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Prajna (Ginty) O’Hara Interview
Rick Archer: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer, and my guest today is prajna Ginty. Welcome prajna
Prajna Ginty: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I live in Grass Valley, don’t you?
Prajna Ginty: That’s right Grass Valley, California. Uh huh.
Rick Archer: My sister in law and her husband lived out there for a while, but they’re not there anymore. Uh huh. Yeah, I’m gonna start by reading just a little quote from you. And then in the course of this interview, you’re going to tell us all about yourself. So I won’t do too much of an introductory biography. Here’s what you wrote. My passion for helping others comes from from from a profound respect and understanding of the human condition, and how we suffer. I listen and function to inspire you to see through unnecessary layers of conditioning, that veil your authentic expression. I provide sacred space for stillness, practice, deep listening, body centered psychotherapy, and resources for spiritual awakening that empower you to embody your deepest realization and walk bravely within your humanity. The word project on the name project project translates as heart wisdom, the Universal Intelligence that resides within all human beings awake or dormant. But always here, when realized, prajna shows us that there is no other, we are of the same essence and divided, already pure, reflecting as each other in this vast array of spirit. It’s nice. One thing I think I’ll find interesting about this interview, having read portions of your upcoming book, is that I often have the sense that what people call awakening is merely an intellectual understanding, or it’s some kind of preliminary thing that’s very nice and very genuine and very sweet, but hasn’t really stood the tests that life may potentially throw at it. And you know, yours had some tests thrown at it, to say the least. And it’s interesting how you kind of dealt with all that and came through it. So we’ll be you’ll be telling people what that means as we get into it.
Prajna Ginty: Sure, yeah.
Rick Archer: Where would you like to start?
Prajna Ginty: Well, I guess I could start. What What drew me to spirituality in the first place? Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think as I told you, in the introduction, I started out with a Catholic upbringing. And being a girl in a Catholic environment back in the early 60s, there weren’t a lot of opportunities, as you know. So I was kind of the little girl on the outside looking in and seeing how do you get inside to the maths, and was always very curious about the mystery. You know, like what was going on. And hearing even though I heard the maths and Latin, there was something that drew me to it. But also, there were there was a belief that was developed because of that religious conditioning, that something about me wasn’t allowed to be part of it, you know. So it’s kind of like from the beginning, negating your divinity, and, and then taking off seeking for it someplace else. So although something very profound happened, when I on my 10th birthday, I was very close to my godmother, and she died exactly on that day. And I happened to be there when it happened. And I saw that something didn’t die, that there was something continuous and constant. And I have never been able to forget that. I mean, through any kind of life experience, whether it be easy or difficult. There was always in the background, this background hum, there’s something that continues, there’s something more behind all of this appearance. No, there’s something behind form. There’s something that’s living all of this, even when the body dies. So that was a strong impulse and me very natural. I have no idea where it came from, like, people talk about prior lives, you know, we don’t need to go into that but But I came into this life with that curiosity.
Rick Archer: Parlez makes sense to me. You know, some people come in with they’re just really cooking already. And in other people, this is the farthest from their interest and of course, in you know, in the Gita, that very question is asked by our Juna, what happens if a person fails to reach the goal in this life? You know, does he does he perish like a broken cloud is the phrase used. And basically Lord Krishna says snipe picks up where he left left off, you know, next time around. He’s either born into a family of Yogi’s or born into some situation, which will be conducive to picking up the practice again, in the next life.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, well, I think it’s true. And I think that the the family that we choose, or that we’re given whatever it is that, that all of it is conducive, you know, that’s something that as we continue to talk, for me, if I did have a teaching, it would be that your life as it is, you know, everything that we’re given, that’s our doorway, that’s, that’s the ground for our practice, that’s the ground for our realization. And even though we jump out of it, and we run away from it, and we cover ourselves up, and we hide, eventually, we’re drawn back to that, and that is the place that gives us our freedom, you know, because like, one part of freedom is, what am I free from, you know, and that’s, that’s partial, and eventually, we have to be able to be free to return to everything.
Rick Archer: And when you say, conducive, you know, I would say that, that applies in the broadest sense, you might be born into a family of alcoholics or you know, something very difficult, and that might not on the surface seem very conducive. But if we see the universe as ultimately being kind of this evolution machine, which is ultimately, you know, fostering on propelling our growth toward higher realization, then everything that happens to us and you can disagree with, or agree with us, is ultimately serving that purpose, even though it may not seem like it on the surface.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that very much. So because I’m in that, like, if somebody is born into a difficult family, alcoholism, I’m familiar with that. And, and there’s a dissatisfaction in that there’s an underlying, you know, dissatisfaction, because it isn’t nourishing. And I think that naturally, we’re meant to be nourished, and that naturally, we’re drawn to love. And so if we’re in an environment, and that isn’t available to us, we’re gonna seek it someplace else, eventually, you know, you fall down the rabbit hole so many times before you realize that, you know, I don’t have to do that anymore, and you go somewhere else. So I think that there’s a natural impulse toward love. I have babies and anyone who has had children and babies, you can you can watch them in the very first inclination of a child is to reach out, you know, they’re, they’re always stretching out first. And we learn to pull back, you know, it’s like the contraction, the pulling back in hiding is, is a learned behavior. It’s not. I mean, in sometimes it’s necessary, because we do need to protect ourselves. But the first inclination is to expand is to reach toward what’s pleasant.
Rick Archer: So, alright, 10 years old, your grandmother, your mother died, and you realize there was, you know, something didn’t die.
Prajna Ginty: Yes, something didn’t die. And well, then I went through the teenage life that everybody goes through, you know, and that kind of came with a bunch of confusion. And I did a lot of hiding, you could say, and got involved in different addictions and things. And then I met my first spiritual teacher named unit Zimmerman in Manhattan, New York. And I was given I guess, he would call a psychic reading. And my, my roommate at college kind of dragged me to her because I was, you know, mixed up in a lot of things. And she had previously, you know, she was seeing my herself and my behavior, and was wanting to show me there’s a way out of that. Yeah. So she brought me two units. And what the first thing that they did is they gave me a reading. And in the reading that was kind of to see, see into your soul, I could say, you know, so your sole purpose. And so what they told me during that reading now, as a means Eunice
Rick Archer: Yoon has had that capability to sort of diagnose your soul so to speak.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, actually, it wasn’t Eunice. It was her daughter her daughter. Trance trance to guide called R W. Okay. Kind of like a Seth. Yeah, that, you know, that kind of thing. And I didn’t know anything about this and I didn’t really know what I believed about it either until I sat there in front of our W and R W pretty much told me my entire life. That was Like, wow, you know, and then then what he told me is that I had a sole purpose, and that at the time, it was far from consciousness and that I needed to become conscious of it. And I was to work with Eunice and Eunice would be my guide. And she would help me to see through the the veils of conditioning so that I could get on with my life, you know, get on with spiritual purpose.
Rick Archer: So RW wasn’t going to tell you your sole purpose in so many words, but he said work with you. And it’s and it’ll be revealed over time or something.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, exactly. He all that he said was that it had to do with learning that we’re not separate. And I thought that was I thought, wow, that’s, that’s a real interesting thing to say, you know, because I was 21 at the time, and I thought, oh, my gosh, I’m the same as everybody else. And that was a lot to try to digest. Yeah, you know, so then I started working with Eunice and she gave, I learned to meditate and do all of these things. But mostly, she was helping me to work through unconscious material. Now, so it was, it was therapeutic in a sense. And from there, I went out to theology school, you know, later on, and I want, I felt like I was drawn toward some kind of calling some kind of service. And I didn’t know what it was. But before I went to theology school, I had a dream. And it told me that I should go to the church, and find somebody there that I could trust and talk to. And that was the first time I had any image come back into my mind about the church, because I left it when I was a teenager, feeling betrayed by it, because it didn’t really welcome. So many things that I saw were real in life that weren’t able to be addressed in this so called spiritual environment. And, you know, it was good in many other ways. So when I got this dream to go to a church, I thought, oh, geez, you know, what kind of a church would this be? And that’s when I found out. I mean, I think I was pretty naive at the time. And I really believed that whatever religion you were raised in, that you needed to stay with that I didn’t know there were other options. So that opened me up to all these other possibilities. It just brought me right out of my religious conditioning. And I started to explore other spiritualities first to theology school, and world religions. And then I went and I lived in an ashram
Rick Archer: was that Yogi aamra? decides ashram? Yes. So yes, it was I figured just from reading in your book, you know, about 300 people. You’re doing a lot of yoga. It sounded like him. Yeah, yeah. It could have would have either been him or Muktananda. But I think it sounded like his.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So you know, it was very much a lot of physical discipline, right. A lot of yoga, a lot of karma yoga, a lot of meditation. And it was all really great. And, and I was there for three years. When Eunice showed up, Eunice showed up at the ashram unexpected. And before she left, she asked me, you know, very one, pointedly, she was very zen like, you know, she was kind of a no nonsense teacher, and always right to the point. And she said to me, what are you doing here? And I said, Well, you know, I’m doing all these great practices can’t, you know, can’t you see I’m developing skill, and I’m advancing on the path to enlightenment, you know, and, and she said, this isn’t your practice. And she and she said, Get on with it. You know, and it was like, she was reminded me of all of our earlier conversations about get get down to the truth of who you are, just get on with it. And then she went home, and she died three days later. And I don’t think I would have taken it so seriously had it had she not died? And that had such an impact on me. Because I was thinking, Oh, well, Eunice is getting a little old, you know, she’s not really seeing the value of what’s happening here. And, you know, she doesn’t really get the, you know, because what she wanted me to see is that purification isn’t necessary. As I said, you could spend your whole life here purifying, and it’s not going to change anything. No, that’s, that’s, you know, what you are already is enough. And that’s what you need to realize. So I you know, so doing that kind of intensive yogic practice is can be very extreme. So when I left there, I left right away. And then I went to another extreme and that’s the chapter in my book that’s called pantry from ashram to pantry. Yeah, because I was depriving myself of all of these delicious foods. You know, we around a brown rice diet and seaweed and sprouts and twig tea, you know, that was like the extent of it salad. Yeah. And so then I went in my friend opened up her pantry door, and oh, just everything broke. Oh, And it was like going from one extreme to the other. And that’s what happens until you come back into the middle somewhere. And that was when I was introduced to my first thought song.
