Interview with Gary Zukav
Lotus Guide: What is it that got you interested in spiritual partnerships?
Gary Zukav: There is a huge transformation of consciousness that is occurring and so many people know about this transformation of consciousness but not many of them have given thought to what it really is and what it requires of them. This transformation is an expansion of our ability to perceive who we are. In other words, our ability to understand ourselves is now expanding beyond the information that we can receive from our five senses. We’re becoming aware of ourselves as more than minds and bodies. We are becoming aware of ourselves as souls while we simultaneously have personalities and walk upon the earth. That is the huge transformation that is reshaping the human experience—the expansion of our perceptual capability beyond the five senses. We’re becoming multisensory. That means we have more sensory systems than one. The five senses form a single sensory system whose object of detection is physical reality. As we become multisensory, we begin to realize that our lives are meaningful, that there’s a purpose to all of our experiences—to the people that we meet, to the challenges that we have, that nothing is random. And we become highly intuitive, and we become highly sensitive beings, and all of this is happening automatically. But what we do with it is for us to decide. A new potential has come into being, the potential of authentic power and the alignment of your personality with your soul. Your soul is that part of you that existed before you were born and will continue to exist after you die. So as you become aware of yourself as a soul as well as a personality, the new understanding of power becomes aligning your personality with your soul, with the highest, most noble, most healthy part of yourself that you can imagine or reach for. The intentions of your soul are harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for life.
LG: When you speak of a transformation of consciousness on a global level, which is actually our collective consciousness, I wonder if there have been times in our evolutionary past when this has also take place on a different level. For instance, looking back in our history it seems that human beings went through a transformation of consciousness when we reached a level of awareness of our own existence and basically said with conviction, “I am.” This could be the metaphor of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they looked down and saw their nakedness and covered themselves. I think what we covered ourselves with was layers of personalities from which we are still emerging. Now we seem to be looking inward and seeing our inner spiritual existence. We’re actually becoming, seeing, feeling, and sensing that spiritual being, and as we sense it, we’re also sensing the unity and the oneness of it. And it’s putting us in touch not only with other individuals but it’s putting us in touch with the planetary being that we’re part of. Do you see it this way?
GZ: All those things are happening, and at the same time, the creation of authentic power is something that you have to do for yourself. I have to do it for myself, to align my personality with my soul to create harmony and cooperation and sharing and reverence for life in my life, which requires me to come into awareness of all of the parts of my personality that are based in fear, and by that I mean the parts that are angry, jealous, resentful, anxious, frightened, that feel superior, or that feel inferior, the need to please, that are compulsive, that are addicted. It’s necessary not only to encounter and become familiar with all of these parts of your personality but to challenge them and to feel them. That is spiritual growth; that is the creation of authentic power, and that does not happen automatically. It takes a lot of work. It takes emotional awareness. It takes responsible choice, which means choosing your intentions consciously and wisely. It takes consulting your intuition. It takes trusting in the universe. All of these things, all of these skills, are the skill of creating authentic power. And the reason that I have become so interested in spiritual partnership is the same reason that hundreds of millions of other individuals are now becoming interested in it, whether or not they even know that there’s a name for it, because as we become a multisensory species, our evolution is no longer based on physical survival but spiritual development.
LG: I would imagine that most evolutionary planets reach this point where their survival is dependent on spiritual evolution, especially during their technological adolescence, which is where we find ourselves. We are sensing that we are connected energetically and spiritually with every other living being.
GZ: And so a new archetype of relationship has come into being that serves a multisensory species that is evolving through spiritual growth. That new archetype is spiritual partnership. A spiritual partnership is a partnership between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. Nothing like this archetype has existed before because nothing like this was required before in the human experience. The need exists now because we have crossed an evolutionary threshold, and we’re becoming aware of ourselves; we are becoming aware of larger aspects of ourselves, namely, our souls. And as individuals begin to understand and long to align their personalities with their souls, they start to long for relationships with substance and depth, in which they talk about more than what they read in books or the children, or politics, or work. Those things are all important, but in these relationships of substance and depth they also discuss the emotions and the challenges and the aspirations that are most important to them, and they help each other to grow spiritually, to create authentic power. That means more emotionally aware, more self-responsible, and cultivating their intuition. That is the reason why I love spiritual partnerships. And spiritual partnerships can be created in a biological family, they can be created among friends, they can be created in the workplace, they can be created anywhere that two or more individuals are committed to their own spiritual evolution and are striving to relate to each other as equals.
LG: That’s the total basis of my wife’s and my relationship. We are totally devoted to each other’s spiritual development. When you are committed to absolute truth it can be challenging in today’s world of man-made morals and rules. We sometimes find ourselves in a relationship that looks more like a workshop.
GZ: Spiritual partnerships are challenging. They are very challenging. A spiritual partnership, by the way, can emerge in a marriage, and that’s exciting. My spiritual partner, Linda Francis, and I are also married. Many marriage partners find themselves becoming spiritual partners. And in fact I will suggest to you that the only marriages that will now last and that can have vitality and creativity and life and spontaneity are those that become spiritual partnerships, partnerships between equals for the purpose of spiritual growth. While