Elandra: I have a big passion for what I believe is possible when it comes to love and ageless living, and so I love it when people say, “You radiate so much light and love, how do you do it?” Or “What are the secrets to your marriage longevity, how do you manage to stay together?” Or, “How do you keep yourselves in such great shape, so fit and healthy, especially for your age?”
I love talking about all this. It’s really my life’s passion and purpose! Perhaps that’s enough to keep me going. And I love sharing and gathering friends, sacred activists, ‘wisdom walkers’, all our transformational communities, to go deep in wisdom and intimacy while having fun together, dancing and singing.
We were at a gathering when suddenly the hostess declared, “Elandra, you are the most radiant human being I have ever met!” And I laughed, responding “It’s a reflection of you all, my joy at sharing consciousness, and being together with so many that I love!”
I really believe there is no need to get old except chronologically; of course you can’t avoid those birthdays year after year. And then when people ask about our relationship I really delight in that because it’s amazing how wonderful it is now; we really have come into a marvelously joyous relationship. But it did take a lot to get there; it certainly wasn’t always that way!
Antion: From my perspective as a man, this is what has worked well for us over the years: I learned way back and still believe that the best thing a man can give his woman is his own spiritual relationship with his higher self and God. If a man demonstrates his focus on his spirituality, it gives a sense of security, safety and comfort to his woman and thus strengthens their relationship. Then she knows that she doesn’t have to sustain him spiritually.
Elandra: It’s the commitment that’s so significantly valuable and powerful. At the beginning all we thought of was that if we did enough spiritual practice and faithfully followed the guru’s instructions we would be free from all possible problems and easily “sail across the world ocean.” Later we came to realize that spiritual commitment means commitment to growth, which means commitment to becoming fully transparent and honest in our relationship.
At the time for us back then this was almost impossible. It meant pursuing something far more difficult than just our spiritual practice. It meant healing, true healing, emotional healing, the healing and exorcism of the programming and conditioning with which we were all raised.
Relationship stuff and healing is hard. Part of the reason being we don’t recognize that we consist of more than the conscious mind, the rational mind, we consist of many parts. Our relationship truly began to heal when we woke up to this and resolved to find out what those parts were. We then had to face them, discover their issues and heal the sabotage they were causing from within us.
We didn’t know about this at the beginning so we couldn’t do this, it just wasn’t possible. We weren’t even aware of how much there was within us that needed healing and letting go – finding out about that that was a long journey.
Antion: But the spiritual practice kept us together until we were ready to really face our inner problems. That’s why the mantra which we were taught and tried to practice “turn your emotions to devotion” didn’t do the trick, or only worked initially. We talk a lot about this in our classes: that spirituality, yoga and meditation (leaving the body and feeling good) as such is not enough.
I believe that even the most intense spiritual practice is not enough and does not do it. It’s absolutely necessary to recognize that spiritual practice – while totally vital – is not all there is to our conscious evolution. We also have to find ways to keep on being open and learning to get in touch with those inner parts we’re talking about and discover their agendas. In our case I found that they come from our own internalized parents. By working with them I was able to understand the whole ancestral lineage that we took on from both sides. So we’re understanding, as many more of us “cultural creatives” are now, that our perceptions create our beliefs. Whether we realize it or not, our unconscious beliefs drive our consciousness and our lives.
Elandra: Now we’re understanding that we, most of humanity, lives unconsciously. As Bruce Lipton says in his book, Biology of Belief, we live 95% from the subconscious which means only 5% is conscious. So we have to find out what’s in that 95%!
Antion: Elandra and I have spent vast amounts of time helping each other, working on each other, discussing healing and meditating together. It’s a priority for us. We would probably have been a lot richer if we spent more time focusing on making money but we might not be together.
Elandra: Yes, and we had to! We faced tremendously difficult times that pushed us into continuous learning. It was either that or divorce. What works right away, effectively, in these emergency situations, we had to find it and apply it. All of this has given us the training and experience to help others with similar issues on the spiritual path, and that’s the joy of it, and of course that’s also the true qualification, the initiations of life, rather than book learning and degrees which many times mostly bamboozle and feed ego enhancement.
Antion: There have been many occasions where one of us, either me or Elandra, has reached the end of what we thought possible in the relationship, and wanted to quit. It was like: “This is it! I’ve had enough, I can’t stand it anymore!” Amazingly, something would then always happen to shift things.
I can recall so many occasions where I’ve said to myself, “Okay, that’s it! I quit!” Then would come the shift. We were repeatedly blessed with the inner shifts that required our moving up to another level of relationship awareness.