Rick Archer: I just want to say I can totally relate to that because I did a very similar thing in the summer of 75. I did all this fasting and fruit diets. And one one week I ate nothing but barley group, because I read a book that that was supposed to be good. And boy, when I snapped out of that, I couldn’t stop picking out I mean, I looked pregnant. I was eating so much, you know, after each meal and down to the kitchen at four in the morning, knocking on things I just went nuts. It took quite a few months to balance that out.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it did for me, too. It was so uncomfortable. And then there was also this impulse it. I wasn’t able to stop. Yeah, that was right. Yeah, I noticed. I just can’t stop this
Rick Archer: rubber band effect. You know, you stretch it far enough. And it just snaps.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. So in my foot, my entire focus then was food. You know, it was just everything was about food. So I get out of the house a couple of times. And what did it I went to a food store. I went to a health food store. And I saw a flyer there about a potluck dinner that was put on by a spiritual group. And that was the Yogananda group. And so I went to that potluck, and I met a woman there that worked at a computer company, and they like to hire people on the spiritual path. And so I was looking for a job, I was looking for anything to get me out of the pantry, you know, like, get my life going again. And so I was able to get that job. And she turned out to be my officemate, and she had sat was Sagada Maharaj. It’s good that you can go
Rick Archer: and get a job at a Dunkin Donuts. That would have been your undoing. Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry. So she said she had sat with Nisargadatta. Yeah,
Prajna Ginty: yeah, yeah. And, um, so she was he was in, in the past practice of non duality. And I saw a couple of pictures on her desk, Ramana Maharshi was there and Ananda my MA, and people I had never seen before. But I could tell from looking at their photographs, there was something that drew me to that. And the next thing I know, she asked me if I wanted to go to a sad song. And I didn’t know what that was. And that was, that was his, that was the early 80s. I think, you know, it was quite a quite a long time ago. And I was desperate at the time I was suffering, you know, I was like, I lost my teacher, I couldn’t stop eating, I was unhappy. I really missed my community. That was what I loved about the ashram, I loved those 300 people, you know, that we were all doing pranayama exercises together and eating to get together and working together and all of that. And I was, I did develop a lot of talents while I was there, so to speak, because I did become a yoga teacher, and a massage therapist, and I was really, very developed then in the healing arts. And that comes into play later, because I was able to develop my own business in Silicon Valley. So it was really great and many other ways. And, um, so she brought me to satsang. And I was in a very receptive mode, you know, because I was, I was at angst now at the time. And so she brought me into satsang. And the ambience was just very conducive to relaxing. There was an old tape of an animaI mob playing in the background. And it was really quiet. And I just went and I settled down into a seat. And the teacher came into the front and started talking about Romanus teaching. And what at what I heard is, you are the Self. And that just went all the way through and just landed in me and I got it, you know, it got me. And life opened up in me and the eating immediately fell away. You know, that was one of the first things that I noticed. And also, my seeking ended then I didn’t have to, I didn’t have to look. It’s I felt like I really returned to something like this was the anchor. This was this is what was going to bring me home. And it did, it did over time. Everything’s balanced out. You know, the swings in my life started to balance, more harmony. And I started to enter state they call Nirvikalpa Samadhi. Define that. That is a very deep absorption in spirit. You know where you’re just sitting I would sit and meditate And I would immediately become absorbed.
Rick Archer: And entirely. No, no, no thoughts. No nothing,
Prajna Ginty: no thought no thought I would even lose the sense of my body. The sense of being located in a body wasn’t there at the time. I wasn’t really I was somewhat aware of what was happening in the environment. But it didn’t matter. And at the same time, as that continued
Rick Archer: along, would you be absorbed like that?
Prajna Ginty: I would hear the beginning of the meditate of the satsang. Bell, I would for the whole Satsang period, so it’d be two hours. Or if we were having some other kind of a day where the meditations were longer, I could sit sit in it all day. And I didn’t it I didn’t even decide to do it. Right. That was the interesting thing. It wasn’t like a decision got made. And also, during that different energies would open up, and my, my body would go into a different position. And I only knew about that later, because one time one of the teachers talked to me and asked me if I could try to sit up straight and meditation. And I said that I didn’t really know that I wasn’t.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Kind of slouch or something without knowing it. Or
Prajna Ginty: I would, I would.
Rick Archer: Yeah, Korea’s things you’re moving.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Or my arms would do something. Yeah. Something was happening. And I couldn’t, I wasn’t really aware of it until afterwards. And they would say something to me. And also, especially when they were having new visitors, they didn’t want somebody to be in all these awkward positions, vibrating around. Yeah. Yeah. But something really profound about that was, um, I felt like, I didn’t talk very much about it. But I think most people have, if you’re on the spiritual path, most people, not everybody are usually coming out of something difficult. You know, there’s a reason that they’re seeking and for happiness for freedom. So during that time of just sitting, I felt like, my prior life was being washed away. And that I was being what’s the word like, nourish, nourished, preserved in a very deep way? And, and I felt like I didn’t age during that time. You know, I felt a youthfulness and a vitality.
Rick Archer: Yeah. I’m sure that’s true. I think that sitting in such states has its value. It is very nourishing and purifying and rejuvenating all kinds of good stuff that’s happening on subtle levels of the physiology, and, you know, some which has actually been studied by, by various scientists and published in journals and so on, but there’s probably a lot more going on than Western science is able to measure. But anyway, I think it was probably just what the doctor ordered for you.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. Uh huh. Exactly. Yeah. And, um, but but and also, I
Rick Archer: just want to say one other quick thing is, you know, Eunice’s statement that purification doesn’t do it for you, or whatever she said. I would suggest that perhaps all that purification and yoga you had done on the in Pennsylvania had actually kind of prepared the stage for this phase it I’m sure that to can’t be unrelated, and that it might have made you more capable of sinking into those deep states.
Prajna Ginty: Possibly, yeah, yeah, maybe? Well, I think one thing that it definitely gave me was some discipline. Yeah. You know, a great deal of discipline,
Rick Archer: except when it came to hostess ring dings.
Prajna Ginty: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I think I think that’s a good point. You know, I can’t really tell that’s what I think everything in our life can prepare us for the next thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And um, so then I became very involved in the teachings of Advaita Vedanta, I was just I couldn’t get enough of it. I remember I had the book I am that which I’m sure you’re familiar with your SATA goddess book. And I had, um, on my, after the end of that period, I had to get a new a new book because I had worn that out so much, you know, just just reading it. And at the end of my time there I had an opportunity to work on the translations of the Rebbe Gita, the first time from Tamil and Sanskrit and editing formatting of the book and reading it every day to prove it. And that’s one of the things that Rahman has said he said if you’re to read anything, read the Rebbe Gita.
Rick Archer: And let’s just spell that for pupils. Alright, big.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, read the Gita. It’s a dialogue between between the sage reboot and one of his disciples on the nature of reality, and it comes in 44 verses. And the Tamil version is really very poetic and beautiful in Sanskrit is it’s different. It’s written more in stanza.
Rick Archer: Yeah. But there were four verses. So it’s a really short thing.
Prajna Ginty: No, they’re long versus Oh, they’re well, I should say, sex shops, Napster’s chapters. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s a good size book, okay. And during that time, I was pregnant with my first daughter, autumn. And so she was, um, she was born during that time. And she’s a remarkable human being. And I think that being able to be born in that environment, and she also heard the Gita every day, you know, because the whole time I was pregnant with her, that was what I was working on. And she had a easy natural birth at home, where there weren’t any complications whatsoever. In fact, the midwife almost didn’t make it in time. Because she just came so easy. And I would call that I’m sure you’ve heard of these different phases, and different people have talked about phases of spiritual awakening in different ways. And, you know, really understanding that spiritual awakening isn’t a one time thing. And it’s different for everybody. And it really evolves over time. So during that time, I feel like I was in the honeymoon phase. You know, it was really kind of coasting along. In I was able to function at a very high level, I had a business in Silicon Valley. And even though I could, I was going in and out of these deep meditative states, on the outside in my life, I was functioning at a really high level. So I think, I think that that’s one of the things that awakening can do for you because it kind of clears out the cobwebs of the mind. And you can become very efficient, very focused, very clear.
Rick Archer: There’s a verse in The Gita yoga karma. sukoshi alum, which means yoga is Skillen action.
Prajna Ginty: Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. So there was that phase and then, and then the phase came for the spiritual rubber where the rubber hit the road, so to speak. And I had twins born to me that were one pound each,
Rick Archer: like three months premature or something three months
Prajna Ginty: premature? Yeah, they were smaller than my hands. And I had never been in a hospital before. Never, you know, that I can remember. I am sure I was born in hospital. But I don’t remember that. And then here, here, I am. helicoptered to this big prestigious hospital. Because the hospital in our town thought, Well, if the babies were coming now they couldn’t handle it. So they helicoptered me off to Stanford.
Rick Archer: So in other words, you went into labor three months premature, or so?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s still it’s still not 100% clear what happened. I could have been having Braxton Hicks, it could have been, which is imitation of labor.
Rick Archer: So theoretically, it might have been a false alarm. It could have
Prajna Ginty: been a false alarm. Well, yes. Yeah. And so I was in Stanford. So there I was in Stanford for the weekend. And as soon as I got there, there weren’t any signs of labor, everything had stopped. But once they admitted me, they wouldn’t let me leave.
