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Rick Archer: 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 old friends sending me an email. There was a, 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. And 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 to, you know, fun to fanatical or whatever. And she’ll always bounce back some sage advice. So I’ve really appreciated that. And it’s really, I’ve really been looking forward to this interview.
Gina Lake: Well, thank you, wreck. You’re welcome. I’ve been looking forward to this interview, too, for all the same reasons.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah. And Gina lives down in Sedona with her husband near Mila, whom I will 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 some of now now me now Meets Godzilla. Just kidding about those last two, but a whole lot of books, which I will be linking to from batgap.com. And I find her books at least as much as I’ve read so far to be as mature and their spiritual wisdom, as Gina herself has proven to be and emails and all the audios I’ve been listening to. So I’m really buttering you up here, you’re gonna have to live up to all this. So we have plenty of time, as you know, in, in this interview, and so I’d like to really kind of explore everything that you consider to be meaningful and relevant and 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 we just usually works to start with a sort of biographical sketch, you know, retrospective on how you kind of came to be where you are today.
Gina Lake: Okay, well, I’ve been thinking about that a little, because I know that you asked 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 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, I, 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 that I just couldn’t stay with it, it was to 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, 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, 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, well, 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 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, and I just had to withdraw into myself, which was my natural thing to do anyway,
Rick Archer: you know, it might, it might help some people to interject here about this feeling that you had of not belonging here, you know, 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 You Born This Way Foundation, where she’s trying to give kids confidence that they’re, they’re fun just the way they are, and so on. And I had a friend, very dear friend who is highly spiritual and highly awake guy who killed himself a few years ago as a young man about 25. Because he just didn’t feel like he belonged on this planet. And he thought he could just sort of check out. But if this, if it saved, if it’s by some chance, saves a life for us to touch on this point that, you know, I mean, in a sense, none of us belong here. You know, there’s, 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, there’s a purpose to our being here.
Gina Lake: Okay, Rick, let’s get into some radical ideas right away.
Rick Archer: Yeah, we’ll continue the the chronological sketch too. But yeah, we can we can dive into little Eddie’s as we go along.
Gina Lake: Yeah. Well, it seems that, as you said, we’re, we’re all we’re all from somewhere else, anywhere, any 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 that goes on here. I’m, 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 they’re, you know, 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, 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, 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 said they love 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 wanted to say what All the the movement, this movement of awakening, which is so phenomenal, where there are so many people awakening and awakening easily, is it there’s something going on here that’s quite mysterious. And 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 it want to intervene that it was 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, 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 know, and you could say that Christ was an emissary, right? Buddha, they avatars what are they, they came in enlightened most an avatar, I think, by definition comes in enlightened,
Rick Archer: but they don’t realize it. I mean, Buddha struggled for years before his Enlightenment was realizing and Rama of Ramayana fame, you know, he is said to be an avatar of Vishnu, and he, he, you know, was miserable and seeking and all life sucks. And you know, it’s not nothing’s worth it. And, and then he kind of worked with the shisha, his guru and ended up, you know, having his awakening. So if, if, if we accept the possible validity of all these, you know, arguably mythological things, then, if even God himself who decides to incarnate as an avatar can come in ignorant and have to come somehow wake up at some point than what to save the rest of us?
Gina Lake: Yes. So I think this is a fascinating idea that when I encountered and and began to talk with other people about it, they really relaxed because I was, 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, 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 almost went off and wakes us up from the nightmare. So that is another seems to be another characteristic of people who might have come here 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 in 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 then who came of age in the 60s and the whole hippie movement, and the peace and love and the drugs, which also played a part in opening up people’s consciousness. You know, and, you know, 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, are in our more mature age, and awakening, and of course, there are younger people who are awakening to, 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 and 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 and then the pace of awakening just so rapidly. It is, is increasing exponentially, probably because the more people who are awake, the easier it is to wake up. 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 that the internet is all part of the plan. And who brought the internet in? I bet you anything there little geniuses from other branches? Right? Oh, I forgot.
Rick Archer: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that’s an interesting point. Very often, when I’ve watched certain movies, you know, like Star Wars, or close encounters, or different movies like that, which you come away from feeling really inspired. Just sort of feel that, you know, 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 kind of serving as instruments to introduce certain ideas to a much larger audience, and perhaps even on aware that they’re doing so. And same thing, as you say, with the internet, and with all with all kinds of other things. I mean, obviously, it can be used for all kinds of creepy things, too. But that, but the growth of technology does seem to be keeping pace with the growth of spirituality, I’m not sure which is the curtain, which is the horse, but experience, 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 and without a counterbalancing spiritual development.
Gina Lake: 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. And so there’s more of a balance. So the the beings who came into human bodies, they’re 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 Archer: Well, I don’t know. I mean, 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 and a lot of inner awareness and radiance that struck me for the first time I met him early in the campaign before he was even the nominee. Of course, I know plenty of politicians who don’t have that. And there are plenty who would completely disagree with what I just said. Even even people I know who’ve been meditating for 40 years hate him. No accounting for political tastes. But but you know, I mean, on that point, it almost seems like when, when times are really dire, great souls are come along to help us through it. You know, Lincoln, FDR. And perhaps Obama.
Gina Lake: 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. And so things had to get worse before they got better? And 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 Archer: It is. And you know, there are plenty of, you know, very, I mean, Francis, Lucille is, is very conservative, he really liked bush. So there are plenty of people who are highly enlightened and who have completely who don’t necessarily have liberal political leanings, and that’s cool. I mean, so but, yeah, whatever. Just to, 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’re 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, you know, progressive wing of the political spectrum and another which is you know, rather hard hearted and repressive and, and you should you know, mention that but
Gina Lake: yeah, you know, I, I have a metaphysical background and having that background, I tend to see things as old souls young souls, you know, this is this is its Earth is like a school room, one room school room 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 round in this world, it creates the conflict and the and the growth and, and all of that. So there’s a place for it. But I do think that 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. And so,
Rick Archer: it certainly is a very Christian thing to do. Yeah. Okay, so
Gina Lake: where were we history?