Elandra: That’s it, a sense of blessing. In fact always from the very beginning we’ve had this sense of a divine destiny together. Even at the worst of times, there was this feeling in me that all of this was for the purpose of growth and understanding; understanding what it’s like and feeling that we are really are divine beings that have come here to have a human experience. Somewhere deep inside there’s always a part that just knows. It knows that everything’s going to be alright in the end, that even through the dark night of the soul and through the worst of the worst it’s going to be okay and we are doing what we need to be doing, and that what’s going on is actually really an initiation.
Antion: When we came together, when we fell in love, there was absolutely no way that the relationship could have and should have worked. It was obvious that we were in different worlds, on different paths, with different attitudes and yet there was something I was seeing in Elandra – something so incredibly cosmic and deep. I mean, she was living this rather flighty partying lifestyle as a model and actress and yet, in spite of that… I couldn’t say I was put off by this but I was saying to myself, how can this possibly work with her in this kind of lifestyle, as I was already on my spiritual path at that point, already committed.
At the same time I saw something incredibly powerful and noble within her; I instinctively knew that that was the real her. That was what she was about.
She still likes to have fun. She’s still the fun-loving partner in our relationship but you know what? If I weren’t around I think she’d be a lot more serious. Since I’m pretty focused and committed to my spirituality she knows she can mess with me with impunity, so she does.
Elandra: Our spiritual practice was so intense, so radical, being dressed in white clothes all the time, living communally, being teachers and ministers and yoga center directors without a break. For a while I was a counselor in the school system and used to go to work dressed in a turban and nobody in my work place really understood what that was all about.
We had this dream of changing the world and so we tried our best to live that dream. It was very stressful and it was a formula for massive burnout. So one day after fourteen years of marriage I realized that, hey, I haven’t danced (I used to be an award winning ballroom dancer) what happened? And I said to Antion – and I meant it – I said, “Either you learn to dance…”
Antion: What she actually said was, “Which do you prefer? Dance classes or divorce?” And so we started dancing.
Elandra: And of course, he being who he is, a musician with a great sense of rhythm (and a strong spirit, focused and committed and going for it), he was soon a better dancer – it was Jitterbug we were doing at the time – than all the other guys. So there are times when we have to confront each other, and we just know this is it. It’s a crossroads, you know, you have to step up, push and be pushed, even when you don’t like it! And I was not one for making ultimatums or being assertive in my relationships, so it was a big push inside me from somewhere to say that.
Antion: One of the things that I’d like to share is that you have to be able to understand the difference between defending your principles and defending your ego. Or let me put that another way. When you compromise with your partner – because in relationship there always has to be compromise – you have to know when you’re defending your principles and when you’re defending your ego.
In the early stages of the spiritual path and marriage, it’s real easy to confuse the two. You have to be able to differentiate between what is coming from your spiritual self and what is coming from the need to control.
Generally we enter relationships when we’re young. That’s the way life is. You don’t get wisdom until you’re a lot older. But we start interacting with the opposite sex… what… 12, 13, 14, and 15 and of course we make a terrible mess of things for years, since we never learned anything about relationship other than what we saw around us.
But, as you get older, perhaps you start to understand that the best way to make a relationship work is to work upon yourself. That’s what’s really important! You’ve got to know what your beliefs, neuroses, and limitations are, and how they work to be interlocking with the other. You’ve got to know which parts of you are motivated by neurosis, which means defending your pain and hiding things about yourself that you don’t want other people to see. At the same time you have to be aware of the parts that are committed to your spiritual growth.
When we first got married it was like I thought I had to control everyone and everything all the time, telling everyone you’ve got to do things this way, my way. I was pretty heavy about the whole thing. Life forced me to learn to lighten up and be more accepting, not only of Elandra, but of everybody. That’s been very good for me.
As an example, I have been a very strict vegetarian for over 35 years now. Elandra wasn’t totally vegetarian when I met her and a couple of times in our relationship she said, “Maybe I should eat eggs or fish.” We’ve gone up and down, round and round about this but, at some point, I had to say, “It’s what she does and she does things differently from me.”
We have some different beliefs and some differing ways of looking at our spirituality. She’s not exactly like me and, because of this, I need to be ready to cut her a bit of slack. We see things differently; we look at the world differently. It’s important to be able to balance these things out.
Elandra: Again we were able to get through those differences as a result of that inner commitment to growth. And the respect of the other, being in love, really in love with each other’s basic integrity and nobility!
In those early years of marriage, we had to adjust to life in a spiritual community, living in one house amongst 30 yoga devotees. We were no longer being the sought after celebrities. It was so hard it was almost impossible; in fact it was truly a miracle we made it. He was often terribly depressed and in a bad mood, and reacting with anger and violent speech, and I would jump to placate and please, to mediate, and to try to make everything alright. We got through all that, because ultimately it was this sense of destiny that’s always been there. I think there’s no way that I ever could have gotten married and gone into this spiritual lifestyle if it hadn’t been for this, plus these inner experiences and guidance that was so strong.
