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[50 Interviews with Spiritual Leaders by Tuula Fai](http://spiritual.50interviews.com)
Seek The Lover Within: Lessons from 50 Spiritual Leaders by Tuula Fai (Foreword by Penny Peirce)
[Mentioned in Bellaspark Magazine (Formerly The Healing Path)](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/mentioned-in-bellaspark-magazine-formerly-the-healing-path/)
by Brian on May 13, 2010
in [News](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/category/news/)
BELLASPARK MAGAZINE (formerly The Healing Path)
November/December 2009
Read the Rockies
Colorado and Wyoming authors have penned a wide variety of exciting new books, just right for gift giving this season. Read local, have fun! Included in the list of top twenty-five books published by Rockies authors is Seek The Lover Within: Lessons from 50 Spiritual Leaders.
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Seek The Lover Within - Volume 1
Seek The Lover Within: Lessons from 50 Spiritual Leaders
By Tuula Fai
Fall in Divine love! Spiritual leaders from around the world tell the story of what brought them to their path.
List price: $19.95
To read the article in full, please visit [BellaSpark magazine](http://www.bellasparkmagazine.com/archmainxxzxqma303.cfm).
Please note: This title is currently only shipping in the USA.
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[“If you wish the world to become loving and compassionate, become loving and compassionate yourself.” Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/%e2%80%9cif-you-wish-the-world-to-become-loving-and-compassionate-become-loving-and-compassionate-yourself-%e2%80%9d-gary-zukav-the-seat-of-the-soul/)
by Brian on May 13, 2010
in [News](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/category/news/)
“If you wish the world to become loving and compassionate, become loving and compassionate yourself.”
-Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul
4/23/2010
Have you read The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav? In it, Zukav encourages us to choose love. When we choose love, we are conscious, free, and aligned with universal principles. We feel joyous and connected to others. However, when we choose fear, we become prisoners of our unconscious thoughts and actions. This leads to pain, separation, and unpleasant consequences.
As the pace of human evolution accelerates, more and more people are offering tools to choose love. Two of them are Zukav, and his spiritual partner, Linda Francis. Since I am a participant in their three-year Authentic Power Program, I would like to share some of what they teach so I can support us in choosing love. I am writing in the first person because the Authentic Power Program encourages us to take responsibility for our experience by speaking personally and specifically.
In the program, I use Spiritual Partnership Guidelines to cultivate authentic power. Authentic power is the alignment of my personality with my soul; it enables me to live my soul’s intentions of harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. Using the guidelines also helps me form spiritual partnerships with others who want to create authentic power. A spiritual partnership is different from a friendship. It is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. My spiritual partners and I support each other in choosing love by using the guidelines of 1) commitment, 2) courage, 3) compassion, and 4) conscious communications and actions.
I commit to making my spiritual growth my highest priority. I do this by paying attention to my emotions, thoughts, and intentions so I can learn about myself. I especially do this when I am upset by an interaction. When this happens, I focus on the physical sensations in my body near my seven chakras or energy centers. If any of them is uncomfortable or painful, I know that a “frightened part of my personality” is active. Frightened parts express themselves as anger, jealousy, vengefulness, superiority, inferiority, etc. When I act on them, they create destructive consequences. In contrast, when the “loving parts of my personality” are active, I feel pleasant sensations near my seven chakras. These loving parts express themselves as gratitude, appreciation, caring, patience, etc. When I act on them, they create beneficial experiences.
I use courage to stretch myself beyond the limited perceptions of the frightened parts of my personality. Courage requires accepting responsibility for my experiences (instead of blaming others), acting with integrity, and saying—when appropriate—what is difficult to say. For example, I recently told a friend, “I am uncomfortable when you gossip about people. It makes me want to pull away from you. Can we please talk about our lives instead?” This was hard to say but necessary for my spiritual growth.
I use compassion to see others and myself as souls who sometimes have frightened parts of their personalities active. Compassion helps me change my perspective from frightened to appreciative so I can be fully present, removing any distance between the other person and me. For example, when I spoke to my friend, I felt love and compassion, rather than judgment and blame.
I use conscious communications and actions to make my interactions authentically powerful and loving. This conscious approach requires me to consult my intuition, set my intention, and then act from the healthiest part of my personality (that I can in the moment). I do so by speaking personally and specifically about my experience while releasing attachment to the outcome. For example, before speaking to my friend, I asked my intuition if I should say something. When it said yes, I set the intention to express myself with love. Then, I used “I” language to describe my experience without worrying about how she would react.
The more I challenge a frightened part of my personality by not acting on it, the more it loses control over me. The more I cultivate a loving part of my personality by acting on it, the more it becomes part of my awareness and experience. This is how I create authentic power. This is how I choose love. They are one in the same.
According to Zukav and Francis, this is how anyone can create authentic power. Those interested can download the Spiritual Partnership Guidelines to start experimenting right away (http://www.seatofthesoul.com/guidelines.html). The guidelines help us choose love step-by-step.
For more information, visit The Seat of the Soul website ([www.seatofthesoul.com](http://www.seatofthesoul.com/)). Or, come to the Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, CO (http://www.tatteredcover.com/) on June 28, 2010 to hear Zukav read from and sign his new book, Spiritual Partnership: The Journey to Authentic Power.
