Vera Helleman Interview

Summary

Vera Helleman discusses awakening, the relationship between mind, ego, heart, and consciousness, and how spiritual insight becomes usable in ordinary life. She also explores resonance, different layers of identity, the limits of reincarnation beliefs, and how present experience reveals unresolved inner patterns.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What can spiritual awakening feel like, and how can it become more stable?
• How should the mind and ego be understood after awakening?
• How can people access deeper wisdom or spiritual insight?
• Is reincarnation real, and how can it be understood without reinforcing a separate self?
• How can present-day reactions reveal inner patterns that need attention?

Key takeaways

• The mind and ego are tools to use, not enemies to eliminate.
• Awakening can open a deep sense of connection, but understanding may develop more gradually.
• Resonance can connect us with knowledge and qualities that match our deeper nature.
• Personal life expresses deeper levels of being through the mind, body, and personality.
• Past-life ideas can be useful metaphors without confirming a separate, permanent self.
• Current reactions and projections show where inner resistance still needs attention.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. There have been over 370 of them now, and if you would like to check out previous ones, go to batgap.com—B-A-T-G-A-P—and look under the Past Interviews menu, where you’ll see them organized in four or five different ways.

This program is made possible by the support of appreciative viewers and listeners, so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it in any way, there’s a PayPal button on every page of the website.

Today my guest is Vera Helleman. Vera is in Holland, where she’s very well known, but she just told me that people don’t know her too much outside of Holland, so hopefully this interview will help to change that. Vera was a psychotherapist for a while and then, according to the bio she sent me, she awoke into oneness and was gifted with a full understanding of the functioning of the human mind, the essence of who we are, and the role that we play in creation.

So we’ll be talking about those things today. Looking from an energetic level and a nondualistic point of view, she has the ability to lovingly confront people with their misconceptions about who they truly are and how this reality functions.

Being married, a mother of four, and standing with both feet firmly planted in daily life—translating from the Dutch here—people find her vivid appearance a recognizable example of living the art of life that resonates with one’s longing to live. And although her teaching style is sharp and bright, she has the remarkable capacity to remain playful and humble in her contact with others.

Rick: I would say by sharp and bright, you probably mean penetrating and clear, right? Are those better words? And by subservient, you probably mean humble. I think you mean humble.

Vera: Yes. I had to think, Subservient? What does it mean? Someone else translated it for me.

Rick: Yeah, subservient means like you’re somebody’s servant, which is okay.

Vera: That’s okay.

Rick: That’s okay. I mean, sometimes people refer to themselves in a spiritual context as your humble servant, you know.

Vera: Oh, yeah. As long as I don’t change into a servant, that is all right.

Rick: But the next sentence explains what you’re trying to say here: Interactions are thus based on equality and serving both selves. And I think that’s really nice. I have some other friends who are spiritual teachers who are really trying to get rid of the hierarchical nature of the relationship between teachers and students, which is often abused in spiritual circles and makes people feel like, Oh, I’ll never be like that person. There’s an attempt to sort of reach an equality, and that we’re all in this together.

Vera: Definitely. I don’t feel this hierarchy, not at all. And I think people also don’t feel it toward me.

Rick: Right. And you wrote a book, Effortlessly Being Yourself, which I managed to read cover to cover this week. I don’t always accomplish that, but I did. The book is a step-by-step guide from ego living, based on fear and greed, to living one’s spiritually mature potential, based on self-expression and growth.

In your book, it says you encourage readers to take full responsibility for the role they play in their lives and the path they tread.

Vera: Yes.

Rick: Okay. And in all your teachings, your aim is to give insight and tools enabling the shift to a more congruent life and increasing understanding and enjoyment of what attracts into one’s life.

Okay, good. Thank you very much for taking the time to come on the show today. So let’s start with learning a little bit more about you. You were trained as a psychotherapist, right? You went to college and whatever training one goes through and became a psychotherapist.

Vera: Yes. Well, that was the last part of it before I switched and realized I didn’t need education anymore on that level.

I think as a child I was always interested in people. What I was most interested in, when I was—I think I was about three years old—I went outside with my mother, holding her hand, and we bumped into the neighbor.

It was very strange to me. I remember it so vividly because my mother’s energy was fine, and on a deeper level she felt totally happy, just like everyone feels on a different, deeper level. She began to speak with the neighbor, and suddenly they were talking about very sad things and difficult problems. It was so strange for me to see the difference between what they were talking about and how they really felt on a deeper level.

Rick: So they felt happy, but they were talking about sad things?

Vera: Yes, and that was so strange to me that, since then, I think I was always investigating why people do the things they do, why they are different in how they express themselves, and how they feel themselves.

I read a lot and did a lot of therapy as a hobby, and the end of the line was doing a psychotherapist education.

Rick: Yeah. You actually did it professionally; you didn’t finish it?

Vera: No, I didn’t finish it because in the last year I, so to speak, woke up, and I realized that what I was doing was just changing our programming. That is not as efficient as we think it is, and I found a more direct way to be happy.

Rick: Yeah, I kind of went through a process like that a little bit myself, although I never went too far with the education. I took some college courses in psychology, and I subscribed to Psychology Today magazine.

I thought maybe I should be a psychologist because the mind is powerful, and if you really understand the mind, then you’re working on a subtle level and helping people and so on. But when I really understood the potential of meditation, I thought, Forget that. I’m going to be a meditation teacher.

Vera: Wow, that’s interesting. Yes, because at the mind level you can focus, but at the meditation level you reach the level of intention.

Rick: Yeah, and you actually really go beyond the mind in a way and kind of bring about some change from an even more fundamental level.

Vera: Exactly, yes, but you do need the mind.

Rick: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Vera: I hear a lot of people who say, Oh, the mind is ugly, and I want to get rid of it. I want to get rid of ego. Well, hey, you can’t.

Rick: They’re faculties.

Vera: I’m sorry?

Rick: They’re faculties. You need them like your eyes and your—

Vera: Yes, they’re tools.

Rick: Yeah, tools.

✨ Awakening into oneness

So it says in your bio that you awoke into oneness. What was that awakening like? How did it happen? Had you been practicing spiritual techniques or working with a teacher or something? What happened?

Vera: Yes. I don’t tell this often because I think everybody walks a different path, and I don’t want to give it as a tool. But what I did do in the months before was not eat meat, not watch television, spend a lot of time in the forest, and meet some spiritual teachers—well, actually, one.

I read a book, and one line really resonated with me. It was, In the other, you meet yourself. That was the line, and whatever it was, at that moment I suddenly saw the world in different colors—sharper colors. I felt connected with everybody, and I noticed that very clearly because I also felt this deep connection with people I would normally walk around.

I didn’t have any triggers anymore; it was all gone. I thought, What is this? It is not a psychosis because it was so clear. What is it? I had never heard of a spiritual awakening.

The guy I thought was a spiritual teacher—I didn’t know what he was teaching. I just met him somewhere as a friend.

Rick: Somebody in Holland?

Vera: Yes.

Rick: Anybody well-known?

Vera: Not really, and he asked me not to mention his name.

Rick: Okay, sure.

Vera: I think everything helped, I guess.

Rick: Yeah, I don’t think there’s any danger in telling one story like that, because these days so many hundreds of people are having these experiences and telling these stories that it’s very unlikely someone’s going to hear your story and say, Oh, that’s the way it has to be, because they’ve probably heard a hundred other ones.

Vera: That’s true. I still watch television sometimes and eat meat sometimes, but now it’s different. It’s like that old Zen story: after awakening, a cloud is a cloud again.

Rick: Right. First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

Vera: Yes, exactly.

Rick: And so, did this oneness experience fade away, or did it stay with you?

Vera: The intensity of it—I think, when I look back, I did go back into the well of ego shock because I wasn’t prepared to understand what was going on. I wanted to understand what was going on, and by wanting to understand, I was craving again.

Rick: Craving.

Vera: Yes. So if I had understood earlier what was going on, I would have been more prepared for a more abiding awakening.

Rick: Yeah. So do you now understand what was going on, or what is going on?

Vera: Yes, completely. After that awakening I went to several teachers, watched DVDs, and so on. But a few years after that awakening, there was one moment when it really—how do you say it?

Rick: Grounded?

Vera: Yes. It was very strange. I was meditating in the middle of my room, and I was very enthusiastic about this whole new vision, but I could never explain it to other people. I couldn’t find the words.

