Patricia & Bill Clum Interview
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done over 400 of them by now, and if this is new to you, and you’d like to see previous ones go to batgap.com and look under the past interviews menu and you’ll see all the previous ones organized in various ways. This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers and so, if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it, there is a donate button on every page of the site and also a donate page that explains the reasons why in greater detail. My guests today are Patricia and Bill Clum. And you know what, before I even read anything biographical about them, I’m going to read a little something that somebody named Julie in Olympia, Washington sent in. You probably know Julie, Patricia and Bill. She said, “I once heard Adyashanti say that 99% of the people that come to him, need more psychological work. I see that most of the spiritual teachers are mostly focusing on verbal teachings around awakening, which has its place of course, but seems to be out of balance, in the sense that most people’s deeper awakening is obscured by emotional and mental patterns that have yet to be integrated. Patricia is one of the few teachers I know who is operating from an awakened heart, compassion in action, and really helping people to directly heal and integrate patterns. I’ve seen many examples of this work transforming people’s actual lives in very concrete and down to earth ways.” Okay, so having read that let me just read a bio here that explains their work in a little bit greater detail. So, together Bill and Patricia support you to build a foundation providing tools for strength in the emotional and spiritual domain, yielding flow and freedom to be who you have come here to be. A life of awakening is not one in, which we never fall into a dark valley. It is one in, which when we fall, we have learned how to move through it. We develop emotional muscle in order to rise. This is the inner work of the soul. Patricia and Bill guide you to that which is unhealed, exposing how these hurts and emotions rule our lives. You’re able to face yourself, learn to untangle from these aspects that have a powerful impact and influence. In the discovery of new awareness and integration, you begin to experience wholeness, embrace all emotion, letting go of resistance and live in the present moment. With sensitivity, strength, and skill Bill and Patricia facilitate working through levels of trauma, pain, grief and anger in order to guide people to their own divine nature. As these wounds heal, you are able to discover the depths of self-acceptance and forgiveness. So, I could ask you if that’s a pretty good intro, but you probably wrote it so you probably think it is, right? What would you like to say by way of comment or elaboration on that to begin with?
Patricia: Wow, when we’re sitting with people and we’re working with people a lot what happens during retreat of course few words can describe. What we’re witnessing is the ripple effect of a weekend, and how people begin to open to new ways of being, who they really are. So, they’re not in life negotiated by past hurt.
Rick: So why does that happen when somebody goes on a retreat with you?
Bill: Well, what we’ve witnessed is there’s a lot of protection around the heart where people have been traumatized, hurt, could be from this lifetime, another lifetime, and those are the filters that people view life through. So, when those filters … some people call it the ego, the ego mind, we see it as if it were a guardian angel, we feel there’s nothing wrong or bad about the ego, it’s also, in transformation. And so, in the place of where those filters filter life, this is how we view life- through the hurt, through the pain, through the suffering and what we believe is this work, actually is the undoing of all that, when people begin to emote, when the emotional body starts moving, it’s the opening.
Rick: Regarding protection, it’s like obviously there are times where protection is appropriate. An egg needs a shell, a fetus needs a womb, we could think of many other examples and you wouldn’t want to remove protection prematurely, it could be deadly. So, how do you remove, maybe remove isn’t the right word, but how does one balance the necessity of protection with the desire to be unprotected and vulnerable, and how does that process, proceed in a way which doesn’t actually cause more wounding if one becomes prematurely vulnerable?
Patricia: Yeah, that’s a really good question. How our weekend is set up or working with another, because we work with them one-on-one, is set up, is that the space is a space that’s held, which what is revealed is ready to move into healing. So, it’s an inquiry, it’s not a forcing into, it’s not a reliving an event, it’s not an exposure of what is still, like you said, in the beauty of the protection, still needing the protection. So, what we find is when we meet people, we’ll meet with them in a one-on-one session, we’ll be in conversation and we’ll know in the meeting as they know, if the weekend is open and available for them. They’ll know if they’re ready to move into whatever is opening for them next.
Bill: This is something that doesn’t happen all at once, usually it’s for people who are really in a deep inquiry and they may have done a lot of work which supports them in the moment they’re in, everything has brought us to this moment. So, when a layer or that thin shell begins to drop and the vulnerability and the rawness is actually letting us know that we’re actually on our inward journey. What happens Friday is the plowing the ground we call it, is going right into the resistance and the protection, and once people discover their own, then they’re beginning to release already. And on the Saturday as we moved into the resistance, then the work comes in and this light comes in, everything that’s not of love or light begins to surface. And then we work around the room with that, and then once people face … we face everything head-on, if it’s fear, if it’s anger, we face it head-on. And as we move into that, there’s an opening and then Sunday is the filling up, so when there’s an emptying out of that there’s also the filling up, of moving from that place of contraction into wholeness. So, the wholeness supports that, and we may spend a lifetime moving through layers of protection that we’re not even aware of, but when it does come into our awareness, that is the opportunity to actually heal that.
Rick: Do the two of you feel like you’ve completed that process, or do you also kind of still work through and release layers of protection?
Patricia: Yeah, another beautiful question. It’s never-ending and always new beginnings. So, it’s sort of like the wider, higher, deeper we go, there is more clearing for us, and that is why we can hold space for another, because as we gather together as a group and gathering we hold each other. There’s no higher or lower, bigger or better, whatever the expression would be. We’re right there in that moment in the breath. We’ve had people come to us say it’s like we’re midwives, when we look in their eyes they recognize that they can move through whatever they’re moving through, into whatever’s next for them. They can trust and feel safe in that space.
Rick: Do you think that there are or have ever been beings on this earth who had worked through it all? Somebody like Jesus for instance, some of the great saints and sages, do you think that they’ve completely unraveled all the sheaths that protect the heart and have acquired or revealed such an inner strength that they don’t need protection, or do you think that to be a human being is to have work yet to do?
Patricia: I feel that to be a human being we’re in constant evolution. So, I feel that as consciousness moves and shifts and opens around us and in this form, there’s always places that we can inquire, because we’re in physical form. Now when we move into non-physical form, I haven’t spent time there yet, but my experience in the energy is that the protection isn’t needed. But here definitely on the planet it keeps us in life, it keeps us grounded on the planet, it keeps us being able to engage in life and be in life all around us.
Bill: And another part of the question also, is that Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, many avatars we may not even know their names, there was willingness and surrender there for them to where they opened through the thresholds of awakening and yes, they came in at a very high vibration, and I’m sure even in their own form there is always something to transmute, or to take a look at where it’s not even in our awareness, right? Because in the way of the subconscious or the unconscious, moves 800-900 times faster than the actual conscious mind. So, in the weekend when we sit still in that stillness and in that quiet place is where all that needs to come up comes up, it floats to the surface to be healed, to be looked at, to be transmuted back into the light. So, I believe they had their own things they went through of course.
Rick: I’ve heard various sages say something to the effect that even if you work in various terminologies, even if you work through all your own stuff completely then you’ve got the whole world to take on, that you become like a washing machine for all the trauma of the world.
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely. We see the ripple effect. So, it starts with us, then it moves in family, so community, family, then community and global consciousness, awareness. And the consciousness we’re in right now like the different, we’re 2017 on the West Coast is a different consciousness and across the ocean where there’s a war zone, right? So, we’re having this opportunity to create the shift in our own hearts so we can be that in the world. That’s the beauty of what’s happening now on the planet, is everyone’s being invited. So, we don’t have to feel like we don’t make a difference of what we see happening to our brothers and sisters. We can start with us first. Bill, you’re going to say something?
Bill: No, I just really what kind of awoken me to all of this was the quote that Gandhi said, “Become the change.” And I thought, my God, like it was like the first time I ever heard it and I said, “Wow, that’s what I can do in life.” And so, in that place of his awareness that brought that awareness to me, was my opening, was becoming the change that I wanted to see in the world.