Rick Archer: Let’s do a little bit more of that. And then I’m sure will diverge again.
Gina Lake: Okay. Okay. So
Rick Archer: when you started getting into these strange things when you’re in college? In what sense? Did you do that? Did you learn meditation? Did you visit a guru? How did you glom on to the eastern knowledge?
Gina Lake: Well, a really funny thing happened, as 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 five o’clock every morning. And I, 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 and mystical side to the to Catholicism, and of course, to many other religions. Sufism, in, you know, 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, you know, not 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, you know, to be happy, I wanted to not suffer. And a lot of the new edge technologies helped with that. So but anyhow, it was rather short lived the interest in metaphysics, or the interest in Eastern religions, and that 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 in that when the time I was married to him, it just didn’t really wasn’t really prominent. And then about 10 years later, I started reading Carlos Costa, not us. 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’ve 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, to study astrology. And so then I really poured myself into the study of psychology and metaphysics, but the most significant thing was in happened in 1986, which all of a sudden, one day I realized that when I asked a question mentally, I got an answer clears 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
Rick Archer: that was beyond yourself, or could it have been within yourself some deeper level of yourself?
Gina Lake: Well, there’s a tonality invoice that comes through, there’s a not so much of a personality, but there’s a feel and energy that’s attached to this 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 it just was very, besides I, I believe there were beings in other dimensions I, I’ve always felt that I’ve always, I don’t know, it’s just, it’s beyond a belief. It’s just something I always knew in my heart was 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, I could have that kind of communication in the shower or 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 it always has been since then, it’s never changed.
Rick Archer: But sit there for an hour and give a whole lecture dictating what this voice is telling you or is it more like little snippets?
Gina Lake: No, yes, I do that all the time. Yeah. So what happened though, and in 1986, the first year that my channel open up 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 paid my ego, tell me all the things I really wanted to know as an ego. And, 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. And so I there
Rick Archer: were astral beings, just different voice, or because they sort of give the wrong advice, or
Gina Lake: 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 to 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. And I
Rick Archer: wouldn’t be interested to hear that what that was, or would you rather not go into it?
Gina Lake: I can I can tell you just very, very. Yeah. Okay, this is it. It’s, um, 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’ve been told some things that were in inaccurate, and I 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 it in it. It was problematic for me in my life, but 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 started this. I could hear a group of them I could actually hear a group of them all like laughing and my my channel at that time I 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.
Rick Archer: Interesting. You know, I was gonna ask you, whether they were malicious or just stupid, just stupid, but it sounds like you just answered that question. They,
Gina Lake: they became extremely malicious once found out. And so and, and I’m, and I’m sharing this because it might be enlightening for people who have gotten involved, whether they’re they even knew they have a channel or not some people get voices in their head that are so demonic, that aren’t, they aren’t part of them. And, and it is possible for demonic voices to, 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, to, to do that to a human being they like that. So there is that level of negative entities in that in the existence, that that, 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 and I’ll help you, you know, 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. And
Rick Archer: not the wise one to or just Yes, absolutely. Not everybody. Yeah,
Gina Lake: I was not 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 don’t when you have an experience like that it changes you. Yeah. And I it was a very powerful learning for me. But what happened next is that,
Rick Archer: let me just interject to say that, you know, some people listening to this are gonna say, well, she’s just, she was just crazy. I mean, you know, there aren’t No, there are no beings, it was just her, you know, her biochemistry was haywire, or, you know, she was just kind of mentally unbalanced or something, and somehow or other. And I don’t think we can address that level of skepticism in this interview.
Gina Lake: But I was the perfect I’m a perfectly functioning human being who’s you know, so this was the fat I was choosing, I was choosing to communicate with these beings, good or bad. Whereas people who have schizophrenia, or who hear voices there, it isn’t a choice, right, that just dominates them. It dominates.
Rick Archer: It started to dominate you until you just, you better shut it down.
Gina Lake: Yeah, for about two days. For about two days. It was it overwhelmed me. And so then an interesting thing happened. Friend of mine said, oh, you should call so and so he’s, 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 I married after two years. And, and, 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 very respectful voice say, may we speak to you And I thought, Hmm, that’s interesting. And I thought, well, if as long as I don’t, it’s long as I’m discriminating or I don’t listen to personal information, I guess I could see what there is here to, to, 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 he continued to, like continue to have a relationship with this particular individual. And from that point on, I never spoke to another being except this individual. And it seems, and it was always clear to me that it was this individual because there’s a certain experience tonality, energy. And
Rick Archer: so it’s natural have a name.
Gina Lake: Well, he gave me a name at the time to us. 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 is Theodore, and Theodore Theo. So that’s what I’ve called him from the sixth dimension. And so I
Rick Archer: went on, he’s from the sixth dimension. So why don’t we have how many we have four dimensions in our ordinary world, right?
Gina Lake: The fourth dimension is the astral plane. Oh,
Rick Archer: I way I’m mixed up. I thought fourth was time. So the fourth dimension is the astral plane. Okay. Yes. Fifth is
Gina Lake: this. The fifth is the higher is the higher astral where the where spirit guides where guides for individuals reside? And the sixth dimension is where guides for Earth reside? For the whole planet? Yeah, for the whole planet. above that. Sure, presumably, there are guides for for the sixth dimension, I am 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 99 days, the information I brought through was more new age, like what we’ve been talking about this metaphysical and 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, we’re, like, fused hair. 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, or them speaking to you. Or, you know, I don’t know what the I mean, I, I can tell the difference. If I’m in my ego. I know it’s not. I know, it’s not that fused energy. But other than that, this, the 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 I when I awoke I knew myself as what I experienced in meditation, and what experience I could say when I’m channeling. And so it’s all very mysterious, isn’t it? Yeah.