Then I was meditating, and I saw in the air a vision of both Ramana Maharshi and Papaji. I saw these visions, and they were melting inside of me. It was very strange. From that moment on, I could speak.

Rick: Wow.

Vera: Very, very strange. I don’t know what really happened.

Rick: You could explain things in other words.

Vera: Yes.

Rick: Yeah, and that’s very interesting. Those guys are hanging around doing stuff, I think.

Vera: Maybe.

Rick: You keep hearing stories like that, where people have an experience—particularly Ramana will come to them—and sometimes it’s before they even know he exists or have ever seen a book about him or anything. They see this Indian guy and think, Hmm, who’s this? Then later they’ll see his book and say, Oh, that’s the guy I saw.

Vera: Yes, I think I know how it works, because Ramana is the archetype of the heart, the opening of the heart, whereas someone like Jesus is more the archetype of wisdom.

He’s the archetype of the heart. So I think when you focus your intention on opening the heart, you meet Ramana Maharshi. I think his resonance is so strong around opening the heart.

Rick: So what do you understand an archetype to be?

Vera: Like a metaphor. He’s like the personification of an open heart.

Rick: Yeah. One thing that I find curious is that there’s this sort of divine intelligence that would show us things like that, like your experience of Ramana and Papaji. What are the mechanics of that? Why are you being shown that, and who is showing you that? How is it that once you had that experience and they sort of came into you, you were able to speak?

Vera: Yes, I think that’s also the issue with angels and reincarnation.

Rick: All that stuff.

Vera: All that stuff. In my point of view, it’s all about resonance. I already knew Ramana, and I already knew Papaji, so the resonance they were sending out was vibrating into something that resonates inside of me.

The message is always that the layer of our own self that can communicate beyond time and space can make a connection on the basis of resonance and reach out to that which resonates and needs to wake up inside of us.

So, if we speak about Ramana and Papaji, Ramana is the open heart, and Papaji is more the wisdom and knowledge, in my point of view. They needed to come together inside of me before I could speak.

So, in that moment, it was some kind of grace moment when I reached out with my resonance, the intention on a deeper level inside of me. Not on the mind level, but on the intention level, the soul level, I reached out, and the mind and heart clicked together and became entangled inside of me.

The mind and heart clicked together and became entangled inside of me.

Rick: It’s beautiful. It’s really nice. Sometimes people speak of a download. I’ve spoken with people who say, well, such-and-such a being came to me. A friend of mine once said that some Buddhist from thousands of years ago came, and she felt like there was this download of knowledge.

She didn’t know why or what exactly she was going to do with it, or even if she was going to be able to use it immediately, but it was sort of like being added to her software, so to speak. For whatever reason, when the time was right, it would be used.

Vera: Yes, yes, I completely agree with that, but not exactly as a download. It’s more a connection. We are all people, so we can make a connection with everything that resonates with our blueprint.

Rick: Yeah, that’s better than download.

Vera: I cannot reach out to the knowledge of engineering, but I can reach my resonance inside of oneness because that’s my blueprint. I can tune in to the knowledge database of Ramana. I can tune in and make a connection, and then it’s also accessible.

Rick: Yeah, no, that’s good. Other people in history, for instance Einstein or great scientists, would sometimes just get these inspirations. They would somehow know something all of a sudden.

Vera: Yes, yes.

Rick: The guy who discovered the benzene ring had a dream of a snake biting its own tail, forming this ring, and suddenly had this cognition of the benzene ring.

Vera: Interesting, yes.

Rick: Or there are obviously examples like Mozart. They say he would cognize a whole symphony in a moment, but then take time to write it out. It just came to him.

Vera: Exactly, yeah. I have a son, and he’s now seven years old. He is really a very bright, intelligent, scientifically minded, slightly autistic guy. He says things like, You know, Mama, our body doesn’t really exist. There’s only mind juice, and we see the body because we believe it is there.

Rick: Yeah, I know. Your kids say great stuff. One of mine once said, Mummy, in my next life I don’t want much stuff anymore. It makes me restless.

Vera: Yes, exactly.

Rick: You have cool little kids.

Vera: So, we all download, all based on what our blueprint is. He is a scientist, and I’m prepared to share his insights. Because we want to learn and we think we know how it is, we don’t have a connection anymore to that. We don’t allow it to come in.

Rick: Yeah. What you’re saying, obviously, is that you kind of regain that connection through these experiences. It’s just a cool point to dwell on for a minute that we happened to stumble onto this point.

It seems like there’s this ocean of wisdom and knowledge, with different aspects of knowledge in it, whether musical or scientific or some spiritual truth or something. According to our aptitude, according to how we’re wired, we may tap into this.

Vera: Exactly.

Rick: Yeah, that’s what we’ve been discussing for the last few minutes. It’s a neat idea.

Vera: Yes. That is the soul level, essence level, or spiritual body level, and the personal level, the physical level, and the mind level are the ways we can manifest it and express it into the world.

Rick: Right.

Vera: So, at this level we’re working together, and the personal level is of service to the spiritual level.

Rick: Yeah, according to our particular aptitudes.

Vera: Exactly.

Rick: You mentioned that when you had this experience of awakening into oneness, you were gifted with the full understanding of the functioning of the human mind. That’s quite a statement.

Vera: Yes, you have to write something as a bio. Actually, more accurately, there were different moments in which these bubbles of information came into me. I had an experience of a bubble of information, and I couldn’t speak for three days.

Rick: At all?

Vera: Yes, at all, because I couldn’t translate it into my human consciousness.

Rick: You couldn’t speak about anything, or you couldn’t speak about that information?

Vera: I couldn’t speak about anything. I couldn’t talk. I was too devastated by it.

Rick: Blown away.

Vera: Yes, blown away by this new information. I didn’t know what information had come in. It was just reprogramming, and I had different moments of these bubbles.

Rick: So, could you give us some examples, for instance, of that bubble or one of these bubbles of information that would come in, and then after a while you got to speak about them?

Vera: Yes, I had to unravel it. Well, someday there was a woman who killed herself, and I was somehow connected to her. We had exchanged emails a few times, and when I heard that she died, I also got this bubble of information. It was like I could travel along with her.

I was devastated because all my insights were blown away and weren’t true anymore. What came after that was completely different. I also believed in reincarnation, and in one bubble it all was blown away because she was gone. She was completely gone, dissolved back into consciousness itself again.

So there was no I anymore, none whatsoever, and it was a really heavy bubble. It took me a few months to unravel this information and understand what it really meant.

Rick: So you don’t believe in reincarnation anymore?

Vera: No, because I see it now more as metaphor. I see us as beings on three levels. We have more layers of ourselves: the personal, personality, physical, essence, soul, and pure consciousness levels.

I think the soul level is somehow connected to this reality, connected to the physical body. I don’t know if, ten years from now, I will see it exactly the same way, but it seems like the I—the first moment of an I—is soul-related and related to conception.

It is a nonphysical level, and this nonphysical level can go beyond time and space. As long as you are connected to the physical level, you can travel along this time and space. So I could now go with my nonphysical body back into time and have a conversation with a living person then, and it seems like the soul of the people is coming to them now.

Rick: Well, is that a theory or something you’ve actually done?

Vera: It is more than a theory, because it’s more an insight.

Rick: Yeah, but is it something you’ve experienced?

Vera: Yes. There were periods when there were dead people next to me, and I asked them questions. Actually, I was sitting by my computer, my husband asked questions, and I asked them to the people and wrote down the answers.

They were really connected to those people, so I could travel and resonate with those people. After that, someone else came, and it was a far more Advaita Vedanta kind of text. This guy said to me something like, But you now are talking to one of yourself or something, because we are all the Self.

Then, poof, he disappeared. How I perceive information now is not through dead people or whatever; it is pure energy, because I see energy and I feel energy. I did that when I was three years old, so all this communication between us isn’t needed anymore.

Rick: The whole thing about reincarnation—I mean, obviously some of the world’s major religions have that as part of their teaching: Hinduism and many aspects of Buddhism. It does help to explain some things.

If we understand the continuing evolution of the soul, if somebody dies and they’re not in a very happy state, it would be nice to think that they can progress from there, and that it’s not just the end of them.

There are also a lot of studies and incidents involving little kids who go to some village and know everybody there. They know who they were in that village in a previous life, and all that stuff. So I don’t know. Obviously, there are also people who don’t believe in it and who say that there are logical explanations for these things.