I had started coming to yoga class and having these experiences of visions, visions of being in India during yoga class, amazing experiences in my body and then outside the yoga class continuing having amazing experiences like feeling no weight in my body at all and hearing divine sounds. I didn’t know what was happening and it was a bit scary, even as I enjoyed the sheer wonder of it.
Then there was the morning when I was guided, in those early days, in the middle of night, to walk to Antion’s yoga ashram through the streets of London – not safe but I was driven with this incredible sense of purpose. He was sitting there meditating and I watched this incredible light around his head. It reached out about – we’re talking meters here – like two meters on either side of his head and it was brilliant blue with millions of shimmering gold streaks. How do you handle that? That’s direct experience, undeniable. Why was I seeing that and why?
I know there was some form of guidance showing up for me there! Somebody wanted us to be together! Without this happening, how could I have left my glamorous lifestyle? Because my rational mind wouldn’t have allowed me to leave my lifestyle and oppose my parents and friends who thought I was utterly crazy. At that time I was doing well in my career as movie star, working and hanging out with celebrities and rich and famous people. To be a celebrity with massive fame and recognition is what our culture depicts as every kid’s dream and every grown-ups dream too! Why would I want to leave such a life?
But I also got to see the many negative aspects of it. I was seeing it all and I was being shown it as if I were being guided as well. I was shown some very negative things going on in that world – well, you know, as is coming to light a lot these days -it’s not quite as glamorous as everybody wants to believe. My experience was that there’s no beauty and no authenticity in that world. Another world was calling to me that seemed true and beautiful on the inside, not just the outside.
Antion: I was in great duality and inner conflict too. Inside it was like, “What are you messing with this woman for? Why are you going crazy over her? Why are you so much in love with her when she’s clearly, totally involved with this celebrity lifestyle? She’ll never leave this lifestyle to be with a penniless yogi like you. She’s never going to change.” So there was a lot of grief going on for me too. Plus coming from California back to England depressed me no end.
Elandra: And then after a bit, the flower power changes hit London, all of a sudden it was wild swinging London and Carnaby Street and King’s Road and all… burn-your-bra Germaine Greer, you know: women’s lib, no more make-up…
In those days yoga was considered very weird indeed. Pretty silly I’ve always thought, it’s mostly just taking care of your body with some stretches, who would object to that and be scared by it? Now yoga is on every street corner, but it was really weird then, practically considered witchcraft by our Christian-oriented culture! Even now, recently the Pope was quoted as saying “Yoga is the work of the devil,” so it’s been a long haul against incredible opposition on all sides, with some of the worst being from my own family, who never understood it and never wanted to. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head, “Oh no! Not a penniless weirdo yogi with a turban and a beard!” I think my mother never recovered from losing her only daughter to what she feared was a horrible cult. Here I was with the world at my feet, with this much intelligence and beauty, they thought I was fantastic. I had a degree, knew all these languages, had everything and in their eyes and the eyes of the world and its values I threw it all away.
Antion: Another perspective to consider was the consciousness of the times in London and in New Zealand. It was still quite conservative, a prim and proper class consciousness. We were in London and London was way behind California.
I’d gotten into the spiritual way of life in California. California was cutting edge; it was leading everything. London was way behind spiritually compared to California. It wasn’t until quite a few years later that London opened up to the spiritual side of things, so starting up a yoga centre in those times was really hard, well-nigh impossible.
Elandra: Actually it’s fascinating to look back and recognize what a repressed society we had then, coming right after the 50s. In the New Zealand of my teen youth it was all about how you looked, wearing gloves, wearing corsets, must follow skirt length and all the fashions. You simply wouldn’t go outside without your purse and looking all formal…I didn’t learn to drive and even now, – I just heard it again here in NZ! “Women are bad drivers!” So what a contrast, all of a sudden, there I was in London in a milieu, in a vibe of what was being called “free love” and “free sex” – nobody in those days had even heard of STDs, sexually transmitted diseases! It was wild, the call of the times, the Summer of Love, all of that idealistic flower power energy hit.
I wonder now how and why I again stuck with a lifestyle which required a uniform, restricted repressed formal white clothes all the time, and this for 17 years. I wonder now how I could have done it, covered head to foot all the time, like a nun – it’s quite extraordinary – but it didn’t feel limiting as such. I was of such spiritual bent, driven by this idealistic longing for devotion and connection and transcendence. I think what I hoped it would make me feel was like I was valued as part of something important and world changing, something of meaning and worth. I wanted to feel that we could change the world by living to a set of obvious values instead of the socially sanctioned pursuit of ego gratification, addictions, and money. Certainly without those truly outrageous experiences of other realities, the visions, the seeing of his aura, no weight in my body, light as can be, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. So where did all that idealism and devotion come from? It was inborn, and it was love. Love first coming from respect for my teacher’s loyalty to his own teacher, and then it was love for him. It was all for love.