Rick Archer: I just want to say to the strict non duelists, to maybe listening hang in there with us because we’re going to discuss, you know, the doubts that you probably are having in your mind about, you know, from your perspective as strict non duelists you know, there is no 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 gonna we’re gonna juxtapose that we’re gonna we’re gonna sort of investigate that and hopefully resolve some of the issues that come up around that kind of thing in sort of non dual circles.
Gina Lake: It never seemed to be a conflict to me to include would other dimensions non physical beings in, in this reality because because my experience and experience have many other people who have sick six senses were 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 is a is a given is pretty obvious. And so they are also evolving, they are also involved with physical dimensions and helping us on this on this planet 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 Archer: I don’t have a problem with it. I mean, you know, for instance, you know, Tony Parsons, for instance, is fond of saying that everything is just, you know, he says, this is being is just walling or being is, you know, carving or whatever. In other words, everything that we see is a, just a manifestation in a sort of a dream like state of the same essential substance. And I’m cool with that. But if that if that is true, then and we see how auditorally diverse the universe is, you know, even here on this planet, we’ll 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, you know, cars and trees. I mean, you know, 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, the Vedic tradition, which is really the source of Vedanta source of non dualism, as its popularized in the West, is, is just replete with discussions of images, 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, you know, and the founder of non dualism Shankara, probably would, you know, he would have said, Well, ultimately the world is Brahma and 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 that doesn’t it doesn’t. And there’s a saying in the in the Gita, you know, for the Enlightened Brahmin, 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 a pinnacle to it all. You know, there’s, there’s all sorts of stuff as you go up the mountain.
Gina Lake: Yeah, it’s such a big mystery. And I think what you how you described Tony Parsons philosophy about the oneness, and being in everything, and that that isn’t contradictory to what I’m saying. And so, I think that, you know, we’re trying to put into words this great mystery, but, you know, and each, each of us, maybe speaking speaks up a part of the truth. But if
Rick Archer: you know that saying neti neti, not this not this, if I’d like to find out the Sanskrit for the opposite of that, which would be this, this, which is true, 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 truth, the truths may be paradoxical to one another, but each one is a facet in a much larger, you know, Gem than then people ordinarily encapsulate.
Gina Lake: Yeah. And, you know, I’m, to me, what’s important is, is what’s true is the proof is in the pudding. The proof is in does does the wisdom or the truth or the belief that you have, is it working for you is 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 a 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 it helped 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 I’ve and it I used to be interested in getting a better me but I grew up I matured my spirituality matured. And I, I became more interested in the truth and 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 and others and that’s the that’s the truth and anything any belief or idea about the bout the truth or philosophy that brings brings you in touch with that goodness with that God within with that love within you is 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 egos perspective and help them move into what I call the place of essence. So if metaphysics physics 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 if it’s getting in the way of that, then throw it out?
Rick Archer: 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’s 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. And that’s a common saying Ramana Maharshi used to say that and very various predecessors of his Yeah,
Gina Lake: absolutely. Whatever works. And so when we’re meeting people who are lost in their ego, we have to find a way to, to touch them to help move them out. And sometimes it might be the truth that Tony person speaks, it might be that very thing. And sometimes it won’t be that it’ll 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, that’s who we are we are that 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 you know, 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 were meant to be within this creation. So I do also feel that we all have an individual purpose that 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, are set to have a certain kind of destiny, maybe it’s to be a teacher, or maybe it’s to be the best 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 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, 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?
Rick Archer: Yeah. I’m on Eckhart Tolle his email list, and he sends out these little present moment reminders, you know, every, every week or so. And there’s one that came this week in which he said, ultimately, he said, 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 will, that we might, 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’re just saying, which is that the universe ultimately is a focal point through which consciousness can know itself, so you can take it, it’s not that the universe is knowing itself, it’s the consciousness is knowing itself through the instrumentality of the universe, which contains trillions of focal points, if we want to if we want to sort of see it in a particular way, rather than as a whole. And you know, each of us has one of those focal points, where each side have a sense organ of the of the infinite. And as you say, each sense organ is different. Each sense organ serves a different function, different purpose has a different role to play a different dharma.
Gina Lake: So, 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, 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, it’s such a great dance. And, and I think one of the one of the things i i wanted to say in this interview it because so many people asked me questions that seemed to assume that after you’re awake, everything is so wonderful, and you must be so like perfect and happy all the time and that kind of thing. And what I 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 you know, 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, i 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, deeper and 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 exactly the right place to do this work, which I’m sure is very much a part of your soul’s desire, your deepest souls plan. And, 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 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? It’s 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. Sure, and some plays for free well in there.
Rick Archer: Well, you know, you don’t help a flower blossom any sooner by breaking the bud open and to see how it’s doing. Yeah. And you know, this whole thing about ego. There’s 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. To who would reincarnate or who would receive the karma and so on. But think about it this way. I mean, if even if we acknowledge which, you know, 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 you know, pure non dual oneness. Nonetheless, we have apparently a body, which has, you know, all sorts of intricate mechanisms in it. We have apparently an intellect apparently senses apparently in a mind all these are just faculties through which we function in this so called dream world. So why not also apparently an ego, you know, some identity, which ultimately isn’t real, but which is real is as real as anything else is, as one of the faculties which enable us to function.
Gina Lake: Yeah, and the ego, it was programmed into the human being,
Rick Archer: yeah, like your, like your nose, or whatever.
Gina Lake: It’s part of it. Without the ego, we wouldn’t experience ourselves as separate. So in order to create this illusion, the the divine had to create something that would make it seem like we’re separate, when we aren’t
Rick Archer: 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 has been blown away. There’s a sense of a profound sense of impersonality.