There are very spiritual people who say that there’s no such thing, that when you form a life, it’s like a bucket comes out of the ocean, and that’s your life. Then, when the life is over, the bucket goes back into the ocean, and there’s no remnant anymore of that life. I have my preferences on those positions, but who knows.

Vera: I’m always aware of, and always looking at, the pitfalls of these kinds of theories because they are somewhat dualistic: me and some red guy who helps me, me and my past life. Actually, we are all one. We are our neighbor, we are our dead grandmother, we are—

So we can tune in, from an energetic point of view, to everyone on the basis of what resonates inside of us now. For the mind, and also on a therapeutic level, it is interesting to see reincarnation as a metaphor to heal inside of us.

Rick: Yeah, you see it that way. One of my former teachers used to say the past is always a lesser-developed state, so don’t pay any attention to reincarnation.

He regarded it as a real phenomenon, but he said, Don’t bother with it. It’s the past, a lesser-developed state. Take it from here and move on. Don’t be trying to figure out who you were in some past life or anything like that.

Vera: No, I always say that to people who have had a traumatic youth or something. They always think that it will cure them when they go back in time and know what happened.

I say the world around us is an up-to-date projection of how it is inside us, so you have to look at your projections at this moment to see how you have developed and what still needs attention. Where you feel resistance or anger, you could play it out in the three-dimensional world.

Three levels of reality

Rick: Yeah, you were saying a few minutes ago, like the body level, the soul level, and maybe the universal consciousness level or something like that. This is reminiscent of a discussion I had with Timothy Conway on this show. He talks about a model for three levels of nondual reality, which are paradoxically different but simultaneously true.

One is the obvious level of the world. It has problems: environmental issues, ethical issues, all kinds of economic problems, and all sorts of things that need to be dealt with. Then there’s the divine level, where everything is perfect just as it is and there are no mistakes. Then there’s an even deeper level, where nothing ever happened; it’s totally unmanifest.

His point was that we don’t want to take a stand in any one of these levels to the exclusion of the others. Each one is true, even though they’re paradoxically different. So you may be experiencing that nothing ever happened, while at the same time experiencing that everything is happening and that things are perfect just as they are. At the very same time, you may be experiencing, Oh, there are problems in life. My kid has the flu, and I need to take care of that.

Vera: Exactly, yes, yes. I experience all these levels simultaneously.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: So if you are waking up to these other levels, you don’t have to suffer anymore. You can feel pain, but you don’t have to suffer from the pain.

You can feel pain, but you don’t have to suffer from the pain.

Rick: Right.

Vera: On the personal level, something is right or something is wrong for you. On the essence level, you say not everything is good, but everything is the way it is because of energetic logic.

Rick: Yeah, it’s the way it’s supposed to be, because that’s the way it is. If it were supposed to be different, then it would be different.

Vera: I think it’s not even a matter of being supposed to be. I don’t think everything is prepared or something.

Rick: Right, not predestined.

Vera: No, predestined, no, but everything is energetic logic. So if you have a nonacceptance of anger, for example, the outer world will mirror your anger. On a personal level, you meet someone who is angry and you say, Oh, that’s wrong, that’s difficult, that’s a problem. On this level, I say, Well, that’s logical, because you suppressed anger, and now you have to face it in the outer world.

Rick: Yeah. So, using that example, let’s say you have a boss at work who’s very angry. Are you saying that that’s because you’ve suppressed anger, and that’s why he’s getting angry at you?

Vera: If he’s getting angry at you and you are scared, yes. Then two people resonate with each other. That’s also the victim and perpetrator. That explains the victim and perpetrator.

If I give an extreme example and generalize it, there’s a woman who was taught not to be angry, but to be sweet and kind. There’s a guy who learned, Don’t be a pussy; be a guy. So the guy suppresses his softness, and the girl suppresses her power. They meet each other and resonate with each other. He sees in her a part of himself that he doesn’t like, and he says, I want to do something to you, and she becomes a victim.

It is very, very confronting if people would see this. I think because of that, we are all responsible for what’s happening in the world right now.

Rick: Yeah. So another way of putting what you just said would be: would you say that the whole condition of the world, everything that’s going on, is just a reflection of the inner state of the seven billion people who live here?

Vera: Yes, absolutely. I make it large, so I make it small again and say, Look at your square mile and see what is coming to you, and take responsibility for that. By healing what you see in your world, and not accepting it, you heal a part of our world.

By healing what you see in your world, you heal a part of our world.

Rick: Very good, yeah. There’s the analogy that if you want a forest to be green, every single individual tree has to be green. It has to be healthy, connected with the soil, properly nourished, and all that stuff. It has to be a healthy tree, and if you have enough of those, you’re going to have a green forest.

Vera: Exactly, exactly. All people who want to change the world only think about changing the whole forest, and so they don’t succeed.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: Because we have to start inside.

Rick: Or they’re out trying to change the world, but they’re full of anger and judgment and things like that, and obviously haven’t really worked on themselves quite enough.

Vera: Yes, and they make it worse.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: Because they focus on that part.

Rick: Yeah. When we say a thing like that, I think it’s good to say in the same breath, Don’t hesitate to go change the world, but just make sure that you’re changing yourself at the same time, working on yourself.

Vera: Yes, and if you want to change the world, do it out of passion. Everybody has something like this in nature: every tree starts with a seed, and life energy goes through it and wants to express itself. Every creature, every plant, every animal, and every human being has a seed. That’s our essence. Then this life energy goes through it, and we have a very strong urge to express ourselves and to grow further.

We all have a unique seed. So I want to encourage people not to change the world because the world needs it, but to change the world because they want to, because they love the world. It’s an expression of ourselves. Then it’s much more effective.

Rick: That’s nice. I think what you’re hinting at is the notion that we are the world. There are so many examples of this—things that Jesus said, for instance: Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me. And there’s that poem by John Donne: No man is an island, entire of itself, and Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. So there’s the notion that anything that is happening in the world is happening to us.

Vera: Exactly, yes, but only if it comes into your world.

Rick: Right.

Vera: If it doesn’t come into your world, it is, in a certain way, not your responsibility. Then something else comes into your world. What is your responsibility?

❤️ Facing fear and meeting life directly

Rick: Have you found in your own experience, though, that your world has been expanding, so that things come into it that might not have come into it in the past, when your world was smaller?

Vera: My world certainly changed, and it changed very dramatically when I was prepared to look at the things I didn’t want to see.

For example, I woke up one morning and said, Now I’m prepared to face everything that I’m scared of, and I am prepared to follow everything that wants to come out of me. I went into the forest and had to choose between two paths. One path was a light path, and the other path was very dark. I felt I had to go into the dark path. A hundred or two hundred meters along, I bumped into a man in a black suit and a cowl.

Rick: Yes, like a monk’s hood?

Vera: Yes, yes. I was very scared because the moment I was prepared to face my fear, I saw my fear in living form, and I was too scared to face it.

But the next day I said, I’m now prepared to face it. I went into the city and saw this big guy, two meters high, with all these muscles, tattoos, and golden chains. I looked at him, and that was the moment I realized, Wow, you’re actually very soft and kind. After that, I never bumped into a dangerous man again. It happened in an instant: I was prepared, and apparently the theme was healed along the way.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: It completely disappeared in an instant.

Rick: Now, I don’t know about Holland, but there are places in the United States where you wouldn’t want to walk around at two in the morning. There could be some dangerous people there. So I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Even in Holland, there are probably places where you wouldn’t want to go wandering around the streets in the middle of the night and run into some dangerous people.

Vera: Yes, my ego would think of that kind of idea if I wanted to test whether I was clear. But on a deeper level, I have no intention of testing or challenging anything. I just walk my path in life, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

Rick: Yeah, I understand that. So you’re saying your life is more blessed, more on a divine track, if we want to use that word.

Vera: I am often very amazed by what I attract in life, but sometimes I’m also challenged, of course. I’m not scared to act.

For example, half a year ago I was completely inexperienced, and the idea came into my mind that I had to buy a horse. I saw a horse for sale, and it resonated very much, but I had only had three riding lessons at that time. I knew I had to go there.

We went into the grassland, and the horse was running and running with his tail up. Suddenly he stopped.

Rick: Were you on the horse at that point?