Rick: Yeah, as I see it, people don’t have a choice but to influence the world. Whatever that influence may be, we all constantly radiate an influence. And there are a lot of people who are waking up these days, spiritually speaking, and obviously they’re having an influence beyond what they actually say to anybody or actually do. So, there’s a sort of a constantly radiating or emanating influence. And just to come back to a point I just suggested, it kind of works both ways. People do feel, and maybe you can comment on this, that they take on stuff, and maybe that comes back to the vulnerability point. It’s like as they become more open and develop higher consciousness, they find themselves… Well, some people comment that a lot of spiritual teachers seem to be having all kinds of health problems, and why is that? Are they taking on karma or what’s going on? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely. So, for us, I can speak of myself, because that’s what I know of. As we work with people, the counterbalance of that is the self-care. So just as much energy I put out, I need to put that back in self. So, what that looks like for me is having my own meditation time, having my own writing, having my own walk-in nature, physical body care. When my being is drained, that’s when everything stays. So, what happens is, in this expression in your heart, as you are able to hold more or be with people more, there’s more people that are ready to be with. It’s always a rechecking of self-care, and that’s actually a big one of our practices with others. And when the in-between retreat is really supporting people with their self-care, so that as they move, that’s what happens. They begin to strengthen in their heart and their inner being, and other energies don’t stick on them, or they feel they can move with them and use it as an opening, instead of something to shut them down. That’s actually what happens with the people we work with. They learn to be strong in it.
Rick: Yeah. Do you want to add to that Bill before I ask anything?
Bill: Well, I really believe that the core of us or the background of us is presence and joy. Happiness comes and goes. So, in the place of when the emotional body starts healing, joy becomes a strength, presence becomes a strength, and in presence of course there’s love. And so that’s the emotional backdrop as it strengthens, that when life comes at us, it could be blissful and it may not be so blissful, but it doesn’t really matter which one comes In, because you have that grounded-ness in that core of you and your being of joy. So that’s the emotional body that we speak of that builds into that strength when life comes at you. You have the ability to come out of the valleys. You can. And related to other teachers, we honor all teachers. We know that no matter who teaches what, there’s been an opening for someone somewhere in this collective effort on all our parts. And so, the emotional body, no matter who you are, has to be looked at. And that’s the place, and I’ve heard this quoted, you know that people will look anywhere except for the heart because it’s so uncomfortable. We’ve been in the mental body for a long time, so that transition from here to here is a long journey. And we’re just discovering the heart.
Rick: You both mentioned the word strength a lot in what you just said, and you know that’s what comes to my mind when I listen to you and read some of your blog posts and stuff, and to use another vulnerability metaphor, it’s like if you plant a sapling, you usually have to put in stakes and ropes to support it because it’s not strong enough to hold up against the wind or whatever, and eventually it gets strong enough and you can remove those. As I understand it and have experienced it in my own life, there’s a deep reservoir of strength at the core of our being, and if we can take recourse to that then it strengthens mind, body, everything, just the way, nutrients would strengthen a tree if it was planted in fertile ground. So, what methods do you use to enable people to have access to that inner strength, so that they can become more self-sufficient, even possibly to the point of not needing your services anymore because they’re a tree that doesn’t need the stakes any longer?
Bill: Well, that’s the purpose actually, it’s not so much to create more students but to teach people how to master their own emotional body so they can go out into the world and begin to give from that place. And so, where it comes from us is the willingness, the surrender, and we have one saying, “How deep is your yes?”
Rick: Sounds like a Bee Gees song, yeah.
Bill: So, in the depth of our yes to be willing to do this, we’ve went through powerful thresholds that have brought us to the other side of the emotional body. The very thing that I resisted actually was my opening as I followed it, it opened me into this. So, the vibration that we live at, we demonstrate it, we live it, and people see that, they see the light. We walk into a room and sometimes people just start crying. They feel safe, they feel the love, they feel whatever they’re feeling in the moment. I can’t explain exactly what they’re feeling but we see the tears right away. They’re so ready for their hearts to open. Mankind has waited for a long time for love to come to the planet, that love is going to come through us.
Rick: Us meaning the collective us.
Patricia: Yes. And what you were saying is accurate. They’ll come, they’ll get stronger, they’ll learn the practices, they’ll go through thresholds and then they go into the world. And what’s beautiful, is they’ll come back, they’ll go for one, two, three, four years and they’ll come back. They always know they can come back, and they can rest with us for a weekend. So, when they come back, it’s not from moving away from pain or how to cope with pain, it’s more of just to rest. It’s like coming back home just for a weekend, the door is always open. So, the practices that we offer are very clear, very simple, not new to us. But what we found is that when you can add them with whatever is calling you, with other practices you do, it helps ground and solidify what’s moving in you. It’s moving the body; it’s walking or if someone wants to put on music and move the body. So, when you’re feeling an energy or an emotion, move with it, move with it, move with it, move with it. Because one thing is people can be quite good at meditation, yet if an emotion is moving, it’s challenging to meditate. We say move first, move the body first, whether that’s walking, whether that’s dancing, whatever it is for you. And meditation, drinking water, journaling, writing. And in your journaling and writing, it’s an inquiry and it becomes sort of your record book with your own opening. Show me what I can’t see, you’re asking your inner being, all of that. So those are the practices.
Rick: Is there a flip side in terms of … I know that there’s the term spiritual bypassing and sometimes spiritual seekers are guilty of that, and they ignore stuff or repress stuff, or “oh I don’t want to put my attention there” and that kind of thing. And they can get very skittish or gun-shy about life because they’re always trying to avoid anything uncomfortable. But is there a flip side to that where one can indulge too much in putting one’s attention on all sorts of inner muck, you know, and in a way exaggerate or exacerbate it? And if that is true, how does one find the balance point between dwelling on this stuff, maybe obsessively almost, or pushing it away and trying to ignore it?
Patricia: Well, that’s a really good question. The emotional body we’re speaking of is the unintegrated body. So, it’s the pain body that’s out in the world and then what happens is the emotional body matures and you feel emotion. It takes a little bit of time for that to unstick itself. So, people will be aware that they’re recycling that pain, getting into the muck too much. And then we walk with them, show them, process with them so that they can realize that they don’t need to spend their time there, that they can bring themselves out into a new awareness, dip in a little bit more. It’s never recommended to try to do it all at once, layer by layer, because that’s what helps us build our strength. So, we have had clients that are very enthusiastic. It’s about allowing them to pull back a little bit, showing them from the observer aspect, “okay, what is moving?” and remembering what already has moved in their life. Because a lot of times when we stay in that sort of yuck, as you said, then we’re also not being aware of how much we have progressed in life. We’re not really having the full image or perspective about what’s actually happening. So that’s how we support them coming into that perspective. They can almost do like a record keeping. Go, “Oh, okay, okay, great. Okay, this still hurts a bit, but I’ve also had this happen, which is different now.”
Bill: So, a big piece of this is how we view ourselves.
Rick: You two, or people in general?
Patricia: Just people in general, human beings, how we view ourselves. And us too, of course, in the place of feeling that we’re a victim here to this planet. And so, the victim actually is a light being, beginning to heal, so moving and healing the emotional body in the form of the victim. The victim views the world as God or spirit doing something to them, and are yet not able to recognize that it’s the opportunity. It’s the opportunity to move from reaction in life, into responding in life, seeing the world as your oyster, because you’ve moved past that. So, it’s healing beyond the victim, because this is the planet of awakening, this is the attitude adjustment planet. And we’re here together to really work our way, collectively, consciously, to work our way through these thresholds.