Rick Archer: And they insisted on doing a cesarean just, they did
Prajna Ginty: after, after, after two and a half days. They said that I had dilated beyond the point of no return. But also, I don’t know how true that was because their sonogram their particular machine to really be able to see clearly what was happening with the babies wasn’t working on the weekend. Oh, brother. And when Monday morning came around, they were supposed to bring in a technician, a technician. The technician never came, but a new doctor came on. And the new doctor decided that the babies needed to be born without getting this clear picture. Wow. And what they did is they pumped me up with Pitocin to induce labor. And they they assumed that the babies were two and a half pounds. But they weren’t because if they were two and a half pounds, you can have a vaginal birth. Yeah. But anything smaller than that’s impossible. So they did a the Pitocin wasn’t working, nothing was working. And so they decided to do a C section. And so the babies came out and they were one pound. And Abby did did okay. The birth Abby came out first. But Libby came out second and she she couldn’t breathe at all so they gave her CPR for four hours last twice. And she was in a semi coma for the first six months of her life. So that was a huge shift for me overnight. No, this happened in a weekend. Yeah. And, yeah,
Rick Archer: boy, so that that didn’t really come out and the parts of your book that I read that this, this whole thing might have been unnecessary, at least from a conventional perspective, you know that it might have been a false alarm, it might have been a complete Miss judgment. I mean, these days, it would probably be, you know, automatic lawsuit if something like this happened. But it’ll be interesting for you to talk about as we go along, like how you have dealt not only with the challenges of your daughter, but with a sense of feeling that this might they just blew it, you know, that they did this to you and your daughter’s unnecessarily? I would, I would have a hard time getting over the resentment myself.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Well, we know what happened in the beginning. It’s kind of like, with anybody, when there’s a crisis, you go into survival mode. Yeah. You know, like, the biology is all wrapped up in surviving. So I didn’t have any thoughts about, you know, it’s kind of like, as soon as we got out of there, and I had the babies, all I could think about were the babies, and how we were going to go on the next day. And my midwife was axed out of the picture at the hospital. And I think, you know, so I didn’t have her support, which may or may not have brought something more to light, I don’t know. But, um, when we later many years later, actually, when autumn was around 10, I think I found a video, which was a video of the sonogram that was taken by the midwife’s technician. And that was taken two weeks before they were born, you know, two weeks before the big hospital intervention. And in that video, the technician is saying prajna there’s no better way to carry babies, you said you’re doing it right. This is the Cadillac, they have to have everything intersec outer second to placentas. Because I didn’t know with twins, there’s several formations, you can have 12 different formations. And the highest risk is that they share everything. And they call that twin to twin Blood Transfusion Syndrome. And that’s what the doctor said I had, he was what? Yeah, because then if you look at this, there, nothing is going to change in the sonogram. And if you look at this earlier, one, it’s super clear there was to have everything. But I didn’t find that video until they were eight years old. And the statute of limitations is age six in the state of California. So I had to and I have continuously needed to let that go. It has had more of an impact. When we watched that video, my daughter was really bright. My first who’s not disabled, but um, emotionally has been very challenged by the whole situation. So she sat there and watched that and she just cried. It’s like, without without even speaking it. It’s like she, she knew something about it wasn’t wasn’t quite right. And she was more angry than me, she hardly had ever had a tantrum. And that day, she had such a tantrum. And she said, Mom, we have to do something about it. And I did some investigation, and then, you know, you have to decide, like, where do you want your energy to go? You know,
Rick Archer: if your limit limitations had expired? What can you do anyway? I guess?
Prajna Ginty: Right, right, you need you need some you need a real strong, high powered lawyer. And then you got you’re going up against a pretty, pretty vulnerable Korea, pretty big system, right? So, you know, for me, it’s been a little bit of the grease for the mill, in a sense, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s been my edge, and everything that has come as a result of that the different things that I need to interact with that. Normally, you wouldn’t, you know, I’m in the medical I’m in, I’m kind of needing to work within an arena that I’m not accustomed to. And also to make good choices about that to like really be able to listen and to take what’s useful and let go of the rest and to be open to exploration. And I think that I mean, I know a lot of parents now and families who have different kinds of difficulties like this, and I really feel that my background, you know, living in the Ostrom, my, my meditation, everything that I have, has allowed me to stay in this Yeah, you know, in ways that I see other people aren’t able to. Yeah, as you
Rick Archer: continue to tell your story, I think people will see that you did an incredible job dealing with the situation of these kids and meeting with resistance from all sorts of so called authorities that wanted to do things in the conventional way and feed them conventional foods and all this stuff. And you know, it’s what you’ve done is really kind of amazing. In my opinion,
Prajna Ginty: thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it’s been a long haul. Yeah, really?
Rick Archer: Well, we’re, we’re kind of skipping ahead. And we’re because we’re referring to things that people don’t really know about yet, because I’ve read your book, and they haven’t. But so you had these, you know, severely handicapped, brain damaged. Premature twins. And, you know, and this was the end of the spiritual honeymoon, as you put it. Yes. Yeah. So maybe pick it up from there.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, well, I think I was saying how hormones kicked in for a while, you know, the biology kicked in, and I really feel that I was carried for, from my spiritual practice to I feel like it carried me for a while, even when I was in the emergency room and the O R, when that was happening. And I could sense it, because I was put out there, I couldn’t feel anything, you know, from the waist down. But I, I could feel and tell when the babies were born. And in that moment, I knew everything was okay. I knew that there there was a deeper fundamental wellness, that essentially what they are, who they are, is was contained in peace. You know, that there was a fundamental okayness and I knew that they would that they also needed tremendous help. And that was a huge seeing. If you know what I mean? I do, yeah, to, to be in to be in that contradiction. You know, it’s a paradox.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Cuz when you say everything was okay. Sort of an apparent level, everything was not okay. I mean, you had these two babies that were severely disabled. But you’re talking in the kind of the cosmic perspective, everything is all as well and wisely put? Yeah, yeah. And now you have your work cut out for you.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and let me say something to about that, because I, this may sound, I can say this now, at the time, I couldn’t say it. But um, I remember when I left the Ramana, Maharshi ashram, there was a little bit of a falling out there with people, I didn’t choose to leave, my partner actually wrote a letter and put my name to it. And that, that hadn’t be that I leave too. But I was I’m very dedicated to being there because I was so into the Rebbe Gita and the teachings. So that was kind of like the rug was pulled out from under my feet. Because I really felt that that was my life. That was that I had found purpose that these teachings were it. Yeah. And it was pulled out. So when that was pulled out, you’ve probably had this at different times, like a spontaneous prayer arises in you like something arises and, and you’re not praying yet, but it’s coming and what it came, then it said, If this isn’t my purpose, this isn’t my service, my work. Show me what is, you know, it came like that. And then when the babies were born, I was like, Oh, my God, I’m getting my prayer is being answered. No, I said, I said, I wanted to know the whole truth, show me the whole picture. And so I said, Okay, this is this is the walk I have to take. So I can, I can learn, I can get the whole picture. Not that it’s just this honeymoon. You know, there isn’t like the states that we can hang out in and we want to cling to them, you know, where everything is easy, but there’s then comes the trials and challenges so that you can really walk in your beingness Yeah, you know, and so that, that didn’t come right away. You know, that didn’t open up in me right away. I was I was like, Oh, I didn’t know how I was going to get through the day.
Rick Archer: Yeah, me Give. Give us a sense of what your typical day was like, after your previous life of nice long somebodies and everything. What was your typical day like, now?
Prajna Ginty: Oh, I didn’t have sleep. I was rot like, well, Libby. In the beginning she slept a lot, which was a blessing. But Abby had 10 different surgeries. So I was I was at the neonatal intensive care unit, where if anybody’s been in a hospital just multiply the noise by 10 or 20, because you have bells and monitors and timers and all kinds of machines going on all the time, super bright lights. So I was screaming babies. Yes, a lot and angry nurses sometimes and sometimes very happy ones. And in very, very bright light. So it’s it’s a full on environment. And I was in that for four months. I was just so I was kind of wound up
Rick Archer: kind of day and night in that. Yeah, really like you slip there every night for
Prajna Ginty: four months. Yeah, yeah, I was I was in it. I was, well, I would go back and forth to sleep in the we stayed at Ronald McDonald House. And I had autumn to take care of so I would go back. My mother came and stayed with us for a while, but she was very helpful. But I was back and forth. Because Abby was in critical condition. You know, she she was wider than she was along. She was black and blue. She had all these, her entire guts split open, and she had to have her intestines removed. She had her eyes operated on, it was like, really touching go for her.
Rick Archer: That was the most amazing thing where she had her intestines removed, and yet they eventually grew back. Yeah, they didn’t know that was possible. I was wondering if that was because she was really still in an embryonic state, even though she was out of the womb, and at that stage of one’s development intestines can still grow. Is that the explanation for
Prajna Ginty: that? Well, what you’re saying, The doctor didn’t know that either. The surgeon that did it, they called in an expert from Canada because she was one pound. And to perform that surgery, a one pound neonatal is very high risk. So they brought in some specialist. And he came in and he told me, he prepared me for the worse, you know. And he said that he would only have a half an hour to go in there and get all the infection out. And the chances that he could do that in a half an hour, he didn’t know if he could. But when he came back later, he said he got all the infection out. And what he needed to do was remove the entire small intestines. And then they put her on a Class IV bag for three months, and said, we’ll just have to wait and see. And during that time, she only received my milk. They wanted to give her formulator grower and I wouldn’t allow that to happen. So they gave her my milk. And when the three months came again, for them to open her up and see what things look like. He couldn’t even believe it. He said, I’ve never seen this. I’ve never seen an intestines grow back. Yeah. And how do you explain this? And I said, Well, maybe it’s the, the milk, you know, because it has everything you need in it for life. And she didn’t get any chemicals. So he said maybe so he started to open his mind up. And he was really a good doctor was were really he was he was excellent. And so she had that going on. And then she had to have her eyes operated on. And they said if they didn’t do the operation that she would be blind. And I remember
Rick Archer: blind yet.
Prajna Ginty: How can you know?
Rick Archer: Well, you said in your book that she would lock eyes with you and really be looking at you while you’re nursing her.
Prajna Ginty: That’s what I felt. I felt she was looking at me. Yeah, she she was definitely we had a connection to our vision through our eyes. And then when she had the surgery, and the patches came out her eyes didn’t look at me anymore. Right The right eye, left eye could but the right eye was all the way turned in.
Rick Archer: And it stayed that way to this day.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, it’s we’ve done a lot of exercises for that a lot of work. So she she can see, you know, she actually has developed the vision. But this right eye doesn’t work. It doesn’t function as well as the left it will. It’s us to take them on how to
Rick Archer: stigma that no, that’s the that’s the thing Christians get stigmatism, I don’t know.
Prajna Ginty: It’s, you know, little movements, right. Yeah,
Rick Archer: yeah. The reason I’m asking you all these medical kind of questions and letting you go on about this is that, you know, people might be thinking, Well, yeah, but let’s get back to the spiritual stuff. But I think people really need to understand get a feeling for the situation and for the, for the kind of what you were dealing with, and some of this nitty gritty stuff helps to paint that picture, I think. And we’ll we’ll get into plenty of discussions about spiritual implications and all but people have to realize that you were, I mean, if we want to just recap and put this in a nutshell, here’s somebody who was you know, able to sit in Samadhi all day long and a real nice spiritual groovy state who was all suddenly hit with a overwhelming task or challenge and trying to deal with it. And, you know, we kind of have to ask ourselves, if we think that we’re awake or, you know, enlightened or whatever we think we are, how it would hold up under, under more trying circumstances, because usually, you know, spiritual people, unless they get met with some unexpected thing, they managed to kind of organize their lives. So everything is kind of smooth. You know, you got your routine and your diet and your comfy little meditation room and everything kind of just cruises along. But, you know, what, if you suddenly got transplanted into what if you got cancer? What if you had a car accident? What if? What if what if, you know, there’s so many things that could happen? How would it hold up under those circumstances? So we’re kind of, you know, painting a picture of your circumstances here? Because that’s the theme that we’re going to be talking about.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I think it’s important because it also lets people see too that circumstances aren’t what decide your happiness. Yeah, you know, that you can be challenged. And if there is this remembering it for me, the fortunate part about that is, until the end, when it got really hard, we’ll get to that. There was this kind of remembering, you know, that there was we were contained in something bigger. And I had reminders of that, for instance, one of the nurses became a very good friend. And one time she brought me a Rumi poem. Right, right after my daughter’s eye surgery. And I was devastated by that. You know, I just that that really was hard. That hit me very hard. And she she read me this poem, and it just was so touching. And it felt Oh, again, there is something that’s okay. In this. Yeah.