Gina Lake: Yes, but they still answer when their name is called. Exactly. 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 Archer: Yeah, let’s, 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 Lake: Okay, well, in 1999, I was a New Age teacher and I, 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 Ganga G, but there were three, three or 400 people in the room. And, and as wonderful as she is, I just felt this isn’t my teacher, and she can’t be my teacher. And so just on a, it was just a very strange occurrence that Adyashanti came up to Santa Rosa, and did a very small SATs on there was only six people in the room. And my boyfriend at the time. He said, Oh, this guy named Adyashanti. Is is going to be talking on Sunday morning. You want to get one ago, and I said, Okay, sure. No, that
Rick Archer: was there. Then I wish I’d known about I was visiting in laws in Guerneville. So I could have easily come over then. Yeah, yeah. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Gina Lake: And there was something about sitting in this room, six people, this very unassuming young man. Young, little younger than me. He just said, you can awaken and if 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 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 I after that, Satsang I signed up for Oh, my boyfriend and I immediately broke up after that. was so funny, and we both went on a retreat about two weeks later, we went on a retreat together with Om Shanti with Adyashanti Right. And, but I had already just moved on. And I, about another month later, I was at a Satsang with someone environment he was in Australia. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And we were doing a dyad of where 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? Is this 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’ve been living in, and moved into another place, the 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, and I just couldn’t think I thought for five days, it just, there just was no thought coming into my mind. And that was so surprising. Nothing. Nothing.
Rick Archer: Just Oh, like, as you were making dinner and stuff, just there wouldn’t be okay, I’ll now go get the knife or something. It would just be complete spontaneous action without any apparent mental activity. Yeah.
Gina Lake: Okay. It was. So it was, it was just so surprising. And I was so happy
Rick Archer: didn’t have any songs going through your head. Like, what should I wear tonight? What should I, what should I should? Do I need any vegetables? Should I go to the market, none of that?
Gina Lake: Nothing, okay. It was just, it was very strange. And then the mindfully came back, but then you’re on to it, you’re, you’re so much in this deeper place, that the mind is seen differently. It’s just it’s seen as separate from you as not a part of you, as if it is just some distant, 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’s some emotion triggered, it’s there and 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. i 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 were, there was a lot of happiness over having awakened and then there’s the next. The next little trap. Right is I’m awake. We’ve got your merit badge. Yeah, yeah. So I think that is the next difficult the next phase in awakening is that, then you feel there’s a certain ecstasy or happiness that is just the ego going, ooh, you know, I achieved something here.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’m taking this little course with audio right now on 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 as something? Yeah. The ego kind of tries to creep back in and appropriate it.
Gina Lake: Yeah. And it’s also just such a normal phase. Maybe 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 I that that whole first year was pretty wonderful. And it was also colored by the fact that I met Nirmala two weeks later. Oh, good. Yeah. 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 it 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, and it gave me a big hug, you know, saying hello. And I thought, oh, huh. 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. I thought, that hug felt really good, what’s up. And then there was another break and another break, and we just kept hugging each other. Keep the huggy person and and then I emailed him afterwards. And I said, Can we need some time. 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 that. So that was about four, four months when we just talked on the phone. And I was falling in love with him. So here we have 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 Archer: yeah, like little swarms of Cupid’s flying all over the place. Yeah. But I’ll tell you
Gina Lake: what, one more thing that happened this year that wasn’t so so great in this first year. And it goes along with what just jaunty talks has mentioned also, as sometimes what can accompany awakening is shortly after I in this, I was 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 this there’s this mountain with a lake on top, I would run up to the top and run down running on these rocks. I was doing situps just more than I was used to doing. And I got into this pattern of back spasms. And you know where my back, my back went out. And it was so severe that for about three months, I could barely take care of myself. And I 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 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 I you know, he didn’t even remember what I looked like anymore. So he had to see me. Gosh, you know, I did a
Rick Archer: check. We paralyzed at this point. Yeah.
Gina Lake: So 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 John Sarno wrote about things like back pain and other kinds of pain can be caused by the body storing emotion, instead in its, 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, I was getting better. And I was able, I recovered within two weeks of finishing that book. But I also did some work on anger, then, and I 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 Jaya 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 Archer: You know, I was gonna ask you before he started talking about this weather since the awakening in 99. Or 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’ll do we can talk in a minute about the need to do some housecleaning after awakening. But in terms of you know, when you were in the throes of that back pain when it was at its worst. Was there any 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 Lake: No, I was. I know I didn’t feel that I lost it. It was Jan Wyatt
Rick Archer: still in her kind of wakefulness in the despite the pain. Yeah,
Gina Lake: yeah. And the fears you know, the fears Coming up, I noticed that, you know, I noticed that there’s noticed notice what’s going on. But I wasn’t I never lost that sense of brightness awakeness that that came with that? And how would that be
Rick Archer: different than if the same thing had happened to you before awakening?
Gina Lake: Well, I think I would have I think I would have been openly angry. And feeling victimized Yeah, that’s the point. That’s what that’s what I like to go to. That’s, 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 Archer: So there would have been a sort of a small self obsession.
Gina Lake: Yeah, I would have felt powerless and weak and vulnerable power.
Rick Archer: Whereas after awakening, not to put words in your mouth was it more like the sense of personal self was more dissolved or diffuser or in addition to the person’s sense of personal self, there was a sort of an impersonal, which simply wasn’t touched by all the difficulties that you were going through
Gina Lake: that whole sense of what I was like, before, how how I was in the world. I couldn’t find that same me anymore. It’s like, I, my, my self images changed, you could say it was like that it was, I didn’t have the same self images anymore. And, you know, 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 if it’s how possible it is to hold no image at all. Because I experienced 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. That’s how do you not take that on, you know, it’s it’s hard other people see was that you have to you present yourself as that. So there is a certain level of taking that on. And but I think I think what the key is, is how tightly you hold that, or how lightly you hold that, you know, and so it’s holding all self images lighter, and no, and being aware of the self images that you are holding, because once you’re aware of the images that you’re holding, then in a sense, you’re 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, the, you know, it’s, there’s, there’s always something going on, and being aware of it. And holding it all lightly, is I think the key and the best thing, best we can do with it all.