Rick: Yeah, I like that. I definitely think most people like ourselves, people who are interested in this kind of thing, are familiar and comfortable with the notion that earth is a learning place, and that we’re here to evolve and to grow, and that the experiences that we encounter in the big picture can design to facilitate our growth and evolution, even though they might seem unpleasant at times. And you can take extreme examples of that and it’s a little hard to accept the point, but if you really zoom out and think of the whole universe as this big evolution machine, then ultimately everything is conducive in one way or another to evolution of consciousness, at least that’s the way I see it.
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely.
Bill: Absolutely that’s the depth that we’re being called to in our emotional body is to allow ourselves to move through these thresholds. For example, pain, grief, and fear are some of the biggest things that humanity runs from, and yet those are the great thresholds that we can move through when we’re willing to face them head-on emotionally, is where the heart comes in. We really start discovering the strength of our own hearts. We can do this, we can move past that, and it’s the undoing of the suffering and pain that we live in, that we think is just how it is. And so, beginning to move to the other side, what would that be like to live beyond the pain, beyond the fear, and beyond the grief? And even the grief, for many years I thought, “God, this is so awful,” because we’ve all experienced grief somehow, and the planet will experience it one time or another. I was meditating on that, and the grief kept increasing and increasing, and I’m saying, “Wow, I can’t take any more of this,” but my “yes” is so strong, I’m going to stay with it even if it takes my life, I’m going to stay with this “yes.” And there was an explosion, I call that perturbation, where the energy of spirit pushes in so hard, there’s like into an atom and it explodes, and it expands, and in that place of expansion, it’s irreversible. We’ll never be back at that place again because we’ve moved through the energy of that, so that is the expansion, and it’s even unrecognizable at times, but it is a conscious shift that is irreversible when you move to the other side. Is fear still there? Yes. As you said earlier, there’s a good fear, there’s a healthy anger, there’s a grief that’s healthy, and what I discovered in the feeling of that grief was actually the depth of love I’ve held in my heart.
Rick: Is that what you were alluding to earlier when you said that your greatest challenge resulted in your biggest opening or something?
Bill: Yes.
Rick: Yeah, and was that grief specific or was it this sort of amorphous grief that you weren’t attaching to anything in particular, but it was just kind of this existential malaise that you were kind of like feeling?
Bill: Yes, it was just grief. There was nothing I could attach it to because I really scanned through to say, “Spirit, what is this moving in my body?” They said, “We’re just moving grief, so open to it.” And in that opening to it, it became so intense, I said, “Wow, I can’t take any more,” and then that explosion occurred and there was that opening. I said, “Oh my god, this is what it’s like to follow the feelings of all of this. It moves us into the opening of now, where there’s more light, there’s more movement, and the vibration of wherever we move in life people feel us. We’ll stand in Starbucks and within 10 minutes it begins to quiet. Somebody always will come to us and talk to us or something. We carry that in life, it doesn’t even need to be in words, people just feel your presence.
Rick: Yeah, yeah. Did you want to add anything there Patricia?
Patricia: No, I’m enjoying this.
Rick: Okay, good. It’s been my understanding, see what you guys think about this, the mechanics of the way emotions and pent-up stuff work is that there is a physiological correlate. When we’re talking about grief and anger and all kinds of trauma and hurt and things, and there were protectiveness of the heart and all these things we’ve been discussing, we’re not just talking psychologically or emotionally, there is a physiological correlate to these. Perhaps even could be understood if physiologists knew what to look for in terms of on the neurological level or something, but we ordinarily don’t feel it that way. Well maybe we do, I mean feel free to interrupt me, there’s usually probably a physical sensation associated with these emotions. Would you agree that the most efficient way of resolving this stuff has something to do with tuning into that physiological basis of it, the physiological sensation, rather than sort of abstracting it into just mental or emotional states, but getting right down to the physiology?
Patricia: Absolutely, so what we witness is that the emotion is stored in the body, different places in the body.
Rick: Probably subtle body as well as gross body.
Patricia: Absolutely, and energetic, all of them, mind, body, same, same. So, as we’re working with energy and as it’s moving, people will feel it, tingling of the head, the sore in the side that we put attention on, breathe with, and as the anger dissolves the side, the cramp is gone, the heart opens, it’s all connected, every aspect of self is connected. When the heart begins to open and heal, all those are revealed in the body for sure.
Rick: Yeah, I’ve been on long meditation courses where all kinds of strange things were happening, but I went through this phase where there was this really serious pain in my shoulder and I hadn’t injured or anything and it just went on and on and finally it just dissolved and then it felt like there was this opening or something that …
Patricia: You got it.
Rick: Yeah, and who knows how long it had been buried there. It really was from or anything.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s how it happens, is it’s after a while at first, we may have things in life that seem to bring this pain, right? So, all of that, but as we clear and as we clear and as we clear, like you said, it’s like okay, I feel that, it hurts, don’t even know what it’s from. There’re no words really attached to it.
Rick: Don’t need to know.
Patricia: There’s no need to know or even want, you know, it’s like the breath, the breath, the attention, the movement, into movement. That’s why I mentioned at the very beginning some of the work that we do with people is, you can’t really put into words, but we’ll do our best with your questions, for sure.
Rick: Yeah, one metaphor that comes to mind when I think about this kind of thing about dissolving trauma and all is, like if you had a handful of mud and you wanted to dissolve it somehow, you wanted to dissolve it. So, if you just had a cup of water and you threw the mud in the cup, it wouldn’t dissolve very well and the water would be really muddy, but if you had like a bucket or a swimming pool or an ocean, the larger the quantity of water, the more easily the mud would be dissolved and just disappear. So that sort of relates back to what we were saying, I think, about strength. If somehow that inner strength can be enlivened to whatever extent it can, then something which could be a huge deal to dissolve, if our consciousness is just cup-like, could just be a little blip on the radar that’s come and gone if our consciousness is more oceanic.
Patricia: Absolutely. And so, for myself, my experience of consciousness is love. That’s how I experience it, not the love in a storybook or even in relation, but the unconditional, just the fabric of love. So, what we notice in people and what the feedback is that as this is clearing for them, they’ll just notice that they’ll walk out of a bank and what used to get them irritated, they actually feel the grace, and they actually get into a great connected conversation with someone at the bank and they walk out, and they go, “Wow, five months ago, that would have really got me upset,”, and that’s how it sort of begins to demonstrate their inner work, it’s those subtleties of influence where they don’t feel like Bill mentioned earlier, in reaction to, where they feel like they’re just there and they’re present, they’re holding space for whatever is happening, and they fall into deep connection with another, and then something moves from that, so it’s quite beautiful.
Rick: Do you want to say anything to that, Bill?
Bill: No, it just has to come from us, it has to come from within us. And people see our work, and everybody has an experience, whoever has sat with us has had some sort of transformative experience, and we can’t make it happen, we can’t make this happen, we can only open to it. And I really believe that the “yes” from my heart – that was a hard one for me to really learn because I wanted to make it happen. I spent a lot, hundreds of thousands of dollars chasing this thing, trying to be happy only to come back to the same point of not knowing what to do with this emotional body. And I think the demonstration is here now for us to really learn what to do with this, and how it’s really the opportunity to really open to everything that we’ve come here to become and to be, and it’s almost like heaven on earth beginning to open from within us.
Rick: That’s a really good point, that kind of tunes right into something I was about to ask that was bouncing off of Patricia’s statement about standing in line at the bank. With all you’ve been through and all the work you’ve done on yourselves, do you sometimes feel like you’re living in heaven on earth, you’re living in this blissful state and in mundane circumstances like bank lines and supermarkets and stuff, the bliss just kind of spills over and engulfs everyone you perceive, and you just feel this joy and love for people in ordinary circumstances.
Patricia: Yes, and I’ll feel vulnerable and I’ll feel someone will bring me to tears just serving coffee. I’ll feel raw sometimes, all of that.