Vera: No, no, no. We were watching because it was for sale. The horse suddenly stopped, looked at me, walked toward me, and laid his head against mine. I thought, My God, I have to buy this horse. I was scared and surprised, but I did it.

It wasn’t easy for months because it turned out to be a traumatized horse, and I had to do something with him without any experience. Everybody would say, You’re crazy. You don’t buy a horse after only three riding lessons. So I have my challenges.

Rick: Well, now you’re probably a pretty good rider, right?

Vera: Not yet, because this horse had a broken tail and a back—

Rick: So he had to be trained and healed?

Vera: Yes, so I’m still hanging in there.

Rick: Well, that’s great. That’s really sweet.

Vera: I also have my challenges because we want to grow. If we are this tree, one branch comes out, but then the next branch has to come out also. Your mind has to open, and you have to see more possibilities.

Rick: Yes, we keep growing.

Vera: Exactly, yes. Until we die, we keep growing, and we keep being challenged by life.

Rick: Maybe after we die, but that’s another conversation. I happen to think it’s never-ending.

Vera: It is never-ending, but for the I, it is ending.

Rick: That’s a philosophical debate point.

👁️ Seeing through identification

So, your book is divided into four sections: your relationship with yourself; your relationship with the other; your relationship with your physical body and the manifest; your relationship and service to the field of unity; a section about traps; and then a vision of the future.

Would you like to have a discussion about these different areas and quickly run through them, touching on some highlights that you’d like to tell people about? The first section is your relationship with yourself.

Vera: Well, the relationship with yourself is important because the other is yourself, so first you need to understand who you are and how this mind functions, what is making you suffer, and how to stop that, how to change, how to stop it, how to walk away from that ongoing, never-ending process of I’m a victim or I’m better than them.

Rick: Yeah, judgmental, comparative types of thoughts.

Vera: Exactly.

Rick: So, how do people do that?

Vera: By understanding what the core of suffering is, and that is this loop of identifying ourselves with stories, with gender, with the body, with successes we made. All this identifying keeps us on the surface level of ego.

So, if we understand that we are the awareness that looks through our eyes, that hears through our ears, and is not to be found if you want to reach it, then you can go beyond this identifying loop and comparison loop and recognize that on this level there’s always peace, there’s always silence, and there’s nothing that can be heard, nothing that can be heard or lost.

Rick: Is it your experience that some people are much more gripped by that kind of identification than others?

Vera: Yes.

Rick: So, for some people it’s fairly easy to just kind of get what you’re saying here, but for other people they’re very deeply trapped by identification. How would you personally help somebody who is very deeply trapped?

Vera: First, stop them, because if they are very trapped, they talk a lot and they want to run away from me and what I have to say. So, I say, Stop. Okay, do you feel the chair under your bottom? Do you see my eyes? Don’t think anything about it. Look at me.

And then I would say, Would you challenge yourself to breathe me in, to really breathe me in? Don’t think anything about it, but breathe me in. Let me come—my whole energy, my whole being—may I come into you?

And this is very difficult for people. I never go so fast as this, but it’s very difficult for people because then this whole mechanism of protecting themselves starts to work, and they say, Oh, it doesn’t work, or, Oh, I feel resistance. Okay, that’s all fine. Let the resistance be. It just takes one second of bravery to let happen what happens if you breathe in.

And if they are really brave, they feel this opening of the heart. They feel the rest come over them, and so it’s a very simple trick to pull them—they pull themselves back into the now.

It just takes one second of bravery to let happen what happens.

Rick: That’s nice. Do you find that a number of people kind of melt while you’re working with them and start crying, and things just start to be released?

Vera: Yes, I see that, and everybody sees it. The eyes become brilliant, softer; even the wrinkles disappear. They’re going to laugh or cry, or are completely silent.

Rick: Nice. And then, if you’re working with somebody like that and you have a session, what do you encourage them to do on a daily basis to try to develop this further and stabilize it?

Vera: Yeah, that’s very different. I give a lot of people homework, and sometimes they need this; sometimes they need confrontation.

There was a woman a few weeks ago, and I saw her again for the second time. She was completely changed. When I saw her the first time, she was so heavy in her energy that I had to stand two meters away because my energy was flowing to her. She said to me, You spoke to me. I was so shocked by your behavior toward me. I completely changed.

So, I had to confront her, and that was enough to unfold a different process. For some people I say, Well, your homework is not to be busy with your problems, but only look around you and see what resonates with you, what makes you happy, what makes you enthusiastic, what makes you at ease, and go toward that.

And there are people who were busy for 30 years with therapy and self-help books, and I say, Stop that. Now go live. Yes, I say different things, and I make a map in the moment.

Rick: Yeah, you’re kind of working intuitively.

Vera: Yes.

Rick: I mean, your whole book is actually based on some kind of online course, isn’t it, that people can take and go through various lessons or stages of the course?

Vera: Yes, that’s very nice. All the chapters—there are 60 days of online course, and every day you get an exercise you have to do in your daily life. So, I send you out on the street, to the city, and let you sit on the couch and experience some things. I let you take a mirror, and every day it gives you an exercise.

There’s a forum where you can ask questions to me, and I will answer them. The nicest thing about this course is that after, well, somewhere around day 43, people say, Whoa, the world looks very different. It’s almost spooky.

And then they have a grounded knowing of how a human being functions, and then they can flip.

Rick: Great. Something special about lesson 43.

Vera: Yes.

👨‍👩‍👧 Raising children from inner guidance

Rick: A question came in from Dan in London. He asks, Do you have any advice for bringing children up in a spiritual and heart-based way? You seem eminently qualified to answer this.

Vera: Yeah, beautiful question. I’m so fond of children. I have four.

Rick: How old are your children?

Vera: Six, seven, fourteen, and fifteen years old.

Rick: And do you mind my asking how old you are now?

Vera: I’m 40 years old.

Rick: Forty, okay.

Vera: Yes. What I found most important to teach children is to appoint them to their own yeses and noes, so they feel their inner intuitive guidance system. I don’t want to teach them my yeses and noes and say, You have to do it that way, but I want them to feel their own yes and no.

So, if they go to a party, I want them to be able to say no or say yes and feel their guidance. That’s one thing. The other thing is that I want the children to keep an open mind, because an open mind is most important to growth and manifestation.

If we tunnel our vision, we can only create this, although our essence wants to direct us another way. So then we have a gap, and that’s a difficult gap. We suffer if our heart wants to go one way and our mind says another.

So, I always say to my children, This is a possibility, but can you come up with another possibility? Because everything is possible. I think that’s the most important thing to teach, and of course, to be an example.

Rick: Yeah, I was going to say that. That’s very important.

Vera: Yes, because we cannot tell them by words how it works, but we show them how it works.

We cannot tell them by words how it works, but we show them how it works.

Rick: Absolutely. How old were you when you first had this awakening?

Vera: I don’t remember.

Rick: Like 10 years ago or something?

Vera: Yes, something like that. But when I look back, I think I never lost the connection.

Rick: You mean your whole life?

Vera: Yes.

Rick: Yeah, but somehow it became more conscious when you had that experience.

Vera: Yes.

Rick: So, some of your kids weren’t born then, and some of your kids were really young. How are they doing?

Vera: Well, that’s a very nice question. What I find typical of my children is that they don’t do things—they don’t want to make friends. So, they have very few friends because they think it’s very important to choose the right friends.

Rick: That’s great.

Vera: Friends who resonate. And I think they’re very self-conscious, but they don’t always like me because if I see an ego mask, I always point at it, and they become angry because they feel trapped.

My eldest son is also very scientific, and he says, You and your spirituality. He’s very down-to-earth, but he sharply listens when I explain things. I think in my explanations I’m also a little bit down-to-earth and scientific, so there is overlap.

And the youngest children, who were conceived after this awakening, are really different. The youngest, for example, is always conscious of the steps she takes, the things she does, and also of her manipulation.

Rick: And she’s like three or something, right?

Vera: She’s now six years old.

Rick: Six, yeah.

Vera: And I saw that she was strongly rooted in her essence. When someone crossed her path and she was one and a half years old, she became angry and she said, Oh. That is very, very interesting for me, because she was a very lovely, angel-like child, you know? And she said, Oh.

Rick: Interesting.

Vera: Yes. And now I see that she is conscious of everything. She hears everything, she sees everything. And, as I said, with her manipulation, she knows she manipulates; she knows it’s a trick. And she also knows who she is.