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[Marilyn Youngbird, Medicine Woman](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/marilyn-youngbird-medicine-woman/)
by Tuula on May 6, 2010
in [Uncategorized](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/category/uncategorized/)
“You are the walking image of the earth and the universe.” [](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/marilyn-youngbird.jpg)
Marilyn Youngbird, a tribal member of the Arikara and Hidatsa nations, is a renowned holistic health care practitioner, teacher, and lecturer who has presented cultural sensitivity training and Native American healing workshops all over the world, including in the United States, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Russia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her classes on interfacing traditional Native American medicine and Western medicine have been presented at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Medicine, Dartmouth College School of Medicine, and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Marilyn has served as liaison between White House staff and USSR Central Committee members at the United States-Soviet Glasnost Conference, Commissioner of Indian Affairs for the State of Colorado, and Trustee of the American Indian Ritual Object Repatriation Foundation. Her presentations and seminars have introduced people from around the globe to the tenants underlying Native American philosophy and medicine.
Q. What experiences put you on your spiritual path?
A: I wouldn’t call it a spiritual path or say that I am a spiritual leader. The word spiritual is problematic. People may think it means something superhuman—that I have some special power, which they do not. This misperception could cause them to want to follow me instead of taking responsibility for their own lives. Look at the Dalai Lama. People want to make him into a god, but he is the first to say that he is only a man.
Each of us counts. Each of us has a purpose for being here. It’s our responsibility to figure out what that is and then live it. We are here to be ourselves. We are here to bring our mind, body, and spirit into harmony because, without our spirit, our physical self wouldn’t exist.
That being said, I can tell you about my path. I was born in a tight-knit community where the children belonged to everyone. When a baby was born, we all gathered and shared what we thought the child was meant to do. My gift was vision. I could see things and they nurtured this gift by encouraging me to share what I saw. This gift was also in my family. My grandmother was the chief’s daughter, so she and my mother had special responsibility to take care of the tribe. As a result, they paid attention to their visions and to nature—the animals, trees, elements, and Mother Earth. For example, they listened to the thunder and wind and knew when it would rain. So my siblings and I adopted their ways like little ducklings following their mother. The mother duck doesn’t have to teach her ducklings how to swim. She just jumps in the water and they instinctively follow.
When I was seven, I had rheumatic fever. It left my heart weak and my body paralyzed. My younger cousin also had rheumatic fever and passed away into spirit. A Western medical doctor told my parents the same would happen to me. It was just a matter of time. While I was in the hospital, my grandpa and grandma (who was a medicine woman) came to pray for me. They prayed so sincerely to our Earth Mother, the universe, and all the elements. They believed that once you asked for help, your prayer had been heard and would come in the manner it was supposed to. In thirty days, I was up running around again. I believe my heart healed because of the sincerity of their prayer. Now, seventy years later, here I am.
Q. Shamans often go through an apprenticeship and a dramatic turning point that represents their death and rebirth. Does your almost dying from rheumatic fever and having your grandparents pray for you fit this, or is there more to the story? (Melanie Mulhall, shaman, and author asks this question.)
A: There was no big “aha” moment for me. It’s been a natural evolution and way of life. I do remember something though. When I was in the hospital with rheumatic fever, I had a wonderful nurse named Barbara. She treated me like her own child. She would play her phonograph records, talk to me, and bathe me. She also gave me therapy for my paralysis by lifting my arm and squeezing a comb in my hand to help me brush my hair. One day, I was lying in bed when a beautiful, brown skinned man with natural clothes came into the room. He stood at the foot of my bed and told me his name was Elijah. He then smiled, prayed, and touched my toes saying, “You are going to be okay.” I was so excited, yet so afraid, because I didn’t know this man. He left and Barbara came in. I said to her, “A man came to see me named Elijah.” She replied, “I didn’t see anyone.” So I asked my grandma and grandpa, “Is there someone named Elijah here?” They replied, “No, there is no one named Elijah.” It wasn’t until eight years ago that I met Elijah again when he came to sweat lodge. That’s when I realized it was the Christian Elijah. Many saints like the Blessed Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael come to the lodge. I don’t really talk about it because I know they are supporting me with the people I am supposed to help. Occasionally, when it’s really exciting, I will tell someone about it. Oh, the stories I could tell . . . but it would take seventy years.
For the rest of the interview, please check out the book, [Seek The Lover Within: Lessons from 50 Spiritual Leaders.](http://www.wisemediagroup.com/product_p/tuula11.htm)
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[Terri Starck, LifePoint Strategies](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/terri-starck-lifepoint-strategies/)
May 6, 2010
“I receive strength from God and pour it into others.”
Terri Starck is a strategist at heart. Terri asks the right questions to clarify your goals, knows what it takes to increase profitability, works with you to develop a path forward that builds on your leadership strengths, challenges and encourages you to live up to [...]
[Read the full article →](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/terri-starck-lifepoint-strategies/)
[Janet Solyntjes, The Center for Courageous Living](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/janet-solyntjes-the-center-for-courageous-living/)
May 6, 2010
“Avoid spiritual shopping. Stick with one method and go deep.”
Janet Solyntjes, MA, has taught meditation and body awareness practices for over twenty years. She leads meditation and yoga retreats in the United States and Canada, is a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher, a senior Shambhala Training director, and Adjunct Professor at Naropa University. She cofounded [...]
[Read the full article →](http://spiritual.50interviews.com/2010/janet-solyntjes-the-center-for-courageous-living/)
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