Antion: One thing I always knew is that Elandra belonged in California. I just somehow knew that if I could get her to California she would just blossom there. She thought London was great but California, with the sunshine and the easy-going attitude, she would fall in love with it. And I was right.
Elandra: I fell in love with the USA as we flew over it from England. Looking down from the window of the plane watching the vastness of it hour after hour, I had never seen anything so huge, and when we got to Los Angeles, it was so exciting to see the sunshine and brilliance. He took me to Baskin Robbins; all those flavours, I’d never seen anything like it. When it came to consciousness California was so way ahead, and the San Francisco Bay Area and Marin County were way ahead of Los Angeles. For example, when we had our first daughter in San Rafael, we had a wonderful doctor come to midwife my birth. Later on when I was a childbirth teacher/midwife in San Diego, the times were that restrictive that they actually ran our supporting doctor out of town and we had to become activists.
Later, when we had been directors of a yoga centre in San Diego for17 years, we got the next big call to transformation. Suddenly, wow, it was Hawaii calling, the most transformational place of all. The word Hawaii means home. It’s like a calling home when you feel the call to Hawaii, like a calling to your destiny, perhaps a calling home.
On the surface, it looked like we had created a great life in San Diego, Antion had built us a beautiful designer house and we almost had a “yuppie” lifestyle. Then all of a sudden we were out of there and living in Kauai, right after a devastating hurricane.
Antion: And then we were happy living in Hawaii and all of a sudden we were out of there to NZ! That’s been the way of my life, of our lives.
Elandra: Constantly reinventing ourselves.
Antion: Moving to new places.
Elandra: Perhaps being guided by Spirit…
Antion: Not “perhaps”!
Elandra: Right, but perhaps not always knowing that we were guided, sometimes thinking, “What? What are we doing now? Again letting go of everything that we built up?” Each time we’d lose everything. We had all our stuff stolen. I did, and he did, everything.
Antion: Actually my stuff was stolen before I got on the spiritual path in California, in Los Angeles.
Elandra: And looking back we can see reasons why… But at the time well, no, didn’t see!
Antion: It was a shock, a terrible shock! You know, perhaps not everything, but everything I valued. The colour TV, my custom build stereo, my leather jackets, sheep skins, and a lot more. All the stuff I really valued, which was interesting especially the TV. I was very proud of it, because it was the first time I ever had a colour TV.
Elandra: In those days having a colour TV was a huge big deal, like equivalent to having a whole cinema set up in your home!
Antion: Most people had TVs but they were small. Still it was a blessing to get rid of it. I didn’t think so at that time of course, and it took time to realize it, but in due course it made my life lighter.
Elandra: When I discovered all my stuff stolen, when I finally got the go ahead to get back to London I found an empty house, everything stolen, every last little bit except a postcard in the attic. It was freaky, especially losing things of great sentimental value, photo albums, my grandparents’ silver flatware, and letters from Denmark that made up our pioneering history in 1950 NZ. Later we left a lot behind in San Diego. And in Hawaii a major storm took away all my healing space and my most valued favourite crystals and books, and that’s a whole story in itself.
Talking about attachments to material possessions I remember one time Antion suddenly said, “Hey, I realize there’s something wrong with me!” What?” said I, “What do you mean?” “I’m not like other people, I don’t care about getting and having more, more and more comfort and luxury and stuff and cars, nor about what others think about that.” And I said, “I know. I’m the same way, must be something wrong with me too, you know, that fancy limousine that would pick me up, at 5am to go to the movie set, with a liquor bar, and this friend who owned an airline and an underground mansion used to pick me up in one of his Rolls Royces, I used to hate all that. And being with all those rich arrogant jetsetters in Europe, yuck.”
Antion: Attachment is heavy, stuff is heavy, weighs you down, and ultimately you can’t take anything with you.
Elandra: You know, people don’t believe it, don’t understand it. We turned our backs on the life of the rich and famous, the potential of ever more worldly success, fame and fortune beckoning. We did have what everyone is looking for and many forever dream of. Wide-eyed they’ll ask us, “You used to be in the Animals?! Or, “You used to be an actress in London, a movie star!? And I’m talking to you and you’re talking to me, wow!” And mostly you know they’re thinking, “Where are the big houses, cars and boats that we expect of you, the evidence of your money?” or “You threw it all away? What a waste, you must be crazy!” Now I suppose I can understand that reaction – that’s our conditioned culture of celebrity – to keep people unhappy and trying to consume more to distract themselves from their pain.