I see that a lot of people manipulate and aren’t aware of their manipulation. They think they are the manipulated figure. But she knows. So, that’s interesting.

Rick: Yeah, see, this is a good argument for reincarnation. Where do these evolved kids come from, you know? These souls that come in and they’re so enlightened—

Vera: That’s why they really are different from the elders, because my resonation attracted—

Rick: Those types of souls. Yeah.

Vera: But they are a creation of an electric and a magnetic energy that came together. You can say, Yes, you attracted the soul, but you can also say, You created the soul.

Rick: You could.

Vera: I don’t know.

Rick: Let’s get back to your book a little bit. We talked about the first bit, which was reincarnation, and we won’t have a chance to talk for 10 minutes about every single chapter. But from the first section, which is still about your relationship with yourself, what are some things that you feel you want to discuss?

Vera: Well, maybe emotions, because that’s a very hard subject for most people. In chapter six, I describe the way we deal with emotions. We suppress them or act them out. I also made a training about looking at emotions differently, and when I put it on Facebook, the first reactions were, Oh, I want to get rid of them.

Rick: Get rid of emotions?

Vera: Yeah, Can you give me a trick to get rid of them? But that’s not how it works, of course, because there are billions of guides. If we don’t like emotions, we suppress them or act them out, but I say there’s a different way. Let them go through your channels and conduct emotions as they are moving energy.

So, if you can observe emotion like moving energy flowing through you, you aren’t the emotion. They say, I am angry. I am sad, but you aren’t the emotion. You can be aware of the emotion. That distinction people don’t really see. They are mad; they are the emotion. But if you see that it can go through you, you can stay in this peaceful state of mind and the emotions dissolve.

Rick: In a similar way with emotions, would you say that there’s usually, if not always, a physical counterpart to any emotion, and it might be a good idea to tune into that?

Vera: Yes, but the pitfall is that then they go into the center of the emotion and feel like they are the emotion. Then they come into an emotional storm because people associate with emotions. When I’m scared, I think, Oh, maybe that’s going to happen. I say you have to leave the story behind and just feel raw emotion as it is: energy that doesn’t have a name or a story.

Rick: But let’s say you’re scared and there’s a whole story about you being scared—such and such is going to happen. If you tune into your body, maybe you feel some kind of sensation in your solar plexus or something, and you can just allow your attention to dwell on that sensation and not go running off into the story. Does that make sense?

Vera: Yes, it makes sense, but there’s the same pitfall. Fear—I’m now writing an emotion encyclopedia—is the most difficult emotion group because it is the group that makes something dualistic. There’s something in the outer world that can harm me.

So, what’s needed if you are experiencing some kind of emotion related to fear is to get the insight that all creation is coming because I send out some energy, so I have to become centered again. And I know that I only attract things I want to come to the surface.

Rick: It might interest you to know that when you said fear is dualistic, there’s actually a line in the Upanishads which says, Certainly all fear is born of duality.

Vera: Yes, yes. The category of fear is about duality, so the cure for fear is oneness.

The cure for fear is oneness.

Rick: Right, right.

Vera: And there are seven other emotion groups that have different messages, but fear is very difficult.

Rick: So you’re writing a whole encyclopedia about this?

Vera: Yes, it’s very nice.

Rick: It must be a big project.

Vera: It is a big project, yes. I’ve been working on it for one and a half years.

The choice between suffering and happiness

Rick: Is there anything more in the first chapter that you really want to touch on, or should we go back to the second chapter, your relationship with the other?

Vera: Yes, there’s one thing that’s very important in the first part of the book, and that is that we have a choice.

Rick: A choice, yeah.

Vera: A choice. In the non-duality scene, let me say, they always say, Oh, you don’t have free will. I explicitly say you have a choice. The choice is: Do you let yourself be encaged by this thought, or do you remain in the present moment?

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: So, that choice is very important, and maybe that’s the only choice you’ve got. That’s the choice we have, and that’s the choice we have between suffering and happiness.

That’s the choice we have between suffering and happiness.

Rick: That’s really good. I’m with you on that. This whole free-will thing sometimes sounds like it’s actually used to excuse inexcusable behavior: I don’t have any free will. The devil made me do it.

Vera: Exactly, exactly.

Rick: And a cool thing about what you just said is catching the thought before it becomes an action. It’s like if you could get back down to the source of where your thoughts come from and catch them there, before they have already reached a great momentum, then with just a little bit of intention, the whole thing could be sent off in a different direction.

Vera: Exactly. Beautiful metaphor, yeah. So, that is the choice between happiness and suffering, absolutely. You have to be awake to choose. That’s the hard part. People ask me, How do I wake up? You can’t. That’s the moment of grace. But if you are awake, you can choose.

Rick: Yeah, and I think it’s grace, but God helps those who help themselves. I think that you can do things, and you’re offering a whole lot of things that you can do to increase the likelihood of waking up.

Vera: Yes, that’s true, absolutely. And if you’re interested, then I think there’s an intention inside you that wants to wake up.

Rick: Yeah, that’s the big step right there.

Vera: Exactly.

Rick: Anybody who’s listening to this show is interested.

Vera: Exactly. So, they’re all potentially wake-up-ers.

❤️ Relationships, judgment, and projection

Rick: So, your next chapter is your relationship with the other. Let’s talk a little bit about some of those points.

Vera: Yes. If we go into the other, we go into duality, so it’s duality in its basis. If you put something else into your life—a partner, a mother, a child, or a neighbor—people find a lot of trouble in relationships with other people because projection comes in.

We see that what we don’t accept inside of us, we see we’ve projected into the relationship with the other. So, it becomes even more difficult. I always say, Please judge, but know that the judgment is about you. Otherwise, you judge and say, Oh, I may not judge, and it becomes more complex.

If you allow yourself to consciously judge, you can see exactly where you judge yourself. That’s always how I look at people who judge me, and I think, Oh, you also judge yourself so harshly.

Rick: Yeah, I know that you have read a little Byron Katie, and one of the steps in her process is to go ahead and judge and be as judgmental as you want to be. It’s not the final step, but it’s something you’re allowed to do.

Vera: Yes, because it is an interesting step. There are a few people who instantly awaken, and a lot of people are very tied up in their ego patterns. So, if you use your outer world—the other, your relationships—to see in which patterns you keep yourself asleep, and you gain insight into how you keep yourself tied up, then it becomes open.

Openings come in the grid, and the more it opens, the more consciousness can shine through. There’s a transformation in that, so for a lot of people it is a transformation with a switch point.

This switch point is very difficult for people because then they are conscious of themselves, of the way consciousness wants to express itself through them, and they are awake to the belief system that holds them back. So, they cannot ignore themselves anymore, but they are fighting against their own belief system. That’s a very difficult point.

Rick: So, what do you do to help such people?

Vera: At that point, I would give people comfort, reassurance, and motivation, and maybe an insight into the future and how it can be.

Rick: Yeah, kind of a vision of possibilities, so to speak.

Vera: Yes, so they go over that bump in their comfort zone.

Rick: Yeah.

You mentioned in the playing-roles section of your book about the ego trying to control life and one’s companions by playing roles.

Vera: Exactly.

Rick: And you say a role is what you do; what you are is yourself.

Vera: Exactly, yes. A role is what you do. So this is a nice anecdote. My husband, who is a very gentle, helpful man, went away for a weekend, and everything was fine. It was nice having the house to myself for a weekend. When he came home, I was very excited, but the moment he set foot in the house, I felt sad. It was so strange, and I thought, What’s going on?

I was happy that he had come home, and then I realized that he was the humble knight and I was the lady. He came to rescue me when I was sad, and then I played this role. I wasn’t aware of it.

Rick: So you mean these were roles you had actually been playing for a long time, and you realized it when he went away for a weekend.

Vera: Exactly. This is what you see a lot in relationships: a humble knight and a poor lady.

Rick: Right. Damsel in distress.

Vera: Exactly. And you see that with parents and children also.

Rick: So you’re implying that our roles are very likely unconscious. We don’t even know we’re playing them.

Vera: Exactly. By writing about it and pointing it out, it can become conscious.

Rick: So, again, how can it become conscious?

Vera: I point people toward the possibility that what they do isn’t exactly who they are, but what they do. We play and act to get something: attention, recognition, certainty, or attention from the other gender.