Bill: Well, here’s a good example. Were you done? I just want to make sure I didn’t interrupt you. I was in Walmart. I don’t go there very often; it just seems like a dreadful place for me to go to. Home Depot is much more fun or Costco, but anyway, I was standing in line, I needed an ice cooler and it was really reasonable there. And I was standing in line, there was this lady with a cart, she had four kids hanging off and they were just really being awful, and she’s trying to get through the line and I’m standing in line and here’s people just glaring at them, people just so upset with these kids and this lady. And I was starting to feel the same thing and then I heard spirits say, “Bill, this is not who you are. Do something about this, don’t stand here and do nothing.” So, I walked up to the lady, and I said, “Hi, wow, you’ve got your hands full here today with all these kids,” and I started talking to the kids and just touching them. I said, “Is there anything I can help you with?” “Oh no, just thank you for being so patient, this was really hard.” I said, “No, I get that. Is there anything I can do?” She said, “You’ve done enough already.” And when I turned around and looked at everybody, I noticed that there was a whole attitude shift in the lines when I was willing just to be in my heart and to go there. So, it’s kind of like that. That’s just one example that really stands out for me.
Rick: Yeah, that’s really nice. I was getting off a plane recently and the plane had landed, and it was taking forever for people to get off and it was hot, and everybody was tired. It was late at night; the plane had been delayed and there was some poor little girl who was just screaming, “I have to potty, I have to potty!” And it’s like some people were feeling impatient, but most of the people were sort of, “Get out of the way, let her get off!” It’s almost like when there’s a natural disaster, like a big snowstorm, it brings out the best in people and everybody starts talking to neighbors that they’ve never talked to before, it brings out their humanity. I don’t know why I told you that story, but it does bring out a point. It’s sweet, and you see that when there’s big snowstorms and catastrophes or an earthquake or something and it somehow evokes the humanity in people, whereas mundane circumstances tend to numb it or suppress it, but people rise to the occasion, and it brings out their better nature.
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I wanted to talk into, speak into, was the beauty about how the strength of my own heart, my experience, how it ripples into my family. I don’t speak to my family as I’m speaking to you, or Bill, they have their life and I’m the youngest of five very busy professional people, and yet when I’m with my mother and I’m with my brothers and sister, there’s this beautiful space where as I’ve moved around and become more of me, is what I call it, when my heart opens, that to just stay in the space with them. And what comes back is they begin to use the language that I haven’t even spoken to them about, they begin to say, “My heart feels,” or, “Wow, I’m just noticing I’m feeling vulnerable today.” So, it’s kind of beautiful that sweetness about what we were speaking of earlier about how you carry it without words, how it is you and it is your life.
Rick: Yeah, there’s a saying in India that when the mangoes are ripe, the branches bow down so it’s easy for people to pick the mangoes, and it speaks to humility. And it almost sounds like not humble to speak of attuning to the level of consciousness of the people you’re interacting with, because it kind of presumes that you’re in a higher one, but what’s really meant by that example, is just that someone who is really humble doesn’t think of themselves as higher or others as lower or anything, there’s just a natural ability to attune to the circumstances and there’s sort of the range or capacity to attune to circumstances of a wide variety of types, I think. Whereas without that range, people tend to be locked into this level and others are locked into that level, and then we have all this strife and conflict and disagreement because, we just can’t … there’s no Venn diagram of overlap between our world and the other world.
Patricia: Yeah, and for myself, in my opening, in my path, if it wasn’t happening in my heart, it wasn’t happening. So, I wanted it to … my life, as far as I know for sure, I have this one physical being here and this time to enjoy it, however my time is, however long my time is. So, for me, what you just said is my absolutely deepest core value. I have to be able to be with everyone in my life, not that we won’t have our ups and downs like any relating, but to be with people in my life, to meet people where they’re at, who they are that’s what excites me.
Bill: I really felt that when you talked about the mangoes or whatever plant fruit that was, how the trees … humility is such an important piece and it’s a rare commodity on the planet, true humility. And I feel that collectively we could all use more of that, and I believe the thresholds if I talk to the fear, the anger, the grief, the victim, when we’ve had the willingness to move through this and just open to that, when we move to the other side of that, just a plethora of energy opens consciously, and it has a ripple effect where one person willing to do the work and say, “Yes, I do it for self, first, because the love has to come from within me to another,” and so when we do it for self, first, we hold the space for maybe a hundred thousand people.
Rick: I’m listening.
Bill: Just by our willingness to say yes to the opportunity that’s right in front of us. And so, one of the things we say is, “Learn to get comfortable with the uncomfortable,” because when we sit still, like in the weekend, this energy, this subconscious mind starts slowing down and all these feelings that people haven’t taken the time to feel, now are coming up and saying, “God, I don’t want to feel this,” and yet actually the pain is the medicine. Pain is the medicine to move beyond the suffering. So, this is the medicine to bring us to the place of wholeness and from the movement of wholeness into the place of devotion and holiness.
Rick: Yeah, I guess you could say pain is this sort of the indicator of … it draws our attention, right? It lets us know that there’s something that needs to be attended to. Just to take a simple example, if you put your hand on the stove, you feel pain and it’s a good thing you do because you need to take your hand off. But then it still hurts, even after you’ve taken your hand off, so why is that? Because your hand’s not on the stove. Well, there’s an injury now that needs to be healed and so the attention on the injury is going to be more healing than ignoring it. And that’s just a physical example, but obviously you’re talking about the same principle probably applies on the emotional.
Bill: Yeah, so we begin to take a look at that which we’ve been ignoring.
Patricia: Or not even aware of, like you said, like your shoulder. Sometimes we’re not even aware of what emotion is. We mentioned earlier in consciousness, we’ve spent a lot of time in the mental body. So, for a while, often, in the beginning, there’s like a thawing out, even if we’ve been dedicated spiritually, and we just haven’t known. It hasn’t come to an awareness. There’s this aspect that is still evolving in us. There’s this aspect that has opportunity to be embraced and included in all of this.
Rick: Have you ever given much thought to, or had experiential glimpses of the higher reaches of emotional development? I’m thinking in terms of …you hear stories of some of the great saints, like the Yoruba or others, who had these incredible hearts and were just like oceans of love and compassion. Amma is an example, sitting on the shelf behind me. It’s kind of interesting to contemplate the range of possibilities. What you’re talking about, I don’t think is just, it’s not necessarily just a lifetime of dealing with, pains and traumas and it’s just going to be this sort of, slog that we have to do all of our lives working through that kind of stuff. There’s really a rainbow at the end of the path. And not just at the end, It gets brighter and brighter as we go along.
Patricia: Absolutely, it’s really good to mention this, Rick, because as we’re processing, as we’re healing, as we’re moving, remember, everyone to remember that we are in movement of evolution, and we are, lack of a better word in this moment, but rising to an expression of open mind, divine mind, open heart, where we can be in the realms, infinite realms, where compassion can move through every vein that’s connected to consciousness, where mercy comes in and quantifies within your physical being so you can offer that depth of healing and that depth for others and that depth of that fortitude of consciousness. So, we do move into a maturity, we just call it emotional maturity, where we can be in that and hold that space and that each and every heart is so different, as unique as our thumbprint, each and every heart. So, we all have these wells that are available and just waiting for us, whatever that well is full of, is with you already. And as you move through those layers of protection, of processing, all that stuff, you begin to tap into that well that’s already available and in you of consciousness.
Bill: Yeah, so getting back to that place where in my meditation I was feeling the grief, not related to anything, just feeling grief, just maybe even global grief, identifying with all of us and in the movement when that explosion occurred, and I realized that was the depth of love that I carry within me, I was shocked. I had no idea that kind of depth was in me, it was a revealing of who I am. Where, as a man, I’ve been really uncomfortable, I didn’t want people to think of me as too Loving, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be a man or something, if I didn’t have acceptance about love. And so that brought in a deep acceptance to know this is who I am and wow, do I feel powerful from this place. It’s something I’ve never experienced; I didn’t even think was possible in this lifetime. And so, what do I get from this? What I really feel that I’m not so much getting, what I’m receiving is freedom. Freedom and fulfillment is what I feel the end result is. I don’t even know if there is an end, it’s probably not even appropriate to use the word end, but on my journey, this is what’s unfolding in me, this is what’s moving. Color is different, taste is different, how I view people is different, how I view the world is different, everything shifts.
