’re not doing it right unless they’re feeling “whoopee” happiness all the time. Oh no, I don’t mean that at all, because I don’t feel that way. I don’t run around feeling, with a great big smile on my face all the time, but there’s a quiet contentment and an appreciation of life, a gratitude, and a seeing of beauty everywhere that comes from being aligned with that which you are.

And you know when you’re aligned with it because of how it feels, and you know when you’re aligned with your ego because of how it feels. It doesn’t feel good, it feels contracted and tight and tense and stressed, and so that can be the guide for what you’re paying attention to. If you’re paying attention to something that’s contracting you, which is probably a thought, then you’re paying attention to the false self. And if you’re paying attention to something that allows you to just rest and relax and just be in this moment and also function very effectively. Oh, look at those adorable ears!

Rick: There’s the adorable face. She just came in. Yeah, so we get feedback, I mean we are our own smoke alarm for there being something askew in life, and if you tune into it, you’re told by what’s going on in your own body, whether you’re on the right track or not, whether you’re sort of moving with ego or with essence, as you say.

Gina: And that’s the proof that life is good, that it has goodness behind it, that there’s benevolence behind it because it’s all taken us home. It is possible to be happy even amidst this world where there are a lot of challenges, it is possible to be happy, and that’s the proof that there is goodness behind it all, in spite of all of the challenges that life throws us.

“It is possible to be happy even amidst this world where there are a lot of challenges.”

✨ Trusting life and the self-correcting universe

Rick: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Maybe that’s a good point to end on, I could go on all day thinking of more things to say and I could think of a response to that, but the point of there being, you know, it’s a benign universe, there’s goodness behind everything, there’s an evolutionary purpose to all this, and it’s a good thought to leave people with.

Gina: Yes, I agree, thank you.

Rick: You want to say anything more about that before we conclude, or have you said it pretty much?

Gina: Well, actually, I wrote a book, I don’t mean to be plugging a book, but my most recent book is called “Trusting Life,” and I wrote it because it’s such an issue for people, especially if people who have had any kind of wounding in their childhood, where they felt not good enough or they had an oppressive religious kind of upbringing, where “Oh, you’re sinful” and that kind of thing. There are so many people who don’t at their core believe that life is good, and that is a critical belief. It’s so important to know the truth, that life is good, that at its core it is about love and it is trustworthy, it’s trustworthy.

Rick: Yeah, I mean in the beginning of our talk you were talking about how a lot of highly evolved souls are born into difficult situations in order to perhaps goad them towards awakening. And in my own case, I had an alcoholic father who yelled at my mother every night until

Gina: Oh, that sounds familiar!

Rick: And she ended up trying to commit suicide and ending up in mental hospital, so it was quite a scene. But I remember at one point, after I had been meditating for a few years and was really enjoying the way my life was unfolding, I said to my mother, “Mom, don’t ever worry about how you brought me up, because whatever you did, I’m really happy with the way things are turning out, so you must have done the right thing.”

Gina: Oh, that was sweet of you to tell her that.

Rick: And she really tried, amidst great burdens and difficulties, to keep it together for the kids. But in any case, I bring that point in because of what you said about this being a benevolent universe.

Gina: Even that.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t think things happen to punish us. It’s more like they happen to teach us and to awaken us, and in some cases to give us a kick in the pants.

Gina: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And the suffering is there to wake us up. And then when we’re awake we want to ease that suffering in other people, because it really is so much the mind’s production. Isn’t that amazing, how much suffering is caused by just the mind?

Rick: Yeah, “fierce grace,” as Ram Dass put it after his stroke.

Gina: Yeah, and the grace is the challenges. I like to use the word “challenge” for what life naturally brings us to evolve us, which isn’t a punishment or it isn’t meant for us to suffer over. It’s meant for us to find a way through it without suffering, find a way to God through it, really. Because a lot of people do come to God from those very kinds of crises.

Rick: And in the long run it makes us more complete too, so it’s not just like we experience really crappy circumstances in order to light a fire under us to get out of them, but having gone through them, and that we can look back and we can help others who are going through them which we might not have been able to do if we hadn’t gone through them ourselves. They often say that teachers who just wake up without really going through very much, aren’t sometimes very good at relating to people on their own level.

Gina: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s all a training ground and a training for whatever we came here to do. Every experience is the right experience, and even so-called “wrong choices” sometimes people feel like they make a wrong choice, or maybe a choice is actually out of alignment with how essence would move them, but even that isn’t a wrong choice, because that choice must have needed to be made because there was something that was being believed that caused that choice, and then by making that choice and seeing that it didn’t turn out well, it might cause the person then to reevaluate that belief that caused that choice. So you can’t go wrong, you keep getting put back on the… it’s a self-correcting universe.

“It’s a self-correcting universe.”

Rick: Yeah, yeah, very good. Okay, so we’ll end on that one, the self-correcting universe. So thanks Gina, this has been great, and I’m sure we’ll meet one of these days before too long.

Gina: Yes, you come to Sedona.

Rick: I want to, I really want to. I have several friends there that I’d like to meet. I had a great experience in Sedona one time, I won’t go into it right now, it was just kind of a sucked-into-samadhi kind of experience that I had while sitting out under the stars. In any case, let me wrap it up. I’ve been talking with Gina Lake, and Gina, as you’ve just heard, lives in Sedona, but she talks to people over Skype.

Gina: No, I don’t.

Rick: Oh, you don’t? I thought you did, I thought you did counseling.

Gina: I don’t do counseling.

Rick: Oh, sorry, yeah, you said that earlier. She writes books, and she’s written eight of them, and I think you’ve got another one in the works, probably?

Gina: Not quite yet.

Rick: Not quite, it will come. And I will link to all those books. Are there some of the books which you would feel like, “Eh, people shouldn’t bother with that, that was early stuff,” or do you feel like they’re all still relevant?

Gina: They are all relevant. They fit together really nicely. The most non-dual books are “Radical Happiness,” “Anatomy of Desire,” and “Embracing the Now” and “Living in the Now” are more like Eckhart Tolle type of non-dual.

Rick: Do you feel it would be helpful for people to read them in the order that you wrote them, or is that not necessary?

Gina: I say, “Go with your intuition.”

Rick: Okay, good. So I’ll link to them all anyway, maybe I’ll link to them in the order that you gave them to me in that list that you sent, and people can pick and choose.

Gina: Yeah, they’re very inexpensive as e-books on Kindle and other places.

Rick: Yeah, yeah, good. And so also, Gina has a website and I’ll be linking to that from www.batgap.com. And as I always say at the end of these interviews, if you’re listening to this on YouTube or something, you can subscribe to the channel and you’ll be notified whenever a new video is put up. But you could also go to www.batgap.com where you can subscribe to be notified by email, you can participate in the discussion, you can find a link to a podcast to listen to this as an audio podcast, and probably some other good stuff. There’s also a “Donate” button. So go there if you like, and thank you for listening or watching. And next week it will be Benjamin Smythe, who is quite a character. I’m listening to his audios now, he stands out on street corners with a sign that says “You’re perfect,” and he’s a very funny guy, so we’ll be talking to him next week. So thanks Gina.

Gina: Thank you Rick, it was so wonderful talking with you.

Rick: Yeah, we’ll do it again.

Gina: Thanks for all the work you do here.

Rick: Oh, thank you, I enjoy it. Bye-bye.

Gina: Okay, bye-bye.