Rick Archer: Yeah, interesting. I’m kind of reminded of my own case, where in my 20s, I was, you know, giving all these lectures on meditation and traveling around and speaking to 500 people and teaching courses and all this stuff. And then, you know, because I was in a spiritual organization that would shuffle people around from this, that and the other two different things. Next thing, I would find myself cleaning toilets, and shoveling cow manure and building fences and stuff, but it was really kind of good to swing back and forth between those, those kinds of roles to to, you know, de inflate any sort of sense of, you know, being the great teacher,
Gina Lake: or, oh, yeah, I still put us I still clean toilets.
Rick Archer: So let’s talk. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Gina Lake: I just wanted to say that in our ordinary in life, where we’re so ordinary, you know, you can’t 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 Archer: And as rom das says, if you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your parents. Yeah. So, let’s talk a bit about the
Gina Lake: debt. You did ask a good question there a minute ago, if there was anything that had shifted me out of this?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Was it? Was it invincible? Or could it be overshadowed? Or, you know, by the most trying of circumstances?
Gina Lake: Well, I did have it, I did have an experience after that honeymoon period of moving into about a five year period of dryness. And now what? So what? Yeah, flat, flat. And I, at that point, after I awakened, I stopped channeling because I had no questions. Yeah. And I also was influenced by ideas, attitude towards New Age things, and thinking that it wasn’t necessary or it serves no purpose, or somehow it, it wasn’t right, or it didn’t fit, right. So I actually stopped channeling for five years. And that, and I did not, I just didn’t even talk at all. For five years, I was amazing. And in those five years, it was very dry it was. And that at that point near Milan, 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, I couldn’t imagine what I had to say to anybody about any of this. And I didn’t know I couldn’t imagine where this was all going and what was going to happen. There was no future. No, you know, 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 the truth. And one foot is still back in the old, 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. Yeah. And do you know that place? Yes, yes. Yeah. So. 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 there’s something to say about awakening? And, sure enough, sure enough, the word started flowing. And I and I haven’t stopped since. So. So all of the writing and teaching that’s come forth, has been on a new in a new vein, it’s come from the new, the new place that I’ve been living from, and it’s come through in a different way.
Rick Archer: And write all eight of your books since then, or were some of them. Yeah, for that. Oh, really? Wow. So that really become prolific.
Gina Lake: Right? And so that, that’s, 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 Archer: So do you feel like your books are largely kind of inspired by Theodore or is it more like you said before, you really can’t separate the two and no, which is coming from where?
Gina Lake: Well, they really are just given to me. And so I would I do take credit for being the instrument and for having the consciousness, the awareness, the knowledge base to be able to, to, to bring through that that in the way it comes through. And so, if I, I see, I couldn’t have written these books, I couldn’t have brought these books through before I had an awakening. Right. So so it is, it is a necessary thing. For me to be I am part of it. I’m definitely part of the process. But I’m the instrument but it’s it is literally just given to me word for word, non stop flow from cover to cover. And
Rick Archer: and you don’t actually sit down and work out a whole logical structure and kind of agonize over it just flows right out of you. Hmm.
Gina Lake: I’m told what it’s going to be about and given a table of contents, and the introduction and boom, boom, boom is It is that way. And yeah, everything I write is that way. And when I teach in my intensives, it’s that way, I invite that my helpers, my helping presence, and open my mouth. And there it is, you know. So I, I’ve been trying to not call it channeling, because that’s just seems to be so limiting. And it, 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 in order to reach as many people as possible. And I also like to say in defense of channeling, if you’re not channeling something beyond this little you this false, you then you’re channeling your ego. You know, if you’re not channeling, I mean, I think that the 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
Rick Archer: just saying earlier, I mean, George Lucas channeled Star Wars, you know,
Gina Lake: yeah, just because I happen to have a name attached to it, and happened to be called channeling, then it gets put in a certain category. And part of the problem it 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, and not everyone is able to discriminate that. So that kind of gives it a bad name it it, you know, like anything else, it there are levels that are more valuable than others. But to throw out the whole thing, just because not all of it is is true and good and worthy. Is is silly, you know, I 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 Archer: I should say that your books are very enjoyable to read. I’ve read a little bit of channeled material from Rhonda and things like that. And my impression is Jesus, this guy couldn’t even pass a high school English exam, you know, why does he have to speak in such a convoluted, pretentious manner, you cannot just be simple, well written prose. And you know, your books are written that way. I mean, they’re very enjoyable, well written sensible, you don’t get any sense of ooga booga, you know, moody, kind of verbiage in them.
Gina Lake: Yeah, that’s why we’ve, we’ve fused in a sense, Theodore, learn to speak in a way that was more human, and learn to and we learned to have a voice that is my voice, right, we learn to put these things into a voice that is my voice. And so it, it it and the words are given to me in my voice, and 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 the, my teaching was developed by being given all of this writing. It’s like, this is Oh, this is the body of knowledge I came to teach. And it feels so right. And it took me 60 years wreck to to find my niche, you know, to find my niche. I know it’s such a blessing. No, it’s such a blessing. But who ever knew it would take that long, right? It’s a good thing. Nobody said it was going to get to be that long.
Rick Archer: see life as a continuum, you know, so I mean, if I were if I were to die tomorrow, it’s just that’s just a little little milestone little mile marker on a much longer continuum. Right. 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. Yeah. Now, a minute ago, you said, if you’re not speaking, if you’re not channeling somebody, you’re speaking from your ego. So Why would you say that it’s really that black and white, it’s really that either or?
Gina Lake: 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 I 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, running it, and then that next second essence comes forward. And so I
Rick Archer: can be more mature and integrated so that the two are functioning harmoniously without any seesaw effect.
Gina Lake: Yes, yeah. Yes. And then, the more 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 Archer: And yeah, but when you say channeling, I mean, you know, then that that brings up, 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 Theatre in a theater. Theater is an individualized entity, which like, like, we’re individualized entities, just maybe have a higher order. And that’s what I think of when I think of channeling I think of sort of, you know, speaking force and individualized intelligence rather than just being reflective of cosmic intelligence,
Gina Lake: 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 Archer: Yeah. Yeah, they’re so fully embodying that same essence.