Rick: Yeah, so when you had that big awakening it kind of sounds like it was a watershed moment for you and things were never the same after that.
Bill: Yes, that’s true. That’s just one of the thresholds, the deepest threshold I believe the cross in our humanity, is the belief in separation, that we are separate from God, and that one was a really long journey for me in the loneliness of that, because that’s the end result of where the mental body could only take me to the place of the loneliness, and the heart was the only place when I opened to that saying, “Okay, I get that,” and when I felt that, for a long time it was so painful it opened me into the place of where I knew that I was no longer separate.
Rick: That’s nice. There’s a line in the Upanishads which goes, “Certainly all fear is born of duality,” and I think that’s kind of what you’re pointing at here. Obviously, there would be a sort of a root fear if we’re separate, if we’re dual, if we’re separated from God, because we’re always vulnerable. If there’s me and other there’s always the chance that other can hurt me or something, but if it’s only unified then what can hurt what? What was I going to say? Pipe up if you have anything. Oh, here comes a question. Amanda from Tampa, Florida asks, “What do you think about when past trauma becomes physical pain affecting the nervous system and the brain? For example, arthritic disease, fibromyalgia, anxiety, and depression. The triggers are super raw and vulnerable. Even in it, I feel like I’m supposed to go through it, not suppress it, and be in a safe self-control space for healing. Thank you.”
Patricia: Yeah, so we always recommend when someone’s that, we call it on the edge that Amanda’s on with her pain and her awareness that she’s been invited to go through it, to get the support, to get the support, someone to hold space for her, someone that is able to help move her through the process of releasing. We’re on this incredible planet together, so there’s quite a beautiful expression when we come together in that movement the threshold Amanda’s going through. Absolutely, there’s a rebirth wanting to happen in her, a complete movement in her whole body, physical, spiritual, energetic, everything that’s moving in her now.
Bill: Yeah, and as you said earlier, the pain gets our attention. So, in the place of the pain, it’s a fearful place to be, it can be at times because we don’t know what to do with it, and then the willingness to feel it and to allow it to work its way out in you and to be with that emotional body, what’s underneath the pain? So that’s the place to look, is what’s beneath the pain that’s wanting to move.
Patricia: The emotion.
Bill: Yeah, so the emotional body is wanting to move.
Rick: Yeah, and like you were saying before Patricia, you know, there’s various things you can do to help yourself – exercise, walking, you know, maybe yoga, diet, all kinds of things. So, it’s kind of like, you pull a table by any one leg and the rest of the legs come along, but maybe if you can pull several legs at once the table is going to move even more easily. So, I imagine somebody like Amanda has, already looked into a lot of things that might be helpful, but it’s just good to keep in mind, we don’t have to sort of just use one tool, there can be a variety of things that can be helpful.
Patricia: Yes, absolutely. And for Amanda, I just want to say, you may want to journal about what emotion is there, sit with in kind of a meditation state and do the inquiry and see, like Bill said, if there’s emotion under the pain, it’s almost like you’re diving in a pool and just see what emotion may be stirring there. And then there’s a release that she can move with if it happens for her, when it happens, so, she doesn’t have to try to contain it.
Rick: I just want to make a wrap-up point about that point I was making earlier about the sort of the higher reaches of emotional development in terms of devotion and so on. And there’s like a thing, in spiritual circles that some people say, “Oh, well don’t be seeking some glorious future attainment, , because you’ll just be forever chasing the dangling carrot, realize that you’ve sort of got it right here.” But on the other hand, there are these examples of, , sort of spiritual luminaries who apparently attain something quite marvelous, and I think you can kind of balance both. It’s obviously every day is life, and we don’t pass over the present for some glorious future, but it’s good to have a vision of possibilities also and to realize that there’s a great range of potential unfoldment which can be quite wonderful as we undergo it.
Patricia: And it’s available for anyone.
Rick: Exactly.
Patricia: It’s not available for a selected few. Like these people, , the different on-earth avatars, people that hold love, that is their calling to offer who they are to the world and there’s a calling in each of our hearts, so it’s available for everyone. And what Bill said earlier too, to maybe add a language to support people in this, is it’s something we’re open to. So instead of reaching to, open to it, because everything in your life happening right now in the moment, whatever it looks like, is supporting that calling in your heart, is supporting that opening. You’re actually in an opening, you may just not recognize it as that.
Rick: Yeah, that’s great.
Bill: What we may be looking for or seeking is actually already happening. In us, right at this moment.
Patricia: Yeah.
Bill: Like for instance, people say, “Well, I don’t believe.” Well, belief is happening anyway, regardless of what I think or what my opinion is or how I think it should be, it’s happening anyway. Creation is continually in movement.
Rick: Yeah, and if someone were to say to me, “I don’t believe,” I would say, “You don’t need to, just experience.” This is a scientific process and if you don’t believe that an apple tastes sweet or something, then bite the apple and that will confirm or refute whatever attitude you have about it. So, we’re talking about an experiential thing here, not just a belief or an attitude.
Patricia: Yeah, and I wanted to mention because a lot comes with belief, the other word that comes in often is trust. Well, in getting to know self, the depths of who you are, trust is built from there. Once we can trust our own being with our own heart and our own being, trust begins to open for us.
Rick: Yeah.
Patricia: So, our mind would like to see affirmation or see proof that there is trust outside of us. How trust is built, is from the core of our being. We build trust into life, each and every person.
Rick: And would you say related to that? Maybe they don’t trust you, but after they’ve been through a world of experience, maybe they trust you more than they were the previous time because they’ve already built some experiential foundation.
Patricia: Absolutely. And we’ve had a world that’s operating at a pretty primitive state still. We have many beautiful things happening simultaneously. There’s a lot of primitive state of relating.
Rick: Very contrasting world.
Patricia: Yeah. So, when we meet and we’re talking about heart space and we’re relearning the language inside of us, it takes time to have that availability, that trust so to speak, like you just explained. So, what we present is that we’re building a bridge. So, they’re on one side, we’re on the other side, and we’re building a plank at a time. And whether it’s the weekend or later down the road, we meet in the middle with them when they meet themselves.
Rick: Yeah, like you were saying earlier, you don’t do this all in one day. There’s layer after layer after layer after layer. And I think each … there are people who like to say things like, “Oh, you’re already enlightened, just realize that and you’re done,” but I don’t think that’s realistic. I don’t think they know what they’re talking about. There’s kind of this progressive unfoldment that takes place and each new layer is a new layer of trust and genuine experience.
Patricia: getting to know self. I mean, what are we here for? We’re here in this physical body, in this being, in this Patricia. I want to get to know all of this universe inside of me. I’m a tall woman, I’m six foot tall, so there’s a lot for me to get to know in here. There’s always been a constant state of shifting, movement, change, dissolving, growing, aspects coming forward, movement, healing. So that’s the invitation for everyone.
Bill: If there was a shortcut to this I would have found it. Let me tell you, I looked and looked and looked at so many different, maybe 30 years of chasing the tail, so to speak, only to come to the place of realizing that it was always here. It was always here. I just didn’t know how to access it.