Rick: A practical question would be: How can you help people become aware of roles that they’re playing, which they’re not even conscious they’re playing, and thereby stop playing them?

Vera: By looking at their reflections. I hope there are a lot of people who are honest. If a friend of mine is on the phone telling a sad story, and it doesn’t feel right or match their energy, I would say, I’m sorry, but this isn’t true, what you’re saying. I can’t listen to it. You feel that, and you can see if people don’t want to listen to you.

You have to watch your reflections. How does someone react, and how does that make you feel? You don’t have to look at all projections, because you would become crazy if you looked at all these millions of projections. But you have to look at the projections that give you a cramp.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: You cannot make things conscious, but your unconscious, pure soul is making them conscious for you. That’s just analytic logic: what has the most priority for you, what most prevents you from being yourself, is reflected most harshly in the outer world. So we get problems with our outer world, and the themes that have the most priority come to the surface.

Rick: I understand what you’re saying. Sometimes people say, The world is your guru, and that things in the world aren’t just happening arbitrarily. There’s a significance to things that happen in your life. They’re trying to bring your attention to something, and they’re probably bringing your attention to the things that you’re unconscious of.

Vera: Yes. I don’t like the word teach, because then it becomes a lesson and hard work.

Rick: Bringing your attention to, or making you aware of, something that you weren’t aware of. Is that a better way?

Vera: It is just that the path is always toward yourself, always toward yourself. If there’s something that withholds you from being yourself, then you get a bumping of energies.

There is an intention—you want to express yourself—but there is a belief. If the belief bumps into your intention and they don’t align with each other, then you get a cramp. You have to investigate this cramp, because then your beliefs are not in line with your intentions. Your mind is not in line with your heart, and we want them to be in line because the mind is the surface of the soul.

Rick: Do you mean an actual, literal cramp, or how would people experience this cramp that you’re referring to?

Vera: As resistance: Oh, that’s not nice. Oh, I’m becoming angry or frustrated. Or, yes, just mentally.

Anger, boundaries, and conscious expression

Rick: Bringing up children can be hard. Did you ever lose your temper with your children? Or we might ask, Do you still?

Vera: Do you still? I used to, a lot, because I’m a very passionate woman, and I sometimes still do. But there’s a difference now. Yesterday, for example, I became angry, but I didn’t lose my temper. I was fully aware of being angry, and it was needed at that time because we needed structure at that point.

Sometimes I have anger. The emotion of anger centers you back into yourself and gives you strength to get—not control, but guidance again. So I had to be the leader at that time.

Rick: You had to be assertive; you had to be firm.

Vera: Yes. I had to be, because everyone was going in another direction, and I needed to be angry so I could center all the family members. Here, come here, come here. That’s what anger does inside us also. Before you became angry, you gave your energy away. You let someone else take you somewhere other than where you wanted to go. Anger gets your energy back, centers you again, focuses you, and helps you manifest things into the physical world.

Rick: There’s a phrase, blind anger. People become angry and totally lose all self-awareness, and sometimes they do terrible things, commit crimes, and so on. But what you’re saying is that the kind of anger you experienced yesterday involved no loss of self-awareness. It was more like a necessary behavioral tool for dealing with a particular situation.

Vera: If I speak about 15 years ago, in the past I could lose my temper and be blindly mad. What helped me then was accepting that I lost my temper once in a while.

Rick: Yeah, admitting it.

Vera: Admitting it, yes, and accepting it. The most important thing was accepting that I lost my temper once in a while. But if you are conscious of it, accept it, and act it out, that’s a different story.

Rick: Say it again.

Vera: If you are conscious of your madness and accept it, and as a recognition to act it out—

Rick: Express it.

Vera: Yes, then that’s a different thing. My daughter, at one and a half years old, said, Ho, but she never hurt anyone else. She just used this anger to set her boundaries: Get out of my way because I’m on my path. I respect it.

That’s very different from wanting to harm someone else, because the other person, as a projection of you, is painful.

Rick: There are quite a few stories of various gurus, living and dead, who would get quite angry with disciples. Presuming that they were really enlightened beings and were doing the right thing, I guess the understanding would be that it was an appropriate expression, that it was done with love, and that it was helping the people. They weren’t hurting them. They had no desire to hurt them; they only wanted to help them.

There’s a saying in English, tough love, so maybe it was a form of tough love.

Vera: Yes, yes. I sometimes have it with people where I want to bang my foot on the ground, and it’s really important that they understand this. You cannot let this go away anymore. You have to stand up for it.

Rick: Emphatic.

Vera: That’s the word, yes. Those are the moments when I really become angry with someone next to me, because there are beautiful and important characters in the play. You have to take responsibility for it. That’s when I can become angry, yes.

Rick: Good.

Vera: But I never lose my temper and harm them. That’s a very different state of emotion.

Rick: It’s almost as if, in a way, it’s the same emotion, but in an ignorant, distorted, or warped expression of it.

Vera: Yes. Anger is a very important motor to push things into manifestation, and it is a very important motor. If you don’t acknowledge that you have anger, passion, and strength, you get all these spiritual people who never get anything off the ground.

Moving through suffering and trauma

Rick: Here’s a question that I think is an important one. It came in from Amanda in Tampa, Florida. She asks, Can you talk about evolving from intense feelings of suffering?

Vera: Yes. Hearing those words, I feel how strong the suffering is, and I feel for all those people who feel this. If I tune into that state, I want you to know that there are all these voices that don’t like life and feel bad. But there is a small voice that says—and please search for this voice—I don’t want to harm myself.

This is the voice that leads to the light, because people who suffer do that to themselves by saying, I’m a failure, and, Life wasn’t good for me. We build up all those stories, and we let them take us. But there is one voice that wants to live and wants to be happy. With a lot of people who are suffering, this voice is completely shut down by other voices that say, But I can’t.

But this pure voice that says, I want to be happy, is the one you have to follow. I hope you understand that all those other voices try to shut down this voice, and you have to be strong and not get yourself into that. You have to focus on the little flame.

However dark life seems, search around you for light. I mean light in the little bird on the branch, or the joy in the eyes of a child. Then there’s another voice that says, I want to be like the child. Don’t go into that voice, but stay with it. Look at the beauty in the eyes of the child and let yourself be touched by that eye.

It requires vigilance, intense vigilance, to say no to all these dark voices. But there is one little line of light. I feel it in the woman who asked me this question. There is one little line of light that she has to follow.

However dark life seems, search around you for light.

Rick: That’s nice. I really like that answer. Obviously, we could get into talking about some of the kinds of suffering people undergo—various types of abuse, people who have been in the military and have what they call post-traumatic stress disorder from the stress of fighting, and all kinds of things—but probably you would give the same advice, right? That little voice.

Vera: Well, there is a difference between pain in the moment from being beaten or experiencing physical pain, and becoming hurt if someone says something very hurtful. It hurts in that moment. But most people suffer, and that’s a whole lot more difficult, afterwards, after it has happened, or beforehand, when it may happen.

Rick: Right. And it may go on for years.

Vera: Yes, exactly. So if your physical body or your emotional body is in danger, you have to help it. You have to save yourself from a dangerous situation. That’s one thing, and the most important thing. We cannot solve everything by saying no to stories.

Rick: Right, right.

Vera: Okay, I’m talking now about the suffering from all the voices inside our head. With post-traumatic stress, there’s something else going on, because when something is too hurtful, we manage to protect ourselves with some kind of mechanism. And if you’re in that kind of mechanism, you have to be prepared to feel underneath, but not if you are still in the dangerous situation.

Rick: Right.

Vera: First, you have to make sure that you are safe, and then you have to slowly feel, because if you’re in a protection mechanism, you cannot do anything. With post-traumatic stress, the thing is that in nature there are no traumas, because at the moment of a traumatic situation, there’s a fight-or-flight mechanism. If we survive in nature—if you are a mouse, for example—the body shakes. By shaking, it regulates the energy system.

People don’t do that. So if we are in a war situation, we weren’t able to heal and balance our energy system, but we have to go into that again and again and again. We were only able to do that because we ignored ourselves. So the first thing is: never ignore yourself again.

If you are suffering from a trauma, look into the outer world, where you see little parts of the theme mirrored. You yourself are very brilliant at attracting situations in a way that you can handle them. I don’t like therapies that say, Okay, come on, we’re going to use hypnosis and go back to the war zone. I like to keep everything in the here and now.