Gina Lake: Yeah. And, in fact, what I’ve come to understand is that and other other people have said this, too, in fact, you mentioned this, in one of your interviews, that beings like Theodore are, are intermediaries between the, the the oneness and the more individualized form, that we are, and so, spirit guides and, and, and higher dimensional beings, are working with human beings, through their intuition, to help them fulfill their task in this world. So they are, they are facilitating essence. So these higher beings are facilitating our expression of essence.
Rick Archer: 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 impulse impulses, which ultimately give rise to the whole universe. And so it 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, when you think about it, if we are that sort of cosmic intelligence, which we are essence, if you want to call it, then, you know, Theodore, and the riches and the Dave itaas, and everything else, are all contained within what we really are. And, you know, we are just we, as Gina or as Rick are just one individual expression of that. But we can, it seems, kind of 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 individual individuality rigidly so rigidly that we can’t do it.
Gina Lake: Yes, we’re we are meant to express the highest, that the highest being the being that we are, and the being is it is coming through our particular body, mind and our personality. And, 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 were 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 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, a beautiful picture of life. And the fact that some of us can speak and see speak with communicate with and see individuals who acknowledged that that is what they’re doing. I think it’s a wonderful message really it for me, it helped me feel connected, that you know, 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 met these metaphysical realities, it can be very powerful for them to realize that they can, they can pray to or make an intention to heal, 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.
Rick Archer: You know, I’m reminded of coaches on a baseball team, like if you have, 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, 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 he the runner can’t see that because he doesn’t see the rest of the field. You know, he’s, he’s busy running, but, but the coach can see it, he can give them little advice there, that’ll make all the difference in the game. I don’t even have to explain the metaphor. Yeah, such an obvious parallel.
Gina Lake: And when we as helpers, or teachers, counselors, therapists, or whatever are connected to, 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 you know, 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 what would be said, I just get it, you know, it just downloads into my body. And then I say it. So, you know, for instance, when I do when I would do astrology readings, I didn’t need to channel I wasn’t ostensibly channeling. But I’m I would get downloads of Oh, yeah, you have to say this, this, this, this, you know, I just 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? I, you know, I call it I call it channeling but you can you don’t have to call it that. It’s just, it’s just how it all works. We’re all mouthpieces when we are aligned enough with that, which, which is our true nature. And when we also have developed our intuition in that because I think it is also a tool that that gets developed through using it
Rick Archer: in Sanskrit is called Ritam Bhara Pragya, which means that level of intellect which knows only truth,
Gina Lake: I love how you have all the Sanskrit two words for everything.
Rick Archer: I’m no scholar, these are just things I picked up over the years mostly from marshy, 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 audio, for instance, after an initial awakening. And maybe I could probably preface that by saying that was 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, you know, all hell can break loose after awakening when there’s a lot but it’s but one way or the other. It’s like nature isn’t gonna let you hold on to a lot of garbage. It’s got to be cleared out.
Gina Lake: I agree. I agree. And I did a lot of here work when 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, so 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 it was, I was able to just stay awake. Because I do think that I think some people have an awakening, and it’s almost like they fall back to sleep, if that’s possible, it seems 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 they have their, 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, I still, there’s still conditioning that I watch I look at it doesn’t really doesn’t catch me up. In this, it doesn’t catch me up for long, it doesn’t. You know, it’s so different. Now, it’s even hard to remember what it was like, because this is 12 years ago. And when I talked 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 a state that I don’t really think it’s particularly unusual, and I don’t, it isn’t really, it’s, it’s ordinary, and 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’s 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 that I just get busy with something else, you know, noticing it out there 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 and seeing them 100 million times. I don’t know how many times, but that what happened after awakening, after awakening, because you have this perspective of, 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 easy, then to to heal it. The trouble with the trouble with before awakening is you’re so close to it, that it 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 easy to to be curious about it, because it’s not personal. And so that’s how that’s when it becomes so much easier to get rid to 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 Archer: There’s this verse in the Brahma sutras as it goes, the DWELLER of the house is seen far away in the distance.
Gina Lake: Ah yeah, yeah, man. mine’s a bad radio station.
Rick Archer: Not quite tuned in. Yeah. Oh, that’s, that’s beautiful. I mean, it’s almost like if there’s mud to be dissolved, if you throw it in the glass of water, 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 deal with to dissolve a lot of conditioning until a more oceanic kind of status has been realized.
Gina Lake: Yeah, and 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 Archer: You create a an internal battle. Yeah, yeah.
Gina Lake: And so yeah, the awakening just allows you to be easy with thoughts and feelings, yours and other people’s
Rick Archer: Yeah, 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 be more accepting of other people and being less rigid or dogmatic or whatever it is, like, you know, the kind of stuff Byron Katie teaches people and helps people with and going through those steps of kind of recognizing that your particular perspective is not absolute. Yeah, it definitely helps people to kind of shift into a more intuitive, accepting kind of state.
Gina Lake: Yeah, I kind of see it like, initially, you have to help people put a wedge between themselves in their thoughts. They didn’t need to just, 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? It’s all it’s 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? Yeah, because the bigger that gap is, the easier it is to not identify with it. And so that’s what the spiritual progresses, isn’t it? It’s that gap getting bigger and bigger.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I was, 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 sort of veto power, as it were, you know, yeah. And, and, you know, if we take that back even further, you know, if you can reside in that place, which exists before any thoughts arise, and if you can reside there consciously, you know, then theoretically, you would never be entrapped or overshadowed or identified with a thought.
