The Enlightening Times

Interviews from the hard copy of the Enlightening Times by founder Tashi Powers

The ET asks Neale Donald Walsch... Why do you think you're not a woman?

Read his insightful conclusions.....

Tashi: Can you comment on your observations while working with so many Westerners about talking to God? Can you reflect on the Westerner's path?

Neale: I think the Westerner approaches his path through his mind. I think the Easterner approaches, largely, although not exclusively, his path through his heart. I think Easterners have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their mind about God, and I think Westerners have to be dragged kicking and screaming to their heart center about God. The beauty about Conversations with God is that it brings people (it almost sneaks up on you) from their mind to their heart. That's why men have been reading Conversations with God with such satisfaction.

Our mail shows that we have an astonishing number of male readers of both books. I would have thought that our demographics would be 70%/30% or 80%/20% of female verses male. In fact it is almost 50% ,50%, let me say 45%, 55% male to female. In fact we have the same percentage on our workshops and retreats around the country, and I think for the same reason. What happened in CWG is that unwittingly, without attempting to do it, a bridge was created between the head and the heart. And so at last Western spiritual searchers could find truths that have been accessible previously only to Eastern mystical searchers, at least in larger numbers. They have always been accessible but because of the differences they did not seem accessible.

So, yes I think our path has been different, but the differences are beginning to erode and to dissolve, but to some degree they still exist. And so to some degree, I think , at least for the next 10 to 15 or 20 years we will still see a largely mental approach to the experience of God in the West and a largely emotional approach to the experience of God in the East.

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Re-defines Balance

Compiled by Tashi Grady Powers

Most people in this society, and particularly in the fields that we are operating in at the moment, think that you need to get into balance. When, in fact, the minute you are in balance, you need to get out of it because your being has become static.

A better way to look at the notion of balancing energies would be to examine the equalization of the electro positive and the electro negative qualities. When we are balancing, what is really happening is that we are synchronizing these qualities until they are comparatively equal.

As in the spiral depicted on this page, all energy is curved. All motion is spiraling vortices of energy-in-motion, positive and negative. Each has its own potential. The positive has qualities that the negative is lacking, and so they have to complement each other so an integration takes place, so that a harmonizing takes place, in a total cyclic way.

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Tracking Freedom

is the third book by Ken Eagle Feather. His first two books introduced Toltec teachings as given by Don Juan Matus, who was made famous through the writings of Carlos Castenada. Eagle Feather studied with Don Juan in the seventies and eighties.

Tracking Freedom is a valuable manual for personal development. Especially if you are looking for radical, evolutionary transformation. Not since Chogyam Trungpa’s “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” has there been such a confrontation with spiritual materialism. This book offers a profound stance on fundamentalism in the New Age, as Eaglefeather challenges that paradigm which makes spirituality a new reality, when all that is really happening is a bigger head trip.

The modern spiritual mind set, the New Age movement, what Castenada calls "Ordinary Reality" is a valuable step towards breaking barriers of perception, but one of the points that Eagle Feather makes is that you need to be very deliberate in using spiritual reality as a firm stepping stone toward breaking all boundaries... towards tracking freedom...

Here is an excerpt from this must read, essential reference guide to fundamentalism in the New Age, a manual for postmodern times.

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HAMPTON ROADS PUBLISHING COMPANY

by Tashi Grady Powers

Everyone has heard of God!

Well, luckily for Hampton Roads, people are also interested enough in whatever conversation God may be having with a mere mortal.

Their author, Neale Donald Walsh's book Conversations With God, Book One has been on the New York Times best-sellers top ten list for 9 months and Conversations with God, Book 2 for four.

Hampton Roads acquired the book, and in a very savvy business deal, sold the publication rights to Conversations With God, Book One to Putnam for seven figures. This allowed both the book and Hampton Roads to expand. The book publishers updated their computer systems and hired a few extra hands.

The ET encountered the company facing the proverbial catch-22.

The latest wunderkind of the book publishing world, HR owners, Bob Friedman and Frank DeMarco have manuscripts on every spare shelf awaiting their perusal. .

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