Rick Archer: I think another thing worth pointing out is that it wasn’t like you were dealing with this as if Oh, the world is an illusion, and nothing’s really happening. And, and there is no self and all that stuff that people, parent, but uh, you know, you were devastated. And it’s okay to be devastated. You know, that’s, that’s a natural mother’s reaction to a situation like that. And yet, paradoxically, deeper level, there was some kind of deep okayness underlying the, the feeling of devastation.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, also something that I noticed during that time, which I came to understand happens for all of us, is I saw myself at different times check out, you know, I did check out and, um, I could see it, I could observe it happening. And it was as if sometimes I would feel I was it maybe it wasn’t even checking out. But I was see, it was as if I was watching somebody else’s life. Yeah. I couldn’t believe that. It was my life is like, you know, I was really walking in somebody else’s life. And I was waiting for someone to turn the lights on, or for that dream to stop. It’s like, okay, when am I going to have my life back? You know,
Rick Archer: so you were kind of in a deep witness state or something at times? Are you saying that, that that there was a, you were kind of seeing it from such a detached perspective that it almost didn’t seem like it was yours? It was like you’re watching a movie or something? Is that what you’re saying?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, in a sense, and then I can understand that too, as a as phases people go through in their practice or in meditation, where sometimes you have to detach yourself all the way and watch it until some kind of resolution comes, you know, so you can walk back into it. Yeah.
Rick Archer: And sometimes, if not, usually, it’s not a willful act to detach yourself like that. It’s just a condition that you find yourself in where there’s, you know, you’re involved in this intense thing. And yet, you feel like there’s this inner sense that you are this sort of silent, detached witness. It’s not like you’re trying to do it. It’s kind of your, your way of functioning at that time.
Prajna Ginty: Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah. So let me go on with that story, because we’re coming to a dark night. So after a couple of years of this, it pretty much wore me out. And Libby, like I said, she was sleeping until she was six months old. So she had been home for three months. And Abby came home at four months old. So we’re all at home for two months. And it wasn’t that difficult, right in the beginning because we were given help and the doctor came to our house. We had a home visiting doctor who was wonderful. But then Libby suddenly woke up and she woke up crying constantly. It was as if she didn’t have myelin sheath to protect her nerve endings. So it was as if the medication that they gave her wore off. You know, she had an N drip, she had a, she was being sedated to a particular degree. And she was also on oxygen. So we took her, we took all of that off when she got home. And one day, she just woke up and was just you’re irritable all the time. And she wasn’t able to keep food down. So she would projectile vomit. So if the only way I could stop her from crying is if I rocked her continuously in the rocking chair. Or I would I had a sling and I would bounce her, we had a mini trampoline, we would jump on and take taking turns with other people. And it was around the clock. 24. So 24/7 Yeah, so I was usually the night person. And because the helpers didn’t stay overnight, you know, but then a nurse came and helped me during the day, so I wasn’t getting any sleep. And I would rock her maybe fall asleep for a short time in the rocking chair. And then she’d wake up again. And it was it was just her nervous, her neurology wasn’t, wasn’t developed enough. And she she just needed that she needed to be back in the womb, you know, she just, that’s what she needed. And so after about two and a half years of that I was so worn out and and I had lost sight of any sense of okayness all I could see I was shrouded in darkness. It made me really understand maybe what deep depression might look like, you know, I don’t know what it was. But I went into a really dark, dark place. And I was ready to end it. You know, I was just like, this is not the life I can live. It’s not I can’t do it. And I we live over near the ocean. And I was oh, it was something took me over. I can’t even say that. I don’t even know if I decided it. I was really just taken over by something. And I was ready to jump off the cliff into the ocean.
Rick Archer: Unless you actually walk to the edge of it. Right? Totally there with the man. You’re
Prajna Ginty: with the baby. Yeah, we were both going. Yeah, yeah. And, um, I got all the way to the edge. And, you know, I was really leaning in and just ready to go close my eyes. And I got pushed back. Which I can’t even explain. But I got thrown thrown back on the ground. It wasn’t
Rick Archer: a gust of wind or anything. It was something else.
Prajna Ginty: It could have been a gust of wind, it could have been something else. I’m not really sure. But it was, it was a big push. And it was like the burning bush kind of thing. It was powerful. And it said, You aren’t going, you’re staying. You’re your stand. So this is your life. This is the one you got. This is the one you’re going to live, go home and get some sleep. You know, and so many hours conveyed
Rick Archer: to you. And I mean, like a voice saying that it was just more like that’s the concept that hit you is it was like a message or something. Here’s here’s the deal.
Prajna Ginty: It was it was like a voice. Good. Yeah, it was it was very strong. Maybe it was a voice that was speaking from inside. Maybe it was coming from outside or both. But it was something that was greater than my little mind. That was telling me I can’t do this. Yeah, you know, it’s just something broke out of that something broke open and said you’re doing it go home, you know, go back home. So we walked back home and it was already lighter, just walking home. And I fell asleep in the rocking chair with Libby and I slept for four hours continuous. That was the first time I had four hours of continuous sleep and about two and a half years. Did you have a husband through all this? I had a partner who left right around this time.
Rick Archer: So he hung out about that far and then he left
Prajna Ginty: he got really sick. Yeah, he had the stress. He had a kidney condition that was exasperated through the stress of it. So he was doing enough just to maintain his job and was very helpful. His he was as helpful as he could be. And so I slept and everything turned around started to turn around after that because I think what that that near death experience so that near suicide jumping. Yeah, that coming that close to the edge. broke open my resistance was like my resistance to the life that I had, was broken open was up until that without with all of the I was just trying to change. I wanted her crying to stop. Now I wanted to sleep, I wanted all of those things. So it brought me to an edge. And then I wasn’t resisting it anymore. And guess what? She stopped crying? Interesting. Yeah, yeah, not all at once. But it really it slowed down. And I think too, because of the resistance falling away. It opened me up to more possibilities. And I want I want to see a neurological acupuncturist, after that, you know,
Rick Archer: I, this sounds a little esoteric, but I, I firmly believe, and I have friends who actually experienced this very clearly that we’re really, we’re surrounded by loving entities who try to help us in whatever way they can. And, you know, given the fact that we still have free will and everything, but, you know, I wonder if the the deal here was that they said, All right, this, this girl is really, she’s had about enough, we have to sort of increase the help, let’s let’s sort of get this baby to stop crying. And I don’t know if this sounds a little weird to people, maybe. But I really feel like we’re not alone. And there are, they’re sort of subtler. We could call them guardian angels or impulses of intelligence or entities which are, you know, helping us in our lives. And, you know, maybe when you reach such a pivotal point, they decided they better increase the amount of help they were giving. And that’s why Libby Maybe? Or maybe it was just totally within your own psychology when you stopped resisting, and somehow on a subtle level that affected Libby’s way of functioning. And, and she settled down more, I don’t know. But
Prajna Ginty: yeah, yeah, I really believe there was some kind of intervention.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I mean, even What stopped you from jumping off the cliff? Sounds like it was some sort of guardian angel type of thing. You know?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah. There was there was something happened there. Something turned me around. And yeah, and, and gave me some comfort. For sure, you know, gave me a sense of, Well, maybe this can happen. Yeah. And it opened me up. So that was cool. And then the after, after that, very shortly after that, as some within a matter of weeks, my old friend who introduced me to my first thought song, her name was Kathy, who I just love. And she came knocking at my door during that time. And she had a tape for me to listen to, she said, there’s a new teacher in town. And at the time, I wasn’t, you know, I was like, I was in this starting to lighten up dark night. But it was still wasn’t there yet. And I thought, Oh, I don’t want to hear about enlightenment. I don’t want to hear about all that. You know, because I still was under the impression that Awakening was about the mountaintop experience. And, and I didn’t need someone to tell me that because that was what I lost. That was gone. And so she said, No, you’re gonna like this guy. He’s the real deal. And he’s talking about dark nights. And I said, Wow, I’ve never heard anyone talk about a dark night. And she said, yeah, she said, you’ll like this, because most of the people in the room were falling asleep. And he said, Yes. Okay. So I think dark nights are really an important thing to talk about, too. So I’m glad we’re talking about this. But I was at the end kind of in resistance was falling away, but I still had resistance to seeing a new teacher. Because I really had the idea that spiritual awakening was about bliss and feeling good and all of that. And I thought, you know, it wasn’t really a possibility for me, that that had been taken away. But also at the same time, I wanted to listen to that tape. And so as soon as she left, the first thing that I did is I put it in the cassette player. We still had cassettes, then was one of the cassettes that was he’s one was that that was 98. I think
Rick Archer: I just gave away a cassette player yesterday to donate plays here. And guys said, Well, I guess I can do something with this.