Gina Lake: Yeah, you know, I experience thoughts sometimes as if they’re, like, humming like they’re, like, like, they’re mumbling or muttering in the background. i It’s like, I don’t let them speak clearly. I just, I just keep them muttering in the background. I hear I hear that they’re muttering. But I don’t tune them in. Yeah, they don’t tune into them to hear them. Clearly. I don’t give them to action of any sort. Yeah, I don’t give them enough tent attention that they come into focus. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it, it’s interesting,
Rick Archer: like you said earlier, I mean, meditation is a good tool for that. I mean, that’s the first verse of the Yoga Sutras is Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind stuff. Yogas Chitta, Vritti Nirodha. So the 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 Lake: 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, and so you you train you yourself to go to that place of presence it takes training, and how do you get that training? Most meditations, the best way to get that training, because it’s a lot harder when there are distractions in your life, that the mind is a lot more activated when you’re moving around. Well, sometimes the mind is activated when you’re quiet too, but But it’s it, meditation is a way of training yourself to go to that place practicing it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, and just as a violinist or a tennis player, or anyone like that, you know, it’s not just a mental training, there’s a neurophysiological training that takes place and it because they say they call it muscle memory, you know, in the case of sports, but, I mean, they’ve studied the brains of long term meditators and everything, and they function completely differently than then 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, you know, trying to sort of manipulate things throughout the day or anything like that. It’s just as automatic as breathing.
Gina Lake: Yeah, right. It is.
Rick Archer: So, you know, 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, Ida, 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, if we sort of look at the traditions of the world, in terms of what is possible for human beings 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 was, it’s more of a suggestion that, you know, we, in a sense, we could always consider ourselves to be a beginner, no matter how advanced we are, because of the sort of the great potential for evolution that that actually exists in life?
Gina Lake: Well, I think that there’s 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 it’s so important, and yet it is the bare beginnings of, of this journey, really, and I know that I am not, I was not blasted out of the universe with the awakening that I had. And that that was right for me. And I, 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, it can be all different levels of integration and realization. And then agile also talks about being open in the mind open in the heart and open in the gut. So, there can be you can be very free in the mind, but not have your heart open. Right. And, 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 to
Rick Archer: like, 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. That is the there’s, you know, we talked about getting overshadowed by our thoughts or identify with our thoughts. Well, how about if it could be so enlivened the inner awareness that even in the depth of sleep or your snoring like a sailor, pure awareness is perfectly clear?
Gina Lake: Yeah, I guess that does happen. And it did happen to me for a while for I think, I can’t even remember I have a terrible memory, by the way. I think for about a couple of years. Yeah, I, I didn’t feel like I slept, but I knew I slept because I was totally fresh. Yes, but there was something awake all night long. And, and, you know, even last night, I thought I felt like I was awake part of the time, but I know that I was asleep. If 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 Archer: Yeah. There’s a verse in the Bible in the Song of Solomon it says, I sleep though my heart weak if
Gina Lake: you have a really good memory, cheat cheat notes right there in front.
Rick Archer: Oh, no, nothing. Just your books. Well, I have a limit. 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?
Gina Lake: I know something that I know something we could talk about you and I mentioned this in an email to you and not too long ago, is that, you know, here we are in the Western world, and and we’re waking up. And it’s not quite like the ascetic world of India. By the way, I just, I’ve just listened to Autobiography of a Yogi on audiobook, I’ve got it right behind me on the show. I just felt moved to listen to that again. And now I know why spiritual seekers have all these fantastic ideas about awakening, as well as wild stuff. Yeah, yeah. Because every page is a miracle. Yeah. And that is 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 Archer: Yeah, you know, it’s an interesting point. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi brought out this thing, the TM City program, which you know, what cities are. And one of those cities is being able to levitate, which, of course, relates to your Autobiography of a Yogi. And he always used to say that, you know, the reason people weren’t actually achieving it is that world consciousness is so dense, and that if it weren’t so dense, people would actually actually that kind of thing would become commonplace. So, you know, as you say, Here, we are in a Western culture, and even in eastern culture is pretty dense over there, too. And who knows that it might be 50 years from now, you know, I mean, 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, you know, make our wildest movies seem simplistic.
Gina Lake: And maybe we’re not even meant to have those maybe this awakenings a meant to look like this without those so that it can be more normal. Also, you know, if it’s, well, if all of these people who are waking up in these various professions and bringing in this new information, if they were to have cities, who would? That would be distracting, wouldn’t it?
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, just think what Wall Street would do with that. So you know, all as well unwisely put. And it’s, it’s, 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 live there took that, or the Roman Empire, all the people who live there took their society for granted. And 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, and the same is true of society now and you know, 200 years from now, it could be that, you know, more different, it probably will be more different than today than today is from 200 years ago, and who knows it even in terms of the spiritual stuff, what might be accepted as the norm then, but for now, you know, it is what it is. And we as you say, we’re kind of this is Dawn spreading, like a contagion within a society that, you know, wouldn’t accept anything too weird. And so it’s, it’s kind of people are learning how to live normal lives. Well, you know, attune to this awakening.
Gina Lake: Yeah. And I think that can be pretty challenging. I know my life is set up to support this awakeness
Rick Archer: gonna, for God’s sake, do anything you want there
Gina Lake: 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 to choosing from that place, making my choices carefully that that that they supported that and that 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 you know, What do I do about that? And so it’s, it’s not that easy to move from ego to essence as, as I, that’s what I usually how I usually describe it, you know, this moving from ego to essence, it happens before awakening, not just after awakening, right? I mean, it’s, it’s what it’s a, it’s 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 he goes up to, and want to move from ego to essence, you, 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 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’s 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 better you are, the more aligned your choices, your life choices will be. And so the more fulfilled and happy you’ll be, the easier your life will go. So, you know, it’s a really a very practical teaching.
Rick Archer: It really is. Yeah, and that’s not often mentioned, I mean, even even sometimes teachers are asked that question, and they say, No, it has absolutely no, you know, practical significance. I’ve heard Tony Parsons say that, and some others that you know, just don’t expect to get any kind of relative benefit out of it. But that hasn’t been my experience. And so, you know, yeah, we can husband years.