Rick: Yeah, that’s a good point. What you were saying a minute ago reminded me of just the point that people like Ramana Maharshi or Jesus Christ or anybody else who’s some great, enlightened, famous dude, they don’t really have …we’re just as much rooted in the Divine as they are and permeated by it and so on. It’s just a matter of maybe they’ve become a little bit more aware of the connection. But we all, that’s what you were saying, that we all have the capacity or the potential to become aware of that connection experientially again, not just in belief. But if we have a human nervous system, we already have what it takes to become an embodiment of Divine consciousness. It’s not like you were just saying, it’s not the province of a select few.
Patricia: Yes, absolutely. And it will always be our choice, like every day that’s an expression of how deep is your
Rick: yes.
Patricia: That helps us remind us, oh, not to get kind of involved in the world and the world is quite in a hurried pacing right now. But that yes helps us bring it back to center and go, oh right, how deep is this moment, that yes in me.
Rick: When you think about the world and see what’s going on in it, from your knowledge and experience doing what you do and considering everything you’ve gone through in your own development; do you sort of see trends and symptoms of deeper issues? For instance, the opioid epidemic is a big deal these days and NBC News has been doing a series on it recently and how it kills more people than any other cause now, at least in a certain age group, more than car accidents or just about anything else. And that obviously is a strange phenomenon, people are trying to numb out, they’re just trying to shut down and obviously it doesn’t work too well. So, do you have any kind of sense of societal trends, both current and future, like where we might be going, do you get insights like that?
Patricia: Yeah, I often do. So, here’s the thing, we’re just creatures of contraction, so we’ve had to come in this human form so far away from who we are in our inner being, to realize that we’ve actually been far away from it. So now we’re moving into this availability, just like having the conversation you and I right in this moment, even though we’re on this computer and you’re thousands of miles away, I feel we’re in the living room, we’re speaking, we’re connecting, we’re following this wave, what’s working with us and all the viewers that are listening or will listen. So, it’s been the lack of connection, the lack of connection and the knowing what to do with the pain someone’s feeling and the beings, we are fortunate to work with all ages, younger people and they’re coming in so bright with so much consciousness into a world that still wants to put them in a box. The old systems aren’t working, we witness it everywhere now in the world openly and so those old systems are being challenged and yet new systems are awakening from that. We were just in an event yesterday where a group of young families, 10 of them, 12 of them, got together and bought property and they are building, living together they’ve got the ecosystem, they’ve got their food, they do it all by council, they do it all, they’ve agreed that they all come together and one of the agreements is that they will always do transformational work, they’ll always bring in mentors, they’ll always keep working on themselves, they’ll always come into the agreement, everyone’s raising the children, all of them have talents that they offer. And then from that, a young man is working with a non-profit where he goes and works with people and they do clusters. So, they’ve done the research that 12 people together is in a gathering is when you can really hear and connect with each other. Building clusters and communities and a community is something like 144, I forget the numbers so don’t quote me on that, but 144 is the max that a human being can be in before they feel disconnected. Interesting, and they’re building homes.
Rick: And 12 is the square root of 144, so it’s kind of interesting that number works that way.
Bill: Yeah, and actually people come to know each other and it becomes a family of where they’re so accountable to everything and they’ve really set up the groundwork where… because together we’re more. Actually, like these people, they talked about it for years about getting a piece of property. The property they discovered was a million dollars, it had four homes on it. So, between five of them, they came up with a down payment like $13,000 each, whatever the figure was, they put it down on the property, they created a corporation so they all pay rent to the corporation and now they’re solarizing. They’ve just found a way to make it, because the average home in San Diego is like $500,000 a home. So, five of them, that would have been $2.5 million. For $13,000, they live on a 10-acre piece of property.
Patricia: And they welcome diversity. So, they’re from all backgrounds, they have all their different talents, the artists, the firefighter, from all different walks of life and in this council, they come together. They have committed to the connection; they’ve committed that they’re going to see it through, when the unconscious comes up, they have systems in place to support the healing of that because it will, because we’re human beings.
Bill: It’s about connection.
Rick: Yeah, my main takeaway from this is something you said, which is that as the old systems break down or prove totally inadequate and it’s going to result in the under-the-radar emergence of much more creative and innovative and effective ways of doing things, which will probably take a long time before that makes the news, but this stuff is just going to crop up quite spontaneously out of the sort of vacuum that the old systems are creating.
Patricia: Yeah if you look at our world, right, how in most cities, how seniors are treated, how parenting is treated, there’s separation there from reality, people are alone that where could be connected more together. So, this is what’s growing more is that opening, that desire, that willingness to connect to deeper levels with self and others in life.
Rick: Yeah, that’s great. So, I have some quotes here. Feel free to bring up anything from your side that I’m not thinking to ask, but I have some notes from reading your blog posts and who is Alex Reyes? He had some things on your blog. Is that somebody that works with you or something?
Patricia: Yeah.
Rick: So, he had some interesting points and maybe I’ll just … go ahead.
Patricia: Oh, so he helps us, he takes our writing and implements it, puts it on the website, yeah.
Rick: Good. Here’s something from Rumi that kind of summarizes what you’ve been saying. He said, “Your task,” and this is from something you wrote, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Patricia: Yeah.
Rick: that’s a good point right there Relationships and finding love in life are very important to people and doesn’t often work out for people and so on, but I guess what this does is it redirects the search from an outer directed one to an inner directed one-find what the barriers are, remove them within yourself and in other words, seek within and then, well, “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven within and all else will be added unto thee.”
Patricia: You got it, yeah. So, remember in the very beginning we were talking about protectors? Well often relationships, and we were talking about, were creatures of contraction, so we feel into what doesn’t work first before we come into awareness that there might be a different way, that there’s possible. So, with relationships, a lot of relationships are still reaction ships, so it’s one protector and the other protector in communication. The aspect of self that hasn’t healed, it starts to direct the relationship or Reaction-ship. So, what we find and what we offer is what you said, is move into self-first, let’s release some of those barriers so you can truly be all of you in relationship into that deep connection.
Rick: Yeah, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to say that relationships are based on giving and that if two people come together both wanting to take, then nobody gets anything because both are trying to take, nobody’s giving. But if two people come together sort of with the capacity to give and with the intention of giving and with no concern for what they’re going to get, then both receive because both are giving.
Patricia: Absolutely and receiving.
Rick: And receiving, yeah.
Patricia: The receiving is so prudent and important, it’s the dance, the giving and receiving. Both of those create more opening, create that fluid energy that helps move us.
Bill: That’s the balance, it has to be equal, the giving and receiving in life. Some people are great givers, even in the conscious world and they become exhausted because they’re so busy giving and the very thing they’re giving is the opportunity to give it to self, and that’s the receiving. We have to be able to receive in order to give and vice versa.
Rick: Yeah, well also, it’s like what Patricia was saying earlier, she needs to have her downtime, her hiking, her meditating, stuff like that to recharge her batteries. You can’t just give and give and give without recharging your batteries. So how long have you two guys been together?
Patricia: 13 years now?
Bill: 12 years.
PATRICIA: 12 years.
Rick: And presumably you’ve been married before to other people and this and that. And so, just out of curiosity, how did you meet and what are your day-to-day lives like as these teachers of having open hearts and everything? What is your experience like with each other on a daily basis?
Patricia: Well, I met Bill when I was with a friend in San Diego on vacation because I’m from Canada. So, I met Bill and when I met him, I felt him. And at that point in my life, I had decided that I wasn’t going to be looking for a relationship. It was just if it came, because I was really having my strong, strong path with God for me at that time. And so that was my number one. And when I met Bill, I recognized that in him. He also had that for himself. And one thing we have in common was his horses. So, we went horseback riding and it started to unfold. I was still living in Canada, raising my children. He was still living here. And so back and forth and through that, eventually, we began to offer our work, what we offer now together. In the beginning, it wasn’t a planned effort. It kind of evolved as the work evolved.
Rick: Yeah. Do you ever have your tense moments and how do you deal with them when those arise?
Bill: Well, we’re human beings. So sometimes we’re on the road for quite a long time.