These days we live humbly, simply, low key and minimalist. When it comes to losses now I have trained my mind to always be looking for the gift in everything, I like to say it’s all practice in letting go because we have to let go of everything when we exit here for the ultimate change of address. I think on some level we deliberately bring those “losses” upon ourselves by our chosen spiritual path, that of a ‘warrior’ of peace, of consciousness. This means always having to cleanse and clear the attachments along the way. The call means to lighten ourselves with the experience of letting go, of loss, of sorrow, the stuff, homes, friends, community. I choose to see it as practice for ultimate transition to that ultimate home, and while it can be terribly painful, the other side of it, when we make it to a lighter life, as we have now, wow, we get to experience a deep fulfillment, energy, joy and lightness. A state, a reality that nothing and nobody can take away!
For me it’s about acknowledging ever more and helping others see it too that we are coming into this power of choice and recognition that there is another reality, and it’s more important and more real than this one – or at least that it exists. And that we are becoming it, that this multidimensional energy can live within us and therefore we can hold our bodies healthy, because that energy includes and is grounded in the body.
Antion: Actually we have been so blessed to be able to choose to give so much time to working on ourselves… most people don’t and can’t. There are a lot of people out there who work 12 hours a day, sometimes more. That’s okay if that’s what they want to do, but our focus has always been on growth and spiritual practice. We’ve had amazing times as a result. I can’t tell you the number of times that, mostly it’s Elandra first, but sometimes it’s me – we wake up at 3am and all of a sudden – boom – we’re in this very deep conversation. Usually there’s some major breakthrough that has to happen. After 1–2 hours, sometimes longer, we’ve moved some energy and in our consciousness moved to yet another level of healing and growth.
Sometimes I think to myself: Can regular people do this? Because if you’re committed to working even 40 hours a week, and you’ve got a couple of kids and stuff, it’s hard! But then, hey, if you give up watching TV just imagine how much more time you’ve got. People don’t realize. They’re just: “Hey, everyone watches TV, why shouldn’t I?” But watching TV rots your brain. It hypnotizes you. It makes you dead from the neck up. If you kill your TV, you could maybe spend time reading, self-improvement, talking to family, or even exercising… these are better choices, wonderful things to do.
When you make these choices which are in your power to do, then you have more access to bigger picture truth. This includes the recognition that, sadly, it’s in the interest of people who control society to keep the populous stupid, unhealthy, and either poor or with just enough money to buy knickknacks from China that keep them happy – or so they think. Society doesn’t want people who are self- motivated, self-healing, able to learn about their potential and at least try to fulfill it. We may not all fulfill our full potential in this lifetime but, if you at least try to, that gives you a certain sense of empowerment. Society does not want empowered people. Society wants drones; people who are drugged up to the gills, drunk or hypnotized by TV. Society would rather have you watch 8, 10, 12 hours of TV a day than question what’s really going on!
However the internet seems to be changing that. That’s always the struggle in life if you will. Which prevails – the spiritual or material? We need both to live in balance; it can’t just be spiritual either. We have to eat, bring up families, marry, and interact with others. These are all part of human development, the Earth curriculum. The idea of sitting on top of a mountain and meditating all day is all well and good, but not a truly fulfilling life path for that we have to participate in the world. It’s always question of degree; you have to be involved to evolve.
Just as it’s easy to lose yourself in having too much sex, in drugs, or drinking too much, it’s easy to lose yourself in being a consumer. Society goes in cycles and waves. For whatever reason, Western society for a long time has been consumer-oriented. There’s been very little of the spiritual. The spiritual was delegated to and taken care of by Church – which wasn’t really spiritual – it was religious. There was no encouragement towards spirituality as such and creating one’s own connection to the Creator.
The cycle changed massively in the 60s and we started to go on more of an upswing into a spiritual cycle in the West. On other hand India, which has been spiritually focused for endless years, you go there now and find they’re well into a cycle of materialism. The country is changing. Still very spiritual but I’ve been there three times: 2005, 2006 and 2009 and just in those three to four years I’ve seen this incredible shift away from spirituality towards materialism and consumerism.
It’s quite upsetting because in this world you could always say, “Well, India is a messed up place but you can go there and be inspired by this fantastic spiritual energy.” Well, guess what, the spiritual energy is not there like it used to be. Everybody has wide screen TVs and watches endless cricket and Bollywood movies. It’s amazing.
Elandra: It’s addiction, a total addiction that is fed by all of this. And it becomes more and more of an addiction. The richest man in the world was asked, “How much in enough?” And he answered, “Just a little bit more.” It’s never enough. The addiction to money, power, being a star, celebrity gossip – it’s all cult consciousness, and never brings lasting happiness.