Prajna Ginty: So when she left, I listened to it and it was Adi Shanti, was Adi Shanti. Talking about mysteries of Christ and the birth, the birth being spiritual awakening the new birth, and that being the beginning, where you just have your foot in the door, and then everything unfolds from there. And as part of that, unfoldment we go through these trials and tribulations. You Big challenges, and they’re all meant to widen our capacity to stand in life. Because really, in the end, it’s about who are you when the lights go out, you know, in the end, because what are you where your were your fears, and, and I think that being able to walk through a dark night is an opportunity to be free of fear. And so I started listening to him going to satsang. Immediately every he was in town, very close to where I lived in the town I lived in and then the town next to it. So I went twice a week. And I just sat the first time I went to sit with him. I didn’t even notice the other people because I really just wanted to hear what he had to say. And I went and sat down in the front. And I think I was probably going to satsang for about a year before anybody knew I was going because I just completely kept to myself. And I went and I sat down in the front. But even after the first Satsang, I went home that night, and I went into my children’s bedrooms, and I was just bowing to every one of them. I just was like Thank you. I felt these are my teachers, you know, it’s like what I’m being given is beyond measure. And I really felt such a good fortune at meeting Adi Shanti. For one. But being given the life I was given because it was really going to allow this awakening to take hold and everlasting way wasn’t going to be something that came and went, you know, I lost it. I found it. That was the end of I lost that I found it. You know that that was truly the end of that. And I started going on retreats with ADIA and started to have more experiences of of being everything. How can you
Rick Archer: How could you go on retreats with the babies, that someone they’re at an age when other people would take care of them?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, they were three by then. And I had through an agency, I was able to get 40 hours of nursing care week for Libby. And I had to amazing, great nurses. And they share that and one nurse was very willing to stay over and just sleep there. When I went on retreat, I was able to go on a 10 day retreat. And that was just amazing. I couldn’t even believe it. And I felt like I just got restored. And Adi Shanti. And I became very close and very close with mukti to we’re very good friends. And he used to say to me because we had privates. And he I shared with him what my realization was. And he was just constantly confirming it was just confirming, confirming, confirming. And until one time he came, I came on retreat, and he goes, What are you coming on retreats for anymore? And I said, well, because I like to get a good night’s sleep. And the food is good. You know, but um, you know, he entered a certain point, he said, You know, it’s really time for you to stand on your own two feet. And that was when we moved to Pennsylvania and I started giving sad songs. That was in 2001. And at first I first started and I had a you know, a very powerful experience where the name came to me prajna it came to me during that time. And it came three different ways. And when it came the third time I said okay, I’ll keep it. And I told audio that you know, that was my new name. And he was like, yeah, that’s fitting. Keep it now go on Get out of here. Interesting. Yeah. Not like that. And is that in his own way? Basically that right? Yeah.
Rick Archer: Nice. Well continue. have any more questions. I mean, I can always think of questions, but I’m just enjoying you rolling out your story here. And you move to Pennsylvania because there was a Waldorf school or something that you wanted to get your girls. Yeah, yeah. For
Prajna Ginty: special needs kids there was. Some people have probably heard of the Camphill organizations, but they’re started by Rudolf Steiner. We started the Waldorf schools and adopter and their villages for people with disabilities, mostly for adults, and they have them in a few places in the States but all over Europe, and they had one for children in Pennsylvania, the only one for children in the states in Pennsylvania. Was Waldorf curriculum for special needs kids. So I did want to get my kids into that because we had I had created a school in my home. We had a school all the way up to kindergym was Waldorf. And we had special needs kids in it. And I wanted to continue that because they were making really good progress. And yeah, and when I looked at the typical public schools, you know, you had to maybe go outside of the box. So we went outside of the box,
Rick Archer: how are you supporting yourself through all this?
Prajna Ginty: How am I supporting myself? Good question. Money has never been a problem for me. You know, it’s like, I don’t even think about it. It’s funny, like how I’ve always been very good at making money. You know, my business, I sold my business when autumn was six months old, and I got a very good son for that. And then I was selling baby slings and doing yoga classes, even when my kids were, well, not what not one, Libby was during the crying time, I wasn’t doing anything. But um, money’s always come easy to me. It’s interesting. And then later on, I started working as a therapist. But, um, so through that, and the nursing is paid for. So all of those so I was getting some help by the state. Anybody who has special needs, it’s going to get helped by the state, at least you used to be able to things keep changing, as the state is drying out. But that and I’ve been lucky, I think I’m really lucky that way. Okay.
Rick Archer: Just curious. It’s one of those questions that arose as I was reading your book, it’s like, doing all this stuff. But where’s the money coming from?
Prajna Ginty: Oh, and for our school, I wrote five grants. I would wrote five grants, and I got every one of them, you know, so that that school didn’t come from my money. It was funded and
Rick Archer: started your own school? You’re saying?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. And we, we took in, we didn’t have tuition for special needs kids. And you know, everything was pretty much covered. Oh, and then when we went to Pennsylvania, the Waldorf school was a certified non public school in the state of California.
Rick Archer: Even though it was in Cal, even though it’s in Pennsylvania,
Prajna Ginty: yes. So what that meant if you were a resident from the state of California, you didn’t have to pay tuition.
Rick Archer: Okay. Curious about these practicalities? Yeah. Those
Prajna Ginty: are good practicalities. Yeah.
Rick Archer: So you’re on these coasts, and you’re doing some SOT songs and there was something you alluded to about some song up in Woodstock or someplace that totally flopped. Or it was a weekend retreat or something. It turned out to be a disaster.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. That was my my big teacher failing experience. Yeah, well, I was really busy. When I got out to Pennsylvania. I mean, the first Satsang that I did was I put a flier up in a, like one of these 711 type places. And I don’t know how people saw it, but two people came. And from there, it just grew. It grew very fast. And I was really busy. So I was invited to go to New Jersey. I was going, you know, Woodstock was the furthest place I was gonna go visit but I was in Delaware and all these different places doing intensives and retreats, and meetings and having private private clients and I didn’t plan to get that busy. So I knew Woodstock was a stretch. And it had been a difficult, you know, a typical week at home. And I didn’t get a lot of sleep that week. But anyways, when I packed myself up, I didn’t fully pack I didn’t have any time to plan so I just, I’m jumping in the car and I got to barely make it in time. And I wasn’t considering the turnpike traffic, so I got a little bit lost. But then I arrived to this woman who invited me to come and I had to clean up and change my clothes. That was I still had my day clothes on with my Libby burps all over me. Everything and I didn’t bring a shirt. I didn’t bring a clean shirt. And um, she was a very petite woman and her shirt wouldn’t fit me and so she gave me your husband’s one of his shirts to wear which was like this big pharma flannel kind of thing. And oh, so I just kept moving along and we got to the satsang and before me that’s where Ganga Ji had been giving SOT songs. So I think they were expecting somebody like Ganga Ji to come in with flowing white, you know clothes. Beautiful Ganga Ji is it all Oliver white in this and there I come in looking a little bit like a rack, you know what, this flannel shirt down? And it was just a total flop because I didn’t have any time to just sit for a minute and prepare. And so people, you know, I did a meditation and I didn’t talk much. But I invited people to come up and the first person that came up, came up to talk about somebody who had just died and they were there, they were very upset and distraught. And I just felt like I handled it really poorly, because I just wasn’t, I wasn’t there. And it just felt like the big teacher fouling. But really, it was just I didn’t have enough sleep. But but after that happened, on the way home, I realized something in my car, that I had had my driver’s seat up like this. And in, I only knew this because the next day my caregiver borrowed my car, and he adjusted the seat. And when I went to get in the car after that, I was like, why is the seat way back here? No, it was way back. And why did he adjust that? And I asked him, he said, No, I didn’t adjust it. He said, you adjusted it all the way forward. And I was like, so then when I sat in the seat, I realized that actually the way he adjusted, it was the normal way that the seat is, and that I had been leaning forward and driving like this, that I was driving ahead of myself.
Rick Archer: So it was sort of representative of your mentality or something.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, it was that I was still chasing, I was still on this, you know, a still driven to do, you know, even the teaching thing, it was like it was a it was I was driving, I was driving to heal the kids, I was, you know, a little bit too much in the front. And then when I got back on the car, and then I was I was able to relax back in the seat. And it was a deep seeing for me. And I left that I let the Teach ahead to let things fall away, I was trying to do too much. And that was the beginning. Or maybe it was a new development or a deeper development of receding into the backspace. You know, so like, at first in the beginning, when you’re teaching, there can be this excitement. And you know, you want to get out and meet all these people and, you know, go around and accept all the invitations and feel like you need to. And then I started to see that I didn’t need to do that. And I started to listen in a different way. And there’s a chapter in my book about listening there. And, and I really think that that’s what spiritual awakening is as it as it becomes more embodied. It can feel like all of our lives are kind of living in the front space, you know, we’re here and this character, this persona that feels like it needs to do do do achieve and accomplish. And when we awaken we feel you know, we see that there’s there’s something else that’s living the life. And you you recede into your nobody Enos Yeah, no, you recede back into your beingness. And then there’s a listening that comes with that. And you can start to listen from a different space, and, and not be the driver. You know,
Rick Archer: yeah, there’s a saying in Vedic scripture someplace, I don’t know the Sanskrit but it’s Brahman is the charioteer. And, you know, it’s kinda reminds me of that Greyhound dad, you know, it’s such a pleasure to take the bus and leave the driving to us. It’s like, you’re not really running the show. And, you know, you kind of shift into a space eventually, where that’s your experience, which is not to say that on the outside, you might not appear highly motivated, and, you know, driven and all kinds of plans and projects. I mean, I have a picture of Arma behind me, the hugging saint, and, you know, there’s, there’s a sort of simultaneous, complete oceanic, you know, all as well, and is relaxed into the absolute kind of thing, and yet at the same time, frenetic activity every moment, you know, with a million projects going on, so the two can be integrated. Mm
Prajna Ginty: hmm. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And yeah, it’s, it’s more like you’re coming from a place of response, you know, you’re responding and not, like, when information comes to us, we can either react to it or respond to it. And we can respond, but we can respond from this greater intelligence, right? You know, which, it’s, it’s below the shoulders, you know,
Rick Archer: information may come from within us to it’s not like you’re just following the outer prompts from other people, but there might be an inspiration or a thought that arises do this, you know, but it’s kind of like, you’re not sitting there racking your brains trying to come up with such thoughts. It comes from a deep intuitive impulse, and then you just respond in an effortless way.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they call that prajna. No, actually, yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Rick Archer: There’s a saying this prajna Poirot, it’s it means mistake of the intellect. And it’s when you you kind of lose that relaxed, you know, higher intelligence is in the driver’s seat perspective and get caught up in the in the isolated details and So the progeny value is is lost. It’s mistaken. It’s it’s overshadowed. It’s constricted. And so, you know, so I think what you experienced and are describing is a return to that orientation where prajna is in the driver’s seat.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it’s a shift in orientation. Yeah. And it doesn’t happen all at once. You know, it doesn’t happen initially. And awakening, maybe it does for some people. But that’s usually, you know, comes comes later, that whole getting grounded in and moving from a different place.
Rick Archer: I’m kind of leery of the word awakening myself, because it has such a kind of a simplistic static connotation. Awakening, it happened, you know, but I think what you’ve been describing is that there, you know, awakening can be a beginning. And then it can be awakenings, stages of awakening. And, you know, it’s like, it’s like education. You go to the first grade, you say, Okay, I’ve experienced education now. I’m educated.
Prajna Ginty: There’s no end to it. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. As long as you’re here living.