Rick: Getting tired.
Bill: And we’ve done several workshops and we do sessions with people. And there’s not that time in between sometimes to really go to that maintenance that we need. And a level of anger will come up and I’ll express it. And then I know that when I come up with that level of anger, she just looks at me like, “Where did that come from?” And I know when she’s looking at me like, “This has nothing to do with you, me. So go take a look at it.” And so, I will take the responsibility for whatever is coming up in me and look at it. And then of course, I’ll come back to wherever we left off. And we have this thing in our relationship, what we call “redos.” I get to re-approach her from a different place, because I’ve taken a look and say, “Oh, this is my anger, what’s happening there?” And then it’ll come to me what it is. And I’ll take a look at it and then I let it go. And then I come back to Patricia, and I’ll say, “Hey, baby,” or “Hey, Patricia, I’m really sorry for that. How can I make this up to you?” Because “I’m sorry” is not enough. So, I say, “What can I do to make this up to you?” And she’ll give me something to do to make it up. So that’s one of the ways we…
Patricia: And on my side, when he has this anger he’s working through, I do the practices just like I encourage people to. I breathe, I ground, I meditate, I walk, I stay open. Because one of my protectors is that I withdraw. So, I do everything to stay expressed, to keep me present in the moment, no matter what is moving and what appears to be moving. And I know he’s got this. And I also know with Bill, underneath the anger for him is a vulnerability and awareness, where there’s an awareness that is sort of embraced in vulnerability. So sometimes for him, Bill as a man in his path, he still works through being to the space of vulnerability, is still tender at times.
Rick: Now sometimes when people talk about not repressing anything, not suppressing anything, express your emotions, express your anger, express whatever, but how do you balance that with let’s say, discernment and discrimination, Because you can have the impulse to anger, and you can just blurt it out and create bad feelings for a few days or you can sort of say, “I don’t really need to say that.” And then five minutes later, the whole situation has changed and everything’s fine.
Patricia: That’s a good question because we actually support people steering through that. So, any moment that you’re hurting another or yourself, it’s taken off, it’s getting carried away in that muck we were talking about earlier in the conversation. Any moment that you’re hurting another or hurting yourself, there’s something deeper going on, and that person in front of you is not responsible to bring you through it. You’re responsible. So, for Bill, so he’ll all go for a walk. I may, for myself, I may go, “Okay, sweetheart, I’m going to go for a walk.” Or he may say, “You know what? I’m going to go to the gym.” So, he knows the way that has him work through it. And like I said, as thumbprints, everyone’s a bit different. So, part of the balance for self, is to find what supports you the deepest through each threshold. And that’s again, we get to practice that during the weekends. But really, the core of it is to find that for yourself in between the sessions, in between the weekends, so that you get strong in it, so you get to know yourself.
Rick: Yeah, back in the … oh, were you going to say something, Bill?
Bill: Yeah, one of my protectors has been anger. And so, I might have been born that way, I don’t know. But it was my biggest learning is anger gave me momentary power in the moment when I didn’t want to deal or look at something. And yet underneath that shield, there was a level of sadness I didn’t want to feel. And so, in the place of when I finally started feeling the sadness, I was saying, “God, am I ever going to come out of this? Do I really want to feel this?” So, I followed the track of the sadness, and it brought me to the place what helps move the anger is opening to curiosity. See anger, there’s no room for curiosity, so I opened to loving curiosity to see, “Is there another way to do this?” So that’s the protection is the anger, the opening for me was being curious.
Rick: Yeah, back in the late 60s I was in an encounter group for a while and I hope everybody realizes that what you’re doing is a far cry from what that was like. I don’t know … but it was brutal. There were just people ripping each other to shreds in the name of honesty and openness and sometimes very vulnerable young people just being bullied by much grosser, tougher older people. It was just very crude, but I’ve listened to several hours of what you do and I just want to say that I don’t get any sense of anyone being taken advantage of. Like what you just said about not harming anyone, I think that sentiment is very much functioning in your workshops. There’s a sense of just helping and healing and supporting, not any kind of confrontational thing that anybody’s going to be confronted with, have to deal with.
Patricia: Yeah, here’s how I feel. I feel that every movement of consciousness, right? So, we’re in 2017, so we’re not back in the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s even, because everyone, people are mentors in the past, people that came before us, people that will be ahead of us. New consciousness is coming in all the time. So, we don’t have to fall back on old ways. We don’t have to push in. Everything is here. If we are willing, if we feel the yes and we’re willing, it will allow it to be revealed. Everything is here for us.
Bill: Yeah, even that which you heard on the hours of tapes, our work has evolved even beyond that at this point. It’s a whole different thing. We feel consciously as we connect and people come, is actually a current conscious update of what is moving in consciousness, and we collectively create that when all of the hearts come together. There’s new consciousness that comes through that venue.
Rick: That’s an interesting statement. I find it interesting that you’re … well I guess this is probably true of most everyone, but I don’t hear people articulate it that often, that their work is evolving and that it’s evolving sort of like a surfer riding the wave of collective consciousness as it progresses and perhaps it’s progressing more and more quickly. But that’s interesting that you stay attuned to that.
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely. So, we may have people that, like I said, have visited us seven years ago, sat with us and then they come back in and there’s no … as if no time has passed. Wherever they’ve been in seven years, they can dip back in with us. There’s never like a catch-up or a feeling of separation, that’s a good way to put it too, is because we’re moving with it and I was smiling because on the Friday night, that’s how we explain it, we’re all riding the wave together. And Bill happens to be a surfer for many years, so it’s a double meaning.
Rick: Yeah, and I imagine if they come back after seven years, if they remember what it was like seven years ago, they realize that your work has evolved since then.
Patricia: oh, yeah. Absolutely. And that bridge of trust has already been built and so they come in and they’re what we call the popcorn They come in and its boom, just as we start to speak half an hour into the event, right? Because they just have no holding back.
Rick: One thing I often heard you say during the seminar recording that I listened to is you’d often say, “They’re telling me this,” and I got the impression you were indicating that they were sort of subtle beings that you were kind of attuned to or channeling or hearing, getting input from or something. What’s up with that?
Patricia: Yeah, so that’s how energy works with me. It comes in as energy, it comes in. So, what we see is that every heart in the room has called in this opening for themselves. As we all sit together in this collective consciousness, many beings are with us in the unseen world, in the seen world. I don’t spend a lot of time speaking of channeling or if there’s someone that’s passed over in the room, unless it’s prudent to that person’s opening at that moment. Because I feel that people can get kind of lost there sometimes. And what I’ve been asked and supported to do is really to focus on the heart. So however, that opens, whatever wave I’m riding with that person so their heart opens.
Bill: And so whatever wave somebody’s in, if they’re going through a huge process of fear and trauma, we’re right there with them. We feel right into the place they’re in and as they’re weeping, we may weep with them, because we feel them so deeply. And when they know there’s support there where they’ve been and somebody else has felt it, they’re more willing to trust and to let go so they can move through it. So, we walk right through it with people. If they’re in hell, we go right there with them and we help move or guide them to move through it, but we’re right there with them. We don’t leave anybody behind in their experience.
Rick: But I guess I sort of get the sense it’s a team effort though, not just the two of you but these subtler beings that Patricia is attuned to. And do you actually feel that sometimes? You feel like, okay, we’re just sort of instruments of the Divine and there’s a much larger intelligence or intelligences that are guiding us and motivating us and working through us in order for us to have the effect that we manage to be catalysts for?
Patricia: I feel that all the time. We have a structure or a container for the room, but the moment we start, we know we’re instruments. Patricia moves out of the way. She may get fed or sleep, but everything is just in the grace of God and it’s not predicted from here, from Patricia. It’s not predicted. I know that whatever comes is this Divine sacred moment of healing and I know that each heart could have waited thousands of years for this healing, the core of it healing. So, without a doubt, I know I am an instrument. I surrender to it. In the beginning of my early life, I didn’t surrender so well. So, it’s taken me years of opening, surrendering, allowing to be at the place that I am today in this moment.