And I think that ultimately it makes sense to me this idea that we have come here as spiritual beings to experience, grow through and work to help bring light to the most horrifying things that are being revealed these days. We both keep in touch with the news through reliably truth telling websites (not TV /newspapers). I believe that I’ve come here for that purpose, to see this through, to go through this and to choose or to come back to choosing. To have things get as intense as is starting to happen, there’s nowhere else to go but to choose, to remember you’ve got the power of choice and you can choose authenticity and truth.
Antion: You can choose integrity.
Elandra: In these days truth seems to be in short supply more than ever, but then, perhaps it has always been this way? There’s a story about some Greek philosopher, Diogenes of Sinope, walking around holding up a lit lantern in broad daylight, and upon being asked what he was doing would respond, “I’m looking for an honest man!” Even if it has always been this way one thing we know is that never before have we had this huge population, 7 billion and doubling all the time that makes for both massive untruth and truth!
In ancient times they knew that any physical dysfunction and symptoms meant that you were on a journey of coming to awareness. They called it the teleology of illness. So all of these things are about the recognition of the evolution of consciousness. I believe that we are in process of creating a whole new species. I really believe that, because I feel it within myself, in my guts. Not just a mental idea, it feels for real in my body. And the conviction supports me as positive convictions, beliefs and passions do, to not get depressed and miserable about all of these horrible things going on in the world.
There are times, though, when I get so disgusted with what appears to be the sheep-like stupidity of humans, for instance being so engrossed in celebrity culture and in denial about the truth of what is going on. It brings up the disgust I used to feel when I was part of it. I never had any interest in the latest worthless gossip about the stars and royalty, yuck, and I then I think, “What? I have to deal with this amount of disgust? How do I deal with it?”
The answer always shows up. My inner voice says Breathe. Malama (nurture, take care of myself, love), my cells, my body. Apply Aloha. Breathe, exercise, know that it’s within me and I and we can affect the world in a positive way with every tiny thing we do for the better, and every conscious moment counts, not just inspiring thoughts, but for real. We’re not helpless.
Who could believe that a change is possible with people who are drugged out on TV and the culture of consumerism of the States that spread worldwide? Who could believe that there would be a big change? But there is a big change happening. I think it’s an overall energy that we are feeling, we 7 billion who’ve come here and here we are all together and major things are happening. I think that what drives the change is the inner drive of consciousness, towards the evolution of consciousness. And that’s pretty exciting.
Antion: That’s a part of life in all beings; it’s the need to evolve, the need to move forward. It’s happened over and over that we were tested by being given a choice to cleave to truth and integrity against all odds.
Elandra: And in the cosmos, it is the whole universe that is evolving with the solar energies.
Antion: Of course on the planet we see it mostly in human beings and they do have a need to evolve, to grow. And I think many billions of human beings are frustrated because although they have their needs met, they realize deep down that they have been sold a bill of goods, a belief that happiness depends on getting something, a bigger car, a bigger house, more beautiful wife, more money, blah blah, more and more will make you happy. So many are starting to realize that those things aren’t bringing happiness.
There’s a hunger for spirituality in every human being. Question is: does it have a chance to manifest or does it get squashed when they’re children? You just don’t know. It depends on so many different factors.
But the hunger is there and I think that the generation of children born in the last 20 – 30 years is manifesting more openness to an outside-the-box view of life and spirituality than that of previous generations. We, the baby boomers, were very different from our parents. We were so gung-ho for yoga and change in the 60s but then, over the years as we found ourselves faced with the challenges of raising families in this culture, and being involved in society with work and businesses, the pressures took their toll and we slipped back to taking on more mundane ways of looking at the world. When you’ve got a mortgage and car payments and a lot of stuff, it’s hard not to.
When we were teenagers we were different from our parents then in our 20s, we were really different from our parents. We had totally different attitudes. Today’s children now are much more spiritual and aware. So the powers-that-be are working very hard to keep them drugged out, being put on Ritalin, and Prozac. Having them become real people is too threatening to a status quo that puts control first.
Elandra: Big Pharma, the pharmaceutical takeover of health, the obscene greed and drive for more and more control through money…
Antion: And more control of the population…
Elandra: Inventing new psychological problems and diseases just to sell more drugs…
Antion: Okay, let’s stay on the bright side, dear; we don’t need to go into that. The vision is that we are put on this earth to create heaven on earth. To create spiritual earth, a new earth, a new civilization if you will. There are multitudes of prophecies about this. One of the Hopi prophecies is that the oceans will turn black and everything will die –now who could imagine that happening? But it’s happening with the oil spills, and the Hopis feel strongly that their prophecies will be coming true, and so are actually quite stoked that one of their prophecies seems to be manifesting.