Rick Archer: Yeah. You’re breathing. You’re still growing and evolving and learning.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah. Well, and then also, there’s the there’s everybody else that’s you to
Rick Archer: write? Uh, huh. In other words, even if in some sense, you’re finished, which ultimately you’re not, but then there’s this larger, you know, thing collective mass, yeah, the collective intelligence, and that’s not finished. And so you become more of a kind of a tool or a washing machine for the uplift, the purification of that.
Prajna Ginty: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why I think, you know, these collective sittings that people do together really benefit the whole, you know, even if you feel a sense of, Well, you know, I’m, I’m awake or whatever. But, um, the meditation doesn’t end, it doesn’t end because it’s benefiting the whole. And you’re, you’re part of it. Right? So I think,
Rick Archer: if you’re meditating in a group or something,
Prajna Ginty: well, just in general, that the practice of meditation doesn’t end. You know, that it it bent the entire because we’re part of the whole, it benefits the whole. I agree. Yeah. And I have i That’s why I continue to have sittings, I do a lot less talking. Now, in my songs, I don’t have a lot to talk about that kind of. I don’t know why it’s just not there. Something comes I talk about it, but it’s really about the silence. Yeah, no, and peep people recognizing the power of their own presence.
Rick Archer: I think it was you I in your book that was saying that audio was saying that, you know, it’s the talking he does is almost like just something to keep you entertained. While the silence does its thing, you know?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah. It’s yeah, it’s it’s yeah, the resonance.
Rick Archer: Yeah. And maybe, if we could point to an underlying principle of this, it’s, it’s, we’re not, we’re not just isolated biological entities, you know, essentially, deeply we are. We’re the ocean of consciousness, and if we, and that that ocean can be lived and embodied through these entities. But when that happens, and when it’s an experience that it gets enlivened, and it doesn’t just get enlivened within our, you know, five, six foot physiology it gets the field gets enlivened far beyond the limits of our individuality. And that field enlivenment is changing the world.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yes, I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. That’s, that’s a much more fruitful way of being in the world than through egoic consciousness. Yeah,
Rick Archer: and I think that’s why so many awakenings are happening these days. You know, in many cases with people who haven’t even thought about spiritual practice, or done any or anything, they’re, they’re tying their shoes. And also, awakening happens, and then they have to figure out later on what happened, but it’s because the field is getting enlivened, and it’s like, you know, the floor of a forest, somehow the earth getting more nutritious, all these plants start springing up, which weren’t born able to grow before. There. So there’s this kind of global thing happening, which I think is exciting.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, totally. Uh huh.
Rick Archer: All right. So you were in Pennsylvania. You had the flop in Woodstock.
Prajna Ginty: Sorry, Woodstock. Yeah.
Rick Archer: What’s more exciting events than you but
Prajna Ginty: yeah, yeah. What it was it was good. I think it was it chanting said that. It’s helped It’s important for everyone to have that teacher workout, so to speak. Yeah. You know, in the beginning, and in the end, I think it, you know, turns out to be to the vet benefit. Yeah. So then Okay, so we’re in California now. And I moved back to California because this is our home for one. And we were three years in Pennsylvania, and everybody was missing everything back in California, our home and our people and the kids dad and, you know, made it harder to visit with him. So we came back and before we went to Pennsylvania, we apply to a school in Colfax, California, that did Waldorf developmental movement, a private school, a little school, and they didn’t want except Abby Libby them because they weren’t walking. So she said, get her walking, and I’ll take her. So while we’re, while we’re there was six then that was before we went to Pennsylvania. So then we’re coming back and they’re nine. And Abby learned to walk as soon as we got to Pennsylvania, because we found this program to put her on and she became an independent Walker. So we showed up at this school. We had I applied online and over the phone, and so we, we thought that Abby was accepted. But in the meantime, something shifted with the school. They didn’t let us know. But they decided they were going to close. So we were driving to Colfax thinking we are going to go to the school. And we got there and it wasn’t happening. And what she told us is that there’s another school up in Nevada City, Grass Valley, it’s a charter school, take her there. And so we went there and happened to be on the day that we came, there was one student dropped out. So Abby was able to get in. And that’s how we ended up in Nevada City Grass Valley. And then how I started teaching up here again, was, um, there was a guy that I saw at an Adi Shanti retreat, and he recognized me when I came up here, and he said, Don’t you give soft songs? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I do. I do. So I told him, I do. And he, he started hosting me. And then I got really busy again, up here, doing retreats, and intensives and one on ones. Until this day, I don’t know how it happened. You know, when I look back at how busy we were, I used to clear out my house people, a group of a crew of people would come over, they were going to be on the retreat, and we would empty my house out. And the kids for two nights and create and have the retreat right in my house. We did that about 10 times. And you know, we just had intensive silent retreats and sad songs. And it was great. It was really great. And I did that up until Oh, until I got into high school, you know, at dinner know? Oh, until June our
Rick Archer: dog is up there. You know him?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, we’re friends. I think. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there’s some other people around here. But yeah, I kept that going. That was up until I found the video. You have the sonogram? Yeah, yeah. And when I found that I started to slow down. It kind of weighed on me. And I didn’t feel I didn’t feel the juice, it kind of that had an impact on me. And I wasn’t as enlivened. And I felt called to stay home more. And I call that my cave time in the book, and I felt like I really needed to be with my daughters more, especially my oldest daughter, because she was working through something really difficult. And, you know, so it was like that for a few years. And that was really, really good, really nourishing. And I’m really glad that happened, you know, in a sense, because she needed she needed that time. And I didn’t need to be doing the teaching. No, I didn’t I didn’t need to be out doing that as much as I was. You know, so now it’s simple. Now I can do both now. Now there’s, there’s there feels like there’s a balance between taking care of my kids and really being here for them. 100% and not be tired. And also when people come to me for private sessions, and the settings that we have, I can really be present for that too. Yeah, but I’m not I’m not over booking myself in either direction.
Rick Archer: Now, you’re going to Peru these days, or is that we’re getting ahead of our story.
Prajna Ginty: No, I think that’s about where we are. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Rick Archer: So that’s an interesting development.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, that is um, How did I get interested in that? Well, let me tell you a little about, you might already know about the Shipibo tradition.
Rick Archer: I don’t think I ever heard the word until you mentioned it. Okay, well, Shipibo tradition
Prajna Ginty: comes out of a particular part of Peru along the Amazon River. And it’s a very ancient culture that up bows, and all that they work with is plant medicine. So they have all kinds of plants to heal anything from cancer, you know, to growing your hair back. digestive issues, everything, but how they work with the plants, they ingest, they do what are called deatils. And a deatta is a special diet that happens anywhere from a week to a year, the longest is a year, and you go into the jungle and you die it just one specific plant. And I find this to be fascinating just because of my, my, my little wrestling match with Western medicine, to to find that they’re taking something from nature, and they they’ll go on a diet with it. And that’s how they learn about its properties.
Rick Archer: So you mean that they’ll go and eat nothing but that plant for a long period of time?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, the longest is a year or
Rick Archer: so just some weird plant with it’ll just eat that plant and nothing else for a year.
Prajna Ginty: Nothing else? Well, they’ll have every second or third day like fish or a plantain something really simple. Get some protein and yeah, and water. Yeah. But, um, no, the whole idea is that the plant is your nourishment. And that’s what’s going to, it’s kind of downloads the information about the plant. So the plant, I really believe we have a plant self. And then in Waldorf education, they talk about the plant or all the mineral world, now we have all your different worlds. So what I feel gets, I think the plant self is very related to our etheric body, you know, that it’s kind of like the mood of the soul in a sense, you know, that you have this, this body, and that in our modern culture, if you if there isn’t even a culture, you know, our modernized world has been depleted of all the cultural traditions pretty much. And in Peru, and some places along the Amazon, they still are trying to preserve these rich, rich cultures. And so with that, the, the medicines are waking up this plant self, you know, so, so the plant, our plant self becomes enlivened through that, and what can happen is really deep healing, not only for the soul, but it can clear out unconscious material to depending on what medicines you’re using.
Rick Archer: If I could just interject something, it’s like, usually what Western medicine does is it tries to find the active ingredients in a plant that extracts those, and then tries to make it into, you know, a commercial product or something that you can take. In other words, like if they discovered that a particular plant seemed to have an effect on cancer, they say, okay, cool. Now forget the rest of the plant. Let’s see what it is in this plant that’s curing the cancer. And we’ll extract that and turn it into some kind of a drug. But I think what the the indigenous people would say, is that the there’s a holistic intelligence in the plant that Yeah, yeah, that is lost. If you extract the whole is more than a collection of parts. You can’t just extract an active ingredients and expect it to have the same holistic effect.
Prajna Ginty: Right, exactly. Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. And even these plants as they ingest them, they, the shamans, they see patterns, they see the the chemistry of the plant in energetic patterns, and they are able to read this. And also, then they develop what they call eco rose, which are the songs of the plants. So the Eco is also a healing medicine. It’s It’s the voice of the plant. There’s, in fact, this really great book out called the singing plants, you know, that comes out of that tradition. Somebody who, who did a very extensive study living there and with the Shipibo has over like, three decades, and created this volume of plant medicine, the information about it? Yeah, so it’s really different. So they won’t treat somebody unless they’ve already ingested the plant and have been treated and know its properties. And then they work with whatever the situation is. So let’s
Rick Archer: say somebody listening to this had some kind of cancer for instance. So They might go down to Peru and sit be with the Shipibo. And, and the Shipibo would be able to determine what kind of plant would be good for their particular condition. And then they would put them on a regimen where they were mostly just eating that plant and occasionally a little something else. And maybe they were chanting some songs along with it that that. So is that what you explained? You’re saying? Yeah, yeah. And a lot of people going down and doing that kind of thing. Yeah,
Prajna Ginty: yeah, this one place is called the Temple of the way of light. There are several shamans there. It’s the people that founded the place have gone through their little weeding them out because not all shamans are clean. You know, you have to, you have to know what you’re getting into. And anyway, they mostly work with female shamans, which is very, very interesting. It’s in sometimes there’s a balance between the men and the women.
Rick Archer: Like Western teachers, I’d say the females probably have a better track record in behaving themselves.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, they do their two, they have a much better track record. And they’re also most of them are like grandmother’s, and really beautiful ladies, excuse me. So person could go down there. And one of the plants one of the most popular plants that they work with, of course, is Ayahuasca. And I’ve, I’ve seen people have tremendous results from working with that plant ceremoniously. Not in a recreational way at all. But what they do down there is they set up these 12 de cera workshops, they call it, and a person would go there based on their own interest, of course, and there’s something they want to heal in their life, or be free of or whatever, it’s not necessarily meant for spiritual awakening, you know, because you know, that that comes from you. But the plant can clear things out of the way, especially trauma. So I’ve seen many people go down there and work with the medicine and have trauma, you know, something that’s really tightly suppressed and packed into the system, where years of therapy doesn’t get to it, or years of sitting on a meditation cushion doesn’t get to it, and then you go there, and this really wise plant, opens it up and flushes it out of your system.