Gina Lake: So, no, you know, anybody 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, you know, is, are you going to follow your minds? ideas about how to live your life? And how to smooth 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, quiet, intuitive sense, that of what your heart wants to do? And what your heart’s 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 Archer: Yeah. And less 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. Yes, it’s not like an on off lights, which is 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, it’s never going to, well, not never, but 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 kind of favor the more you know, constructive one, the more evolutionary one, just give, there’s a say that another thing for you that to which you give your attention grows stronger in your life. So if you if you just sort of steer the boat a bit more in that direction, yeah, then it’ll get stronger.
Gina Lake: Right, right. And I’m glad you made that point. Because I do feel like with a website called Radical happiness, right, my websites called Radical happiness. I don’t want to give people the impression that they are supposed to feel radically happy radical in this 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 whoopie happiness of the ego. So I don’t want to give people the impression that they’re supposed to. They’re not doing it right, unless they’re feeling would be happiness all the time. Oh, no, I don’t mean that at all. Because I don’t feel that way. I don’t want 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 how to, you know, 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 Archer: adorable face. Oh, she just came in. Yeah, so we get feedback. I mean, we’re we our own smoke alarm for, you know there being something askew in life. And you know, if you tune into it you you can, you’re told, you know, by what’s going on in your own body, whether you’re, you know, on the right track or not, whether you’re sort of moving with ego or with essence, as you say.
Gina Lake: 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 taking us home, it’s all taking us there is it is possible, to be happy, even amidst this world where there is 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.
Rick Archer: Yeah, that’s beautiful. Maybe that’s a good point to end on. I could I could go on all day thinking of more things to say. And I can think of a response to that. But the point of there being you know, it’s a it’s a benign universe, there’s goodness behind everything there. You know, there’s an evolutionary purpose to all this. And it’s, it’s a good thought to leave people with.
Gina Lake: Yes, I agree. Thank you.
Rick Archer: Want to say anything more about that before we conclude? Or have you said it pretty much?
Gina Lake: Well, actually, I wrote it. I don’t mean to be plugging a book. But I wrote about 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 where they are, 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 it’s that life is is good that at its core, it is about love. And it’s and it is trustworthy. It’s trustworthy.
Rick Archer: 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 go them towards awakening. And you know, in my own case, I was had an alcoholic father who yelled at my mother every night,
Gina Lake: you know, still three sounds familiar?
Rick Archer: She ended up committing trying to commit suicide and ending up in mental hospital. So that was quite a scene, you know. But I remember at one point, after I’d been meditating for a few years, and was really enjoying the way my life was unfolding, I said to my mother, I said, Mom said, 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 Lake: That’s sweet of you to tell her that. She really tried
Rick Archer: amidst, you know, very great burdens and difficulties and to keep it together for the kids. But in any case, I mean, I bring that point in because of what you said about this being a benevolent universe. It’s it’s like, even though Yeah, I don’t think things happen to punish us. It’s more like they happen to teach us and to awaken us in some cases to give us a kick in the pants.
Gina Lake: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. And the suffering is there to wake us up. Yeah, yeah. And then when we’re awake, we want to ease that suffering and in other people, because it because it really is so much the minds production. Isn’t that amazing? That how much suffering is caused by just the mind?
Rick Archer: Yeah. Fierce grace as rom das put it after his stroke, you know?
Gina Lake: Yeah. And then that that’s the grace is the, 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. It isn’t meant for us to, to suffer over. It’s meant for us to find a way through it without suffering, find a way through it, you know, find a way to God through it, really, because a lot of people do come to God from that those very kinds of crises.
Rick Archer: And in the long run, it makes us more complete too. So it’s not just like, you know, we experience really crappy circumstances in order to light a fire under us to get out of them. But having gone through them, you know, and then 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 if we hadn’t gone through them ourselves. Yeah. They often say that, you know, teachers who just sort of wake up without really going through very much, sometimes very good at relating to people on their own level.
Gina Lake: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It’s all a training ground and training for what we came, 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 what essence 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, that it didn’t turn out, well, it might cause the person then to reevaluate that belief that caused that choice. So it’s, you know, you can’t go wrong, you keep getting put back put back on. It’s a self correcting universe.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Yeah. Very good. Okay. So when done that self correcting universe. So thanks, Dana. This has been great. And I’m sure we’ll meet one of these days before too long.
Gina Lake: Yes, you come to Sedona.
Rick Archer: I want to, I really want to have several friends there. Like to meet and I had a great experience in Sedona one time, I won’t go into it right now. It was kind of sucked into Samadhi kind of experience that I had well 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 and she actually has Oh, you don’t I thought you did? I thought you’d like counseling. Oh, sorry. You said that earlier. She writes books. And she she’s written eight of them. And I think you’ve got another one in the works? Probably? Not quite yet. Not quite. It’ll come. And I will I will link to all those books. Are there some of the books which you would feel like and people shouldn’t bother with that that was early stuff? Or do you feel like they’re all still relevant?
Gina Lake: They are all relevant. They’re there. 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 Archer: 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 Lake: I say go with your intuition. Okay. Good. So
Rick Archer: I’ll link to them all anyway, maybe I’ll link to them. And I’ll link them in the order that you gave them to me and that list that you sent? Yeah, people can pick and choose.
Gina Lake: Yeah, they’re very inexpensive as ebooks on Kindle and other.
Rick Archer: Good. And so also lead gen has a website. And I’ll be linking to that from batgap.com. And as I always say, at the end of these interviews, if you 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 BatGap gmail.com, where you can subscribe to be notified by email, you can participate in 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’d like and thank you for listening or watching. And next week it will be Benjamin Smyth, who is quite a character 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 Lake: Thank you wreck you’re so wonderful talking with you. Yeah. Thanks for all the work you do here.
Rick Archer: Oh, thank you. I enjoy it. Bye bye.
Gina Lake: Okay, bye bye.