Elandra: That’s because in the bigger picture it’s what’s meant to happen. The populace has become so – “sheeple,” so it’s the only way to get people’s attention, to wake them up to remember there might be choice here. That’s what the bright side is. You can get into and stay in the cognition and perception of the bigger picture, and that’s the call, to see that, right?
Antion: It’s not easy, particularly because of the incredibly negative bombardment from the media – so huge. But that’s the whole idea… there are so many prophecies like the Hopi one and they’re all saying that there will be a new world and it will be a spiritual world. Now, who’s going to see that? Will I see it? Certainly I hope so. We know that we’re coming up to 2012 with the Mayan calendar ending and there’s massive focus on 2012, which in itself is significant. What’s going to happen after that? I don’t know. Nobody does…But as spiritual people it’s our obligation to stay focused on the spirituality and try and uplift ourselves and everybody with whom we come in contact to create a better energy. There’s a real sense of hopelessness out there in most people right now. We need to do whatever it takes to change that.
Elandra: I do know that every little thing we do helps, and we are becoming more appreciative of that, feeling it as truth that we are all connected. We need to watch the frequency of our energy and feel when it’s being lowered by our thoughts and then deliberately be seizing the thoughts, and healing them by bringing to consciousness everything that shows up as being in the way. That means pulling your lost energy back to yourself, for soul retrieval and above all destiny retrieval, claiming it, and living in that understanding that you have a destiny, you have a kuleana, a spiritual purpose and responsibility here. There are lots of ways of being a warrior of consciousness, and a self-healer.
Right now I want to share a memory coming to me of something that happened that is significant to our relationship and lives now. In 1972 in May when we had travelled to Los Angeles together, my idea was to stay for three weeks, I had told my agents I would be right back. I just wanted to meet the guru, Antion’s spiritual teacher.
When the guru realized what was happening with us he wanted us to get married and called us together to persuade us. I was way too scared to consider such a thing, totally freaked out at the idea. Sure we had this attraction but with way too many fears and doubts. Never really even imagining that it could possibly work to be together, it was a bit of flirtation for me, marriage was not considered (at least consciously), and as for him, he knew that without a lot of approval, – no, a direct order from his guru!- there was no way he would move with this, and as a dutiful chela, disciple, he was prepared to give up his feelings for me, even renounce them and me altogether. I knew this and respected him for it.
After some outrageous dramas the guru ordered us to get married, now, soon, next week. That was it, our lives were about obedience, and I had learned that from Yogananda’s book: obey the teacher. So there we were sitting on the floor of the yoga room having our hastily organized wedding ceremony at 7am after morning group sadhana (daily community regime of yoga, meditation and music). He was an imposing presence, a huge guy with big mana, highly persuasive, dynamic and authoritative, suddenly he was yelling in his do-it-now-or-else voice, demanding of us, “Speak with one voice!” I was frightened, flabbergasted, floored, what?! What does he mean? The audience began tittering nervously. I didn’t know what to do. Silence, everybody waiting… Finally I sneaked a helpless and terrified look over at Antion, who gathered his wits enough to whisper, “Okay, we’re gonna say the same thing at the same time.”
Again in that great ogre voice he yelled, “Speak with one voice. Right now! Or I will not go on with this wedding!!”
And so – what was it we said?
Antion: I think it was in answer to the usual marriage ceremony question, will you … so I whispered to you, “Say ‘we agree!’”
Elandra: So we spoke saying…
E + A: We agree.
Elandra: I’m laughing remembering because now we really are close to speaking “with one voice,” but it’s taken so long because we’ve had to learn to speak each with our unique individual voice. We’ve had to find our true separate voice first. I tended to follow my mother’s example of submissiveness and pleasing, (aren’t we so unknowingly influenced by our parents!) while Antion was trying his best with the ideas he had learned from the men or teachers in his life, (no matter how bad they were) ideas on what he thought was the right thing to do, be “the man of the house”. So we had to go through that “battle of the sexes” – the yin-yang process. I had to learn to express myself with some empowerment, I had to learn to stand up for myself and speak my truth. Very, very hard! Almost impossible. I’m still working on it, you know when what you want to say sticks in your throat…. So that’s part of it too, the recognition that there are individual truths and universal truths and that each person needs to find their own, and to expect – and demand – that others respect that. Parents, authority figures, religion…
Antion: Spouses…
Elandra: In my work now, the expression of the truth of how you really feel and having clients speak it out loud, has become an integral, vital part of my healing work that I call Fifth Chakra Holographic Healing. How you really feel needs to be expressed, acknowledged, honored, supported and encouraged, even if it’s different, and especially because it is so difficult to do. But that’s what it takes to reclaim your energy back. You’ve got to be totally individual, and simultaneously one. It’s a paradox. Simultaneously it’s both and we reach that individually by going within. Each one of us figuring it out within. Not necessarily accepting what someone else tells us. We were raised in an authoritarian culture, where the truth is either this or that, right or wrong.