Look around you. Maybe you are scared that someone else is walking in the streets and would harm you. Maybe that’s your point of focus at this point. How realistic is it? Are you prepared? Are you brave? Go together with me, perhaps, into the streets and look at what’s going on. Build it up a little bit. Here, too, it is very important that you know how the mind works, how creation works, and how oneness and duality work.

Rick: I was reminded, as you’re speaking, of a story Eckhart Tolle told. He saw a couple of ducks that got into a fight. Then the fight stopped, and the ducks shook themselves off and went back to being ducks, like nothing had ever happened.

Vera: Exactly. Horses do that also, and dogs. They shake it off, and it’s okay.

Rick: Michael Moore’s latest movie is called, I think, Where Should We Invade Next? He went around to some European countries and saw how they did things over there. One was, I think, Norway or Denmark. He went into the prison system there, and the whole system is set up almost like a resort, where everybody’s really comfortable. They have really good food, television, Internet, exercise—everything is in a beautiful setting. They have tremendous results in terms of a low recidivism rate, and the people are actually changing.

So rather than putting them in a harsh environment as a form of punishment, it’s more like true rehabilitation, where they put them in a healing environment and help them heal.

Vera: Beautiful. I saw that with my traumatized horse. He would bite me if I approached him. He was very angry, and all people had been very hard on him all his life. I saw the instant difference when I approached him with a totally open heart and love.

Rick: Nice.

Vera: Yes, you saw him relax. It’s the same thing with children, of course. If you are so hard on them, they build a fence around themselves. Loving doesn’t mean, Oh, I will be your slave; you can do anything. That’s something different.

Rick: Let’s go on to the third section of your book: your relationship with your physical body and the manifest. There are some subsections—the spiral of consciousness, the physical body, food, sickness and physical handicaps, money, Mother Earth, and things like that. What would you like to say about those points?

Vera: What I’d like to say about that is that we are in a human vehicle that contains the mental body, the emotional body, and the physical body. Some people are very evolved emotionally or mentally but forget the body, so we become out of balance. There has to be consciousness about that level also.

Of course, the physical body and the physical life around us are the last stage of creation. There’s intention, there’s mind, there’s energy, and then there’s manifestation into the physical world. So, yes, I found it important to focus you on what came before and how you are attached to all the physical components, like money and things.

Ten years or so ago, we suffered from bankruptcy, and we had nothing anymore. I sold all the things of value in my house, and I couldn’t go to the city for two years. It was a very, very interesting period. I had to go to secondhand stores and couldn’t buy anything anymore when I went to visit friends. It totally detached me from the value of, and the identification around, things.

A lot of people have a lot of identification with things. Once I went to a family party, and my two stepsisters had bought a new iPod and a new iPad, I guess. I looked at them and I looked at the things, and I really liked them. In one second, I felt this craving toward them. I immediately realized how I had become relaxed and calm because I didn’t have that craving anymore. It was complete freedom from physical attachment.

Rick: And now maybe you have some things again, but without the craving.

Vera: Exactly, yes. I do like beautiful things, although I’m more practically focused, actually. But if I don’t have them, it’s also fine.

Service, purpose, and the unique seed

Rick: The next section of your book is about your relationship with, and service to, the field of unity.

Vera: Yes, and it becomes really interesting.

Rick: This is where it gets really juicy toward the end of the book. What would you like to say about that?

Vera: Well, as I mentioned earlier in this interview, we have a very unique seed. If we were a tree or a flower, we would have a very unique seed. In this seed, it was already known who we would become. Our character and physical body are the vehicles in which we can put things into manifestation.

Your service to the field of unity is letting yourself be yourself and expressing yourself in your pure form, which feels like just you. It is like finding your mission, finding your purpose in life. A lot of people think that it is in the future, that it is very beautiful, and that we have to work very hard to get there.

The contradiction is that your purpose in life, your mission, is being your ordinary self. Just by being your ordinary self, you do exactly what you have to do and play your part in this play we play with each other.

There are people whose role is to confront people, and not many people like them, so they have a very difficult role. There are also people with a more serving energy who will never be in the spotlight, and they are also very important parts of the chain of change. Fulfilling your role in the field of unity means being completely your ordinary self.

Rick: In Sanskrit, they call it your dharma. Obviously, different people have different roles to play and different contributions to make. You could have a million enlightened people, and there would be tremendous variety among them. It’s not something that’s all going to look the same on the outside.

Vera: Exactly. It is an obvious point, but people don’t really know how to be themselves. They’re searching for themselves: Who am I? What do I have to do? They overlook that they already are doing what they do.

Rick: Do you have any guidance for people?

Vera: Observe how you act at the moment when you are completely reactive, and see what you do to other people. Whether you are doing the dishes, cycling on the road, or being at your office, in every place you are being you. In every place, you are doing the same thing you did when you were three years old or during kindergarten.

I could scan the children in kindergarten and know exactly what their purpose in life is, really, because it is obvious when you are still in the crib.

Rick: So, in your experience, if you go to your child’s classroom, see all the kids, and interact with them, you actually get a pretty clear vision of their purpose?

Vera: No, I don’t see that this kid is going to be a doctor, because that is the misconception a lot of people have when finding that purpose or mission in life. They think, Do I have to be a doctor? Do I have to be a lawyer?

That is the form, but the form organically serves your energy. Your purpose in life is an energy thing. For example, if you look into the little bed of a baby and say, Oh, I feel completely calm when watching him, the purpose in life of that baby is to calm people down—

Rick: I see.

Vera: —whether they do it as a coach, a gardener, or whatever.

Rick: Yeah, so it’s a more fundamental quality, obviously, rather than what profession they’re going to have.

Vera: Exactly. The profession is completely your choice, whatever you like to do, because you have to have fun doing it.

Rick: That’s a good point.

Vera: Joy is the resonance of your pure soul, so joy is your guide to doing what you have to do.

Joy is the resonance of your pure soul.

Rick: Beautiful.

Vera: And not hard work.

Rick: Yeah, unless you get joy out of that. Some people do.

Vera: Exactly. I only get money when I work very hard. The more painful it is, the more recognition I get.

Rick: No pain, no gain, they say.

Vera: Yeah, exactly. No, that’s completely different in real life.

Taking responsibility for what we absorb

Rick: Here’s a follow-up question from Amanda in Florida, who asked about suffering. She said, Do you have any advice on picking up suffering from others and how to handle that?

Vera: Yes. Amanda, what I’m going to say now is maybe difficult, but it is a choice. And here is why. You have learned to be of service to others, and you would be recognized and acknowledged by, maybe, your mother if you took care of her. If you took care of them, they would say, Oh, you are nice.

So, deep down, there is a choice you made to be there for others. If someone suffers, immediately your energy system goes there and you say, Give it to me. I will help you. If you change that belief and say, I want to help, but never again at the cost of myself, then that will stop immediately, if you make that choice.

I want to help, but never again at the cost of myself.

Rick: Great. Thank you.

Vera: I hear a lot of questions about picking up energies. Some people who find the spiritual world very interesting also find it very interesting to have an identity that can pick up energies. So they end up picking up all energies and then want to get rid of them again, because there is a belief that it is an interesting quality to pick them up. That also is a choice.

Rick: In other words, watch out what you wish for.

Vera: Exactly. But we aren’t always aware of what we wished for in the past.

🎵 Opening the heart to difficult people

Rick: Has your awakening and growing abidance in the Self had any impact on your relationship to perceived planetary threats, for instance, global warming and environmental degradation?

Vera: There was a phase when I was very sad about how people harmed themselves and harmed the world. But it was a phase, because later on I realized that I couldn’t change the world in its totality, and it was also not my role to change environmental issues. I do what I can in my square mile to fulfill my role in the play.

I also realized that if I am still fighting against all the things that cause harm from a dualistic or ego point of view, I am also fighting from an ego point of view. So if you really want to open your heart, you have to accept these kinds of people as well. I have a very interesting exercise to do that.

Rick: What’s that?

Vera: If you have an image of some of those perpetrators who wreck the world, you can tune into the resonance by seeing a picture, a movie, or a video on YouTube of this harm, or by watching the news. Then you have to—as we did at the beginning of the interview—inhale the complete being, the complete energy system, and the appearance of the perpetrator, and let them into your heart. That is where everything is already accepted.