Rick Archer: Did you
Prajna Ginty: know I didn’t have that.
Rick Archer: So have you done Ayahuasca down there? Oh, yeah, I have. So So typical question someone might ask is okay, here’s this woman who has already undergone a whole series of awakenings and has really kind of, you know, been a satsang teacher and is, you know, pretty well established by most people’s standards. Why would she feel the need to do something like that wouldn’t sort of be unnecessary for someone who’s undergoing so much spiritual advancement?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, it’s not really necessary. You know, but I’m, I’m doing it because I’m interested in training as a shaman. Okay, so I’m doing the deat has to one or the other. I’m doing all kinds of plants. When I go there. It’s I work with all different kinds of plants. I’m specifically interested in finding some plants that will work for my daughters.
Rick Archer: Yeah. No, I can some of these plants yet.
Prajna Ginty: No, no, not yet. They’re, they’re not old enough. But the eight. So the way that it works is usually anyone who’s going to die at the plants will also try Ayahuasca because it’s kind of like the, like, it’s a perjure. You know, I It’s the the Ayahuasca means purge. No, so that’s the mother plant and it’s purging any negative energies, or dark energies, or any residual can even get into collective energies, you know, clearing all of that out of your system. So that would be taken first so that you’re cleared out, and then you can take the other plant, and you can really see what its properties are.
Rick Archer: So what was your experience with it?
Prajna Ginty: My experience was getting really like I felt like I lost a couple of years. You know, when I did the, the whole ceremony one time, it’s seven ceremonies. I felt like I it was as if all of that sleep that I’d ever caught. Like I just I felt really revived like all of the tiredness because when you purge you don’t only purge through vomiting you know, you can purge out both ends. You can purge through yawning. Shaking so I’ve seen lots of people go there and just have tiredness worse. Tired of their system? And I think for me, that was the main thing that got cleared out, is just this. You know, any weariness, you know, weakness, you know, just kind of feeling tired a little bit exhausted physically. Yeah, I think I might have been, you know, close to having Oh, what is it called where, you know from lack of sleep, there’s something that develops, but oh, I can’t think of what it was. The other thing that happened for me too, when I said I didn’t have trauma release, I actually did the scar tissue from when I had the C section. All of all of that got worked through. Oh, yeah, so well, because it’s
Rick Archer: not there, you don’t see a scar there anymore. Yeah,
Prajna Ginty: I don’t see a scar there anymore. And, um, a lot of energy freed up there, it was like that part of my body was closed, was kind of like contracted energy there. And now, like, I could never do a setup. You know, it’s like, really, and now, you know, because I do yoga, I can do things that I wasn’t able to do before. Interesting. So I had I had mostly physical changes.
Rick Archer: So so you’re kind of in training to be Shipibo? I guess you’re saying not? Well, that’s a tribe, actually. But to be some sort of plant medicine expert. Right. And you’re going down there and doing the training in stages? A couple of weeks here a couple of weeks there. Are you?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, just go for like a week and a half? Yeah.
Rick Archer: And is the end goal to be able to do it back in the States?
Prajna Ginty: Um, I don’t know, you know, it’s like, it’s not even defined for me yet. I’m kind of really exploring it. Because I met different people working with the medicine and I, I wanted to consider, like, could there is, is there something in the plant world, because I’m sure even in the States, you know, that we have plants that we haven’t even been able to figure out all their properties yet. But I’m just really interested in plants, and in herbs, and in healing medicine. And I know that my daughters are going to need that for the rest of their lives. So, you know, some, if I can find something that can offer them more comfort or more function, other than just all of the different physical activities that we’re doing. I’m interested in that. And I’m also because I often work with people, in my private practice to have trauma. You know, I, I’m very open, it’s like, I wouldn’t suggest it to somebody, but if somebody were to ask me about it, I would tell them the truth about my experience in working with medicine, and if they felt drawn to it, I would encourage it, because I think it takes it can take a lot of time off of your practice by by getting through those those heavy, dark places, and working it out of the system. Yeah, but I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t encourage it for anything recreational. And then also in the end, you know, when it comes to the end of the day, you know, it’s really you and in presence is it’s really, any, but there’s so many things that can support, you know, coming to this sense of integration. Sure, you know, you know, because different therapies. I mean, there’s like spiritual awakening is one thing, but it’s not going to accomplish everything, you know, as part of the whole picture.
Rick Archer: Right? There’s so many things that need to be worked out. Yeah, you know, in thinking of Patanjali at the moment, first of all, in his Ashtanga Yoga, you know, he has all these different aspects, Yamas, and niyamas, and pranayama, and asanas and all these different things. And then there’s Samadhi. And it’s not so it’s not only just Samadhi, there’s all these other aspects that are correlated with Samadhi. And that need to also develop, you can’t develop anyone to the isolation from the others. And then there’s another point in the Yoga Sutras where he talks about mantras, herbs, and gems of being sort of conducive to are able to result bring about I don’t know whether it was samadhi or cities. But in any case, obviously, India has a vast history and tradition of iron Veda and herbal understandings and they’re, they’ve been sort of Indian sages who could just talk to the plants and have the plants tell them what they were good for. They just walk through the forest and the plants would see kind of its cognize your see or communicate with the plants just know even not taking a plant what it would do. So you know, it’s and as you say, and I read also says that there’s no plant which doesn’t in some way have a medicinal purpose. I imagine even poison ivy or something. It’s gonna have some some utility and in some way, but But it’s so little understood in our culture, and hopefully we won’t exterminate these trucks. cultures before? Well, hopefully well exterminate them at all, but hopefully we’ll be able to, you know, take it to come to understand their wisdom and apply it because we certainly need to.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, working with any of this kind of stuff, it has to be done very responsibly. You know, you have to there’s, there’s a time and a place for everything. Yeah. And somebody could, you know, go into a ceremony with without a lot of understanding, and it could be the wrong time for that person, you know, so. So it’s, it’s something that I don’t take lightly. I mean, I really, I take it very seriously, as far as considering it for anybody, that you really need to know who you’re, who you’re with, where it’s coming from, and that you have proper guidance, and then it’s the right time. And I you know, because if you think about people on the spiritual journey, like what lots of this I lost it, I found it kind of thing happens, because people get tripped up often by, you know, suppressed unconscious material that hasn’t been seen yet. You know, like Christ says that no stone will be left unturned, you know, and we have to go beneath all of those places and clear it out. And in the first seven years of childhood, that’s where so much of our conditioning happens, all of the imprinting. And often, that’s where the real work happens for some people, because they jumped out of that, or the early teens, and there’s something some kind of trauma still in the system. That is, is, is impacting how they’re functioning today. And whether it be depression, whether it be, you know, addiction or other kinds of things. So if you can responsibly work with something I’ve seen, all kinds of things get cleared out for people. So so that’s my, that’s my whole take on it.
Rick Archer: Yeah, I’m glad you’re emphasizing that, because I know at least one person and probably more who’ve gotten into serious trouble by doing approaching this stuff recreationally. And so if a person, you know, not that we’re sort of promoting, you know, trips to Peru right now or anything, but if a person felt a resonance with this, how can you where’s the quality control? How can you possibly know where to begin to find something you can trust?
Prajna Ginty: Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, I I think the place that I found in Peru can be very trusted. The Temple of the way of light. So do they have a website? Yeah, they do. And they have a very thorough website, which has a tremendous volume of information on it. Yeah. And they’re hooked up with, um, you know that. I don’t know if you heard of the guy. Hancock, What’s his last name? Graham. Graham Hancock, he, you know, he’s done some. Some TED Talks. I think his TED talk was actually banned. Maybe it’s out again,
Rick Archer: think about that there was big controversy about it.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, but there’s a lot of really good research going on right now. And studies in with responsible organizations, you know, that aren’t taking it lightly and are really being very thorough in and watch in there, you can tell so much because everything matters, even will like as we know, just with food, because food is basically a plant, right? And you can tell the difference, by the way, you can tell when something’s cultivated properly, when it’s grown and good soil and it’s been harvested properly. Well, the same thing. Because if something is being used, recreationally or for material gain, it’s going to have a completely different property than something that has been planted and harvested for healing medicinal purposes and for ceremony. Excuse me, for ceremony for that’s, that’s a very different field.
Rick Archer: Yeah. So each time how many times you’ve been down there now?
Prajna Ginty: Oh, just a few times. I mean, I, I go, I also lead meditations. So you know, I don’t only I don’t just go I go for my training, but my role is more or less meditating as well leading leading parts of the workshops with meditation with
Rick Archer: people who are going to that that place. Yeah. And you yourself each time you go, like, do a different plant for a week and a half, you know, to see what it will do for you.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m working on it. I’m working closely with one particular And who’s considered the leads that calls to Shannon’s actually, surgeons, you know, after you’ve had so much training, and he’s been working with plants for 50 years, he’s considered one of the surgeons. And he’s met my daughter, Abby, and I’ve talked with him a lot about neurology and things like that. So we’re really, because it almost, it’s almost new for him like to like, but it isn’t all the way new. And we have a little bit of a language. I mean, I’m learning Spanish, you know, you can speak Spanish. But we’re, we’re exploring the possibilities of plants that really work with the neurology. And I bet they’re, you know, there’s some here too, I’m sure, because I’ve worked with homeopathic physicians and things like that, and I’ve worked with neurological acupuncture. So I know there’s a lot that can be done. And besides, it’s nice to just get out of the country. And to experience a different culture, you know, and there’s so many wonderful things they’re doing there, there’s, I’m also involved with their permaculture program, they have a really, you know, in the next five years, they’re planning this, they have little villages involved. So they’re employing the people in the villages, and they’re doing a lot for the people. So it isn’t just has, it doesn’t have just one focus. And then also, they’re helping to save the Amazon. Because the oil companies are coming in there, and many of the people in the villages have become very sick, but from the pollution in the water, just taking over their land. So they’re we’re working to to educate the people on what their rights are, and to kind of bring all the tribes together, so they can stand up against the big oil companies, and also helping them to value their tradition and not to sell it off, you know, for a quick sum of money. Yeah, you know, which is what is happening. And then also teaching people in the villages, how to continue to work with their crafts, and they have one program going on where they’re making all of these, like purses and water bottle cat carriers, and I just gave them the idea of a dog leash out of recycled plastic. And then they go, and they, they sell these. So there’s a lot going on there besides just you know, it’s it’s a holistic approach, you know, to permaculture is taking care of the land and the people. And so it’s it’s some, there’s a lot going on, which is fascinating to me. So that’s what I’m doing.