Now we have the wisdom to be able to say when we don’t agree with something, “Okay, well that’s one way of looking at it.” Okay, here is another way of looking at it. Alright, so what is my way of looking at it? I love to talk about what I call “simultaneity of consciousness,” so even in the fight for and loyalty to finding one’s own voice in the world, “Speak your truth even if your voice shakes” – Maggie Kuhn, and having it be heard, and honoring it, you have to simultaneously let go of having it be heard, like Allen Ginsberg says, “To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.”
There are so many individual personal truths, and there is a universal truth, a higher all-encompassing truth, which acts as our witness all the time.
For instance, I had an experience of this consciousness years ago in the Bay Area where I was teaching, having all these people come to me for healing in great agony of soul because the elections had given us a particular president who was in favor of more war. It was a very painful time for many… so there they were on my massage table, a safe and sacred place, crying out their agony. I liked to believe that it didn’t affect me too much, their sense of pain and betrayal, but back home on Kauai, it came time for me to do the same. So I’m lying on someone’s table, trying to release what I had taken on, my concern about all the pain people are in, their stress, and my stress, and suddenly from within me I hear a clear voice, a very neutral informative calm full-of-truth voice saying, “There is no one getting killed in Iraq.”
Right away I understand. Okay, which viewpoint, which dimension. This is the viewpoint, so it’s a reminder: we live in several realities, paradigms or dimensions of reality. In a way it’s true that there is no one getting killed, in a way there is no oil slick, in a way these… in a way, from that certain other point of view, a much bigger, bigger, bigger picture, (5th dimension and beyond), they have been created by us the creators. We have created them in that oneness that we are – in order to learn something. Still, sometimes that truth bugs me, like inside I am screaming, “I don’t want to go through that to learn anything, and did I really choose to come to this earth? I’m supposed to help a world where the biggest economic growth and profit is pornography and human trafficking and – Yuck no! No no no! Lemme outta here!”
How do we accept miracles and how do we accept the worst of the worst? It’s a paradox.
And of course we know that we have to come into a place of recognizing the Oneness that we all are, in spite of the tremendous differences. That there is one Creator, isn’t there? Not all these different differences. So we’re learning to speak with one voice and we’re learning to speak with separate voices. And sometimes we say, “Well, so this was what it was all about!” And other times it’s “Hey, what happened? The vision, how come it hasn’t manifested sooner?” And then, “Did God forget me?”
I had this tremendous vision so many years ago. It hasn’t manifested yet in the physical as far as I know. I had this vision that thousands and thousands of us together would all be singing and chanting all the names of God in every language and all would be healed. Thousands of people would come to one place, one enormous auditorium, with cancer, sickness, wheelchairs and they’d walk out freely without ever needing them again. I totally see this, this is easy, hah, and to me this is the real world.
Deep inside we know we’re just here on a brief little journey in this lifetime on this earth. Deep inside we know this is a multidimensional reality, we knew it when we landed here out of the womb. Then we forgot. We were programmed to forget – a fact I‘d like to forget.
I know – the way you just know – that even when things look so terribly bad, with world events and personal struggles, we have choice! We can grab the energy of these times for our true abundance, and like the alchemist, turn it to gold! We can tap this energy of “future fears” and use it to heal our past and ancestral lineages of fears. Our subconscious negative sub-personalities, (e.g. inner critic, judge) that have run the show, can be replaced with our super-personalities, you name them, such as Inner Deserver and Manifester.
So even when things look so terribly bad, still, even then that other reality – the paradigm of the fifth dimension – has never left us for a moment. It’s right there real close. It’s really close! Every session, yoga class, workshop, talk, is about that, embodying that recognition. Every day is about that for me now, and I want to acknowledge that, with celebration of joy. Like Barbara Marx Hubbard says, these times may feel like emergency but are actually long awaited times of divine emergence!
And so then all your physical problems are actually signs of your suppressed power! Well, that’s my perception; my awareness is that they are not problems but a message from your soul, your developing true self, to take your next steps in your journey; it’s your kuleana, your own responsibility to your own chosen life purpose – yours, nobody else’s.
It’s a drive in me and a passion; I love to be always gathering the like-minded and the like-souled and feeling the joy together. So I’m always looking for ways to celebrate our forthcoming move, our Great Shift into the integrating of the fifth dimension!
And into the Great Plan of 2013. I think we are in for a big celebration.
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