Bill: What we feel is that we do 5% of the work and God, Divinity, the intelligence does the other 95%.
Rick: Yeah, I kind of feel like that way myself. I sort of feel like anybody who’s really doing something to serve the spiritual awakening of mankind, gains a lot of support from perhaps unseen places, but there’s a sort of an imperative or a motivation from Divine intelligence to bring about this awakening and anybody who wants to be on that team gets a great deal of support just by joining.
Patricia: Absolutely, and they get sort of on the fast track. So, their lives, their mind can appear broken or not working, but we’re actually seeing it as an invitation. Actually, nothing’s working because Divine is speaking to you so clearly, so powerfully. There’re just a few filters in the way that you can’t receive it quite yet.
Rick: You mean anybody in particular who embarks on the spiritual path or you as teachers or what do you mean by that?
Patricia: No, I mean people that come and sit with us.
Rick: Sit with you, right.
Patricia: Yeah, so not because it’s Bill and Patricia, we don’t have that much clout, but in the mere nature of the sacredness of when we come together as a collective, as a group, and everybody’s sitting in the room, no matter how their world looks to them, is getting a very powerful invite to be an instrument of evolution.
Rick: Right, yeah, that’s good, and they’re not there by accident.
Patricia: Absolutely. we have people that all of a sudden drive up, and they’re in tears and they’re saying, “I don’t even know why I’m here, but before I knew it, I was driving here.” And then we have others that say, “I wasn’t going to come, I wasn’t going to come.” We go, “Yeah, we know. Okay let’s ground and breathe.”
Rick: So what is the range of your teaching activity, just up and down the West Coast or where do you go?
Patricia: Yeah, so we have a smaller group in Berkeley and San Francisco. We go to Olympia, Washington. We’ve been going there quite regularly. Spencer and Seattle, and we’re beginning to open in Vancouver, Washington, and we’re being asked to open in San Diego. Usually, we come to San Diego to rest, but we’re being asked now to open here, so we’ll see. And one big adventure we’re having is we’re actually going to take a small group of 12 people to Bali.
Rick: Wow, that would be nice.
Patricia: And so that’s the end of October. So, we have a friend that lives, she lives between Bali and India. She’s a healer herself, so she’s hosting us for the 12 people, yeah. It’ll be an eight-day adventure.
Rick: Is that one already signed up for or are there openings?
Patricia: There’s openings and I’ll get that up and go in by tomorrow, Monday.
Bill: We also have other openings in Canada. We’re on two islands, Victoria, Bowen Island, and we’ve just been invited to the east coast of Ottawa, Canada.
Rick: Oh, nice.
Bill: So that’s our newest opening now is the east coast of Canada and Vancouver.
Rick: I was up there a couple years ago and went to Bowen to stay with a friend and did an interview there, Canella Michelle Myers, and then went over to Vancouver Island and did a retreat with a fellow named Lauren Huff and did a couple interviews there. There’re some nice folks up there.
Bill: and
Patricia: Yeah.
Rick: So people watching this then, if they happen to live on the east coast, you also, I guess do things over Skype and all, right?
Patricia: Over Zoom, yeah. And we offer a 20-minute, so anybody if they just want to speak to us and we can really inquire if this, what we offer will support them, a 20-minute. And they can just email us and we can arrange if they can say their name, where they’re from. I’m always curious how they heard about us, right? So yeah.
Rick: Yeah, well, right now 115 people are hearing about you and there’ll be many more once I put this interview up, so they can get in touch. And I’ll be linking to your website of course, as I always do with these interviews.
Patricia: May I?
Rick: Yeah, sure.
Patricia: I just want to mention one thing, like we really work with all ages. We have a woman that’s turning 90, we’ve worked with a young teenage person, and all cultures, and people even coming from religion are still having a very devoted religious path. We work with everyone, even if you’ve never done anything like this before or have done this a long, long time, just so people know that no one is excluded, everyone’s welcome.
Rick: Do you sometimes encounter people whom you feel are more seriously troubled then you’re equipped to deal with, and you refer them to a psychiatrist or somebody like that?
Patricia: Yeah, we have a handful of people we recommend to people. And then we actually come on sometimes as a team. So, if someone has mental illness, they’ll have their psychiatrist, they might have a counselor on top of that, and we’ll come on as one of the team members. We work with a team. So, anyone, like I said, we’ll make sure they’re supported properly.
Rick: Great. And when you have these retreats, how many people are typically on them?
PATRICIA: We don’t take more than 16.
Rick: Oh, so it’s nice and small, yeah.
Patricia: Yeah, so it’s usually 14 to 16 people.
Rick: Okay, great. Good, well I hope that’s given everybody a taste of what you’re about and what you have to offer, or a boat as you would say from Canada. Is there anything that you feel like is important that we haven’t thought to discuss in this interview?
Patricia: I feel like we’ve covered a lot, thank you, because I’m new to interviews, so, this is exciting, and I really appreciate your inquiry.
Bill: Your questions were really great. I’m not much of a person to sit and talk for an hour and a half. Questions are what really inspire me and spark me to go deep within to bring my gift out, so, I really feel you asked us really great questions.
Rick:Oh, thank you. I had another page of notes with all kinds of points from one of Alex’s articles and one of your articles on the site, but I think we kind of covered those and it would be a little bit redundant to go into them, but there are some blog posts on your site that people can read. Do you do any kind of like a weekly or monthly webinar kind of thing, like on Zoom where
Patricia: Yeah, so when they go to our website they’ll get 4 meditations from us. When they can register for those, they’re just given to them to support them, whatever they’re going through. They’re like 10 minutes long. We have a newsletter that we’re going to put out just every 2 months and about every 3 months we organize a virtual call, is what we call it. So, we haven’t set those dates yet. We have some things shifting and moving. Once we have the dates, we would put them up on our website and send them out in the newsletter for people to know.
Rick: Okay, and if people get on your email list, obviously they can be notified of that.
Patricia: Yeah, absolutely.
Rick: Great, alright, thanks. So let me just wrap it up. I’ve been speaking with Bill and Patricia, or Patricia and Bill, it works both ways, Clum. And you’ll be able to click through to their website from mine, their page on Buddha at the Gas Pump. You might as well just say what your website domain is, what is it?
Patricia: So, it’s evolutionoftheheart.com.
Rick: Okay, evolutionoftheheart.com. And this obviously is an ongoing series of interviews, so if you’d like to be notified of future ones, either subscribe on the YouTube channel and YouTube will notify you. And I’d like it if … I’m encouraging people to do that anyway, because once I reach a certain level of subscribers on YouTube, I get a lot more support from YouTube. There’s like YouTube representatives that work with you and everything. So, subscribe if you haven’t, or else you can also sign up to be notified by email on the Batgap site. And this also exists as an audio podcast, if you like to listen while you commute and things. And just go to the website and poke around through the different menus and you’ll find various other things that we offer. So, thanks for listening or watching. Next week I’ll be speaking with a very interesting woman named Jude Currivan who has a Master’s degree in quantum physics and cosmology, a PhD in archaeology because she wanted to study the cosmology of ancient cultures. She began attuning to higher beings when she was four years old. She’s worked in the world of business at very high levels in the world, and she’s a healer. A very interesting person. I’m reading her book right now. So that’ll be next week’s interview. And if you look on our upcoming interviews page, you’ll see all the future ones as we schedule them. So, thanks Bill and Patricia, it’s really been good spending time with you.
Patricia: You too.
Bill: Thank you so much.
Patricia: Thank you very much.
Rick: You’re welcome. And thanks again to those who’ve been listening or watching, and we’ll see you next week.