Rick Archer: That’s fantastic. Yeah, well, there’s one, everything you just said was beautiful. There’s one thing which really struck a chord, which was, you know, people doing some thing for a quick shot of money, where, which is going to have these devastating long term consequences. There’s so much of that going on in the world today. You know, it’s like, the oil companies are rushing up to the Arctic Arctic now, because the ice is melting because of them. But now they thinking, oh, boy, more opportunities to get more oil. And it’s like nuts. So it’s, in a way I kind of see that as the, the most critical problem on the planet, which is this sort of short, sighted, greedy, myopic, quick fix mentality where, you know, I, what I want, what I want, and I want it now and know, sort of sense of the larger implications and the long term consequences. So I love what you described that you’re doing.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because these people, they’re, they’re, you know, not living in the best condition. So when somebody presents a, you know, a big hunk of money to them, all they can think of, oh, well, I’m gonna feed my kids for a month or something, you know, whatever. But yeah, so they’re, they’re learning and they’re, they’re saying no, now and they’re banding together.
Rick Archer: That’s great. I know, that happened so much. I mean, in Indonesia, they’re cutting down all the rainforest to plant palm oil plantations, you know, just devastating the edit. It’s, again, it’s this quick fix mentality. And it’s having a, you know, huge impact on climate change. So it’s, there’s some interesting new documentaries coming out. In fact, there’s this thing on Showtime, that’s going to be a whole series with all these actors, like Don Cheadle and Harrison Ford, I think it’s called. I forget any case, but it’s, you know, a lot of climatologists are now feeling like 100 years from now, we might actually have a human race anymore, it seems extreme to say so but if we experienced a 66 centigrade re rise in global temperatures, that’s it, you know, oceans would be would be dead. Humans would be dead. So I think it’s, it’s really cool that, you know, and of course, what you’re doing is not specifically about climate change, but I think it’s really cool that spiritual people quote unquote, are getting more involved in the kind of thing you’re doing, which, you know, if it happens on a grander and grander scale could really be pivotal and critical in saving the planet. Yeah, the inhabitants of the planet planet will be fine, but we may not be.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, what you’re saying is really true. Because, well, if you think about it, the Amazon River and our rain forests, you know, that’s the lungs of the universe without the lungs, you know, of the Earth, we need that. And, and I, there’s a lot of permaculture programs going on around all over the world, and they really look at it in a very holistic way. It’s like, How can we not only take care of our land with the people? How can we create food forests? You know, how can we recycle that reuse the water? mean everything and how, how we are so far away from that. But when you go back to these early tribes, that’s, that’s how they’ve been doing it forever.
Rick Archer: I’m reminded that seven generations thing that the Native Americans say, you know, you have to consider the implication, though anything to do for seven generations?
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which is, which kind of brings us to the, the element of time, you know, when you say you don’t know about the inhabitants how they’ll be. And that’s, that’s usually the one thing that speeds up awakening, right? In our embodiment is, when we remove the element of time, when there’s no time, then we what becomes important to us takes our focus comes into the focus, right?
Rick Archer: I don’t completely understand what you’re saying. Explain that again.
Prajna Ginty: Well, you know, like, if you’re if a person is in some degree of suffering, or isn’t awake, or sleeping, or still wondering about the dream, then if you remove the element of time, you know, like, well, we don’t know how much time we have, right? We don’t know, it’s a big unknown. And if you remove that element of time, just imagine that that’s not here, if you can, we become very focused on what’s really important to us. You know, it’s so it’s sort of like it narrows the plane, you know, as far as where our attention goes, the possibility of becoming distracted into things that are periphery to what matters start to fall away.
Rick Archer: So you’re saying a sort of an Eckhart totally Power of Now thing here, we’re just focusing and living in the present. So
Prajna Ginty: yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And if we all did that, sure. Uh huh.
Rick Archer: Which is not to say that we shouldn’t consider the implications of our actions for the future. No, no,
Prajna Ginty: I’m not saying that at all. No, no, no, that actually, if we’re really paying attention, I think the implications could be only positive,
Rick Archer: right? Mm hmm. Yeah. I’m just trying to think of this quote was by some Buddhist sage, he said something like, even though my awareness is as vast as the sky, my, my attention is as my attention to karma as as fine as a grain of flour.
Prajna Ginty: I mean, that’s what I like about you. I’ve listened to a number of your interviews, and you always have these great quotes. So like, how do you how do you remember
Rick Archer: them? I don’t know. I have a fairly limited repertoire, as anyone who’s listening enough of my interviews will tell. But yeah, I’m doing this all the time. And I pick up new little things here and there. I’m no Deepak Chopra in terms of being a repository of quotes, but these little things come along, and they really catch my attention.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, that’s neat. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Well, this has been great. Is there anything else you feel like we haven’t covered?
Prajna Ginty: Well, um, well, there’s a lot on my website, if anybody wants to go to that. I have some recorded audio, some videos, some samples from my book. Are there.
Rick Archer: Some nice photos of your family? Your daughters? I enjoyed looking at those.
Prajna Ginty: Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we have in the in the very back page. On the vision page, there’s a little video where if anybody is interested, they could watch that. It’s like eight minutes. And it shows what they looked like when they were tiny babies. Oh,
Rick Archer: I have to say that. I haven’t seen it yet. I kind of feel like I know your family. Now having read a lot of your book is,
Prajna Ginty: yeah, I know. We’re a little bit of an open book now. Yeah, so there’s that and I do private sessions. I prefer in person but I do do Skype. Because I work as a body centered kind of person. And I really like to be able to be with the person but I do find on Skype, too. And I can be invited out to now that I’m teaching again. I can be invited to especially when I go to I’m going to London in September and I know a number of people there and I’m going Now, I’m going to hopefully get some events together while I’m there.
Rick Archer: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot of people in London, who watch the show, including a friend of mine who, who manages the forum on BatGap and a number of others. So maybe, you know, either they’ll see it and get in touch with you or I could put you in touch with them or something. If you want some more contacts in London, and other parts of England, for that matter. There are some people who, in various know, up in northern England who have like little this lady named Mandy salt, who runs this North Northern. I don’t know what it’s called some kind of Northern England Satsang thing. Non duality thing. And Jeff Foster and Karen Richards and all kinds of nice people.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, emojis. There’s any a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: He has an ashram in Portugal. But he comes to London. Yeah, so great.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, I really appreciate this opportunity.
Rick Archer: Yeah, it’s been it’s been a pleasure. So let me just, I guess, make a few wrap up points. I’ll be your your website is prajna. Living awake.org? Yes. Yes, Raj has spelled pra j na. And I’ll be linking to that from your page on bat gap calm. And the book will be out in a while. It’s not out yet. But if people can’t preorder, you know, you probably have something on your website where people could get on the mailing list in order to be notified when the book comes out. If no, right? You have something like that,
Prajna Ginty: yeah, I do have something there. And even if they get on the newsletter, then you’ll be able to get the update of when it will be published. Because right now, I’m deciding between I have an opportunity coming up that I have to wait to see sure with the publisher. Okay, so we have to see if that happens, or self publishing, but yeah, and
Rick Archer: but I think this whole interview, I think, you know, each interview serves a particular niche in a way some people relate more to one than the other. But there’s so many people who have who have fairly serious challenges in life. And who may be wondering whether those whether they can sort of live a spiritual life as they would like to when being confronted by such challenges or whether or might feel as you did at one point that they’ve kind of lost their spiritual moorings, because the challenges are so overwhelming. So I think your example will, will be an inspiration to such people.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, and I think, too, for parents, you know, for that are at home with their kids. I mean, there’s a way of learning all of the opportunities, that that arise just in being with your children, and what the children being bring to us. It’s just, it’s just phenomenal when you open up to the possibility of it being there, you know, that, that our spirituality doesn’t happen in satsang? You know, or or in the temple or, mean, you know, it’s it’s happens in our life. Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Archer: Okay, so let me make some just general concluding remarks. Firstly, okay. Thanks, again, President for for you know, this conversation, it’s really been a pleasure. And for those who may be seeing one of these for the first time, there is a whole collection of them now, over well over 200. If you go to batgap.com Bat gap, you will see both a alphabetical listing a chronological listing, a category listing that’s under development, eventually, we’ll have a geographical listing, so you can know where particular people are. And so there’s various ways to kind of sort out which ones to watch. You know, it’s gonna take you Well, if you want to watch all 225, but you can just watch 10 minutes, see if see if that particular interview grabs you or not. And if it does keep watching, there’s a place to be to sign up to be notified by email each time a new interview is posted. There is a donut donut button. Push that button, you get free donuts right through a donate button, which I appreciate people doing if they can. This is a BatGap is a 501 C three, which means a nonprofit organization in the US. There is a link to an audio podcast, so that you can just listen to these on iTunes if you want to. And there is a discussion group that it has its own section for each interview. So your interview have its its section. And some sometimes there’s not too much discussion. Sometimes there’s hundreds of posts. So there’s that if you’d like and one point is that unless you register on the site, you can’t see the discussion. It looks like there’s nothing there. But if you just click the login button that’s at the upper right hand part of the page and you registered then you’ll see all the messages that people have been posting. So thank you for listening or watching Next week, we’re going to be interviewing Adam C Hall who actually in some ways, his, his story is similar to yours. He, he experienced very different kinds of challenges. But he also ended up going down to Peru. And he felt he’s doing, he’s also doing something really significant with the environment, he’s got this thing established called Earthkeepers. And he’s used his experience as a real estate developer, to take land that would otherwise be, you know, developed and plowed or clear cut or whatever, and turn it into permanent conservancies, you know, for to help to preserve it. And but there’s a spiritual reason why he ended up doing this instead of an inner underlying story of a spiritual awakening that resulted in his having this motivation. So in that sense, it’s similar to your story, and we’ll see what he has to say, but sounds like an interesting guy.
Prajna Ginty: Yeah, I’ll have to listen to that. Yeah. Yeah. And I didn’t know about the discussion forum. So that’s, that’s good to know about.
Rick Archer: Yeah, keep an eye on that. And, you know, people might ask questions that you can answer, and so on. Okay. Sounds great.