Accepting is not something that you can do. Acceptance is already here if you let that non-accepted object into your heart.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: This is also helpful if you are fighting against an ex-partner or a parent. Take a picture and really inhale them. That is very difficult, because then I always see that frog with its blown-up ego saying, I don’t want to accept you. But if you do it, and you are interested in what will happen, you will notice that your heart is opening and the perpetrator becomes human.

Rick: I heard an interesting story about a Tibetan monk who was tortured, imprisoned, and persecuted by the Chinese. Eventually he got out of there, and someone asked him about his experience. He said, It was very difficult. I almost lost compassion for them a couple of times.

Vera: Wow. Beautiful.

Rick: Yeah.

Vera: Yes, yes. And then you need to be vigilant again.

Rick: Right.

Vera: It can take a lot of effort, really. I once got a hashtag on Twitter, and in one night I went through this whole scene involving hooligans. They said, Oh, we are going to this lecture of hers and make some trouble.

I woke up and saw this, and I took the picture of one of those men. He had red curls and a red beard. I looked at him and let him into my system, and I was shaking. It was very hard. This is how it is done. At a certain moment, it dissolves and becomes soft. Then my hashtag disappeared.

🕊️ Spiritual traps and the urge to grow

Rick: Let’s go on to the last chapter of your book. It’s called Traps, and there are some interesting things here. Here’s a funny one: the spiritual ego. There’s a quote: I have passed that. I have no ego anymore.

Vera: Yes. I see that a lot in the face of someone who has just had that first awakening and sees how it really is. There is still a large ego that says, I’ve seen it. But then it becomes more like a memory of awakening, rather than a truly awakened state that continues in the present moment. That’s very different.

Rick: Yeah. Do you know who Adyashanti is?

Vera: Yes, I like him.

Rick: He has a nice quote where he says, I feel like I’m always a beginner. He’s really a very advanced soul, but he honestly means that. When you talk to him, he’s like, Who knows? Maybe ten years from now I’ll look back at what I’m doing now and think I’m an idiot. There’s always this growth.

Vera: Exactly. I like that. Yes, I always feel like a country girl. I’m still a country girl.

Rick: Yes, it’s good to keep that in mind. Another trap you have here is meaninglessness.

Vera: Yes. A lot of people can even become depressed over the meaninglessness of life if they see that life doesn’t really have a goal. We don’t really have to save the world. We have a choice to do things differently, but it doesn’t matter for consciousness itself. It doesn’t matter. It just provides energy. It’s up to us.

There is meaninglessness, but the pitfall of meaninglessness is that you are feeding the story of meaninglessness. It can be an insight, but don’t allow yourself to fall into a depression, because an insight can become a story.

Rick: I’m going to be interviewing a fellow named Michael Murphy, one of the founders of the Esalen Institute, and he wrote a very interesting article about what he calls evolutionary panentheism. What he means by that is that there actually is a purpose to life and a purpose to the universe. That purpose has been moving things along for billions of years in an actual direction—towards greater and greater complexity of physical systems, for the purpose of greater and greater evolution or embodiment of divine intelligence.

Vera: There’s an irresistible urge to grow and to evolve. It is an ongoing stream, an ongoing drive in our life. We cannot stop it, and we cannot go back. But I don’t know if it has a goal in the form of a particular endpoint.

Rick: The way you put it is very good, and I think that drive that we experience in ourselves isn’t something we’re just experiencing in ourselves. It’s everywhere. It’s in everything.

Vera: Exactly. And that is again like the plant.

Rick: Yeah, which wants to go towards the sun.

Vera: Yes, exactly. The purpose, from our point of view, is that if we are a rose, we have to become that rose. That is our responsibility.

Rick: Yeah, to grow into what we are.

Vera: Exactly.

Rick: Another one of your little trap points is consciousness is something outside yourself. It isn’t me and consciousness. It is I am consciousness.

Vera: Exactly. It’s also not me and an angel, or me and this guidance. I am that guidance.

Rick: Right. Ultimately, it’s all within us.

Vera: Exactly. If you really, really, really see that, all these ideas we just talked about also come into another light. I feel that, from a consciousness point of view, it isn’t that you want to reach something, accomplish something, or go anywhere. It is all within the joy of this moment and the urge of expression—the urge of growth.

That is finite from a mind perspective. We want to believe in forms and goals, and in reaching and gaining. From a consciousness perspective, there isn’t any of that.

Rick: We’re just translating the way God thinks into the way people think, and it’s really something bigger than that.

Vera: Exactly. God really doesn’t make any distinction between victims and perpetrators, anger and joy. It doesn’t make any distinction. It is. It provides energy. It provides the surrounding.

Rick: One big evolution machine.

Vera: Exactly.

👁️ A vision of the future

Rick: The last part of your book is very beautiful: Vision of the Future. You talk about how, when awakened consciousness shines through all people, a whole new civilization will arise. What would you like to say about that?

Vera: When you see the world from an energetic point of view, the whole surface layer isn’t that important anymore. When you look at someone or some animal, you immediately feel the connection, or you feel that you have to let them pass by, and that’s okay.

You don’t need words anymore to really connect. You don’t need to have the same interests to connect. There is connection, or there isn’t resonance.

If everybody would live exactly the life they were meant to live, like that seed, and we would acknowledge that everyone follows their own path, we wouldn’t want to change them. We wouldn’t want to change their path, and we wouldn’t want to control the path of our children. There would be no distinction between races, genders, or ages. It would be totally different.

Rick: So are you optimistic about the world—for yourself as you get older, for your children, and for all of humanity? Some people get pretty depressed because they think, Whoa, look at all the pollution, the corporations, the politicians, and all this. How can we have any effect? We’re all going to die. Do you have a more optimistic view?

Vera: Well, I don’t let myself become depressed by those thoughts, but I don’t know if I’m really optimistic because the world is pretty messed up. Something really big has to change, but I think that is already going on. I was very surprised that Donald Trump was elected, and I think it could be interesting.

It was a very interesting choice, and it would be a far more interesting choice if we didn’t choose either of them, because then we had to take responsibility for ourselves, and we still don’t do that.

Rick: I’m sure that there could be a more enlightened politics than there is now.

Vera: Exactly. It was just my point that it is changing already.

Rick: Yeah, it’s changing.

Vera: I think the problems will become bigger because people still don’t see. If we still don’t see, the world has to mirror something bigger.

Rick: This ties into your whole theme of what we’ve been talking about with the individual, that things are designed to help us see. I agree that probably, in many ways, the problems will get bigger in the world, but that will be instrumental in a collective awakening that is really underway already. And so, ultimately, I’m optimistic.

Vera: Yes, if we see it instantly, yes. And we are shocked by all this. We will be shocked. Most people will be shocked. And then it is good that there are people who have walked the path already and can help.

Rick: Yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff happening that you don’t hear about on the news, but it’s building momentum more and more.

Vera: Yes.

Rick: Great.

Vera: But I think it is a pity that we need this shock.

Rick: Yeah, it would be nice if it could be done without.

Vera: I think it wouldn’t be necessary.

Rick: Right, yeah. I don’t think we have to wait for it.

Vera: No. But a lot of people do need shock, apparently.

Rick: If the whole seven billion of us can’t escape the shock, at least we have the choice personally to do things in our life, to live our life in such a way that we can come through the whole thing relatively untraumatized.

Vera: Exactly, yes. And then you do a great job for every one of us.

Closing thoughts

Rick: Well, we’re all doing our thing. So, thanks, Vera. This has been great. Are there any closing remarks you’d like to make to people about what you have to offer?

Vera: Well, if you want balance, you don’t have to come to me, because balance is living on the surface. I’m offering a really intense life and seeing true life, and I really hope. It is my passion to let people see that life isn’t that difficult. There are very simple ways of seeing things and walking through life.

Rick: Is that course that you offer, which we talked about earlier, offered in English or just Dutch?

Vera: Yes, okay, all English.

Rick: English?

Vera: Yes.

Rick: Okay, great. So, people can go to your website and check that out if they want to.

Vera: Yes, verahelleman.com.

Rick: Good, verahelleman.com. So, I’ll be creating a page on batgap.com about this interview, as I always do, and it’ll have some information about you, a link to your website, and a link to your book. People can get in touch with you through your website if they want to.

Vera: Yes, and I’ll respond.

Rick: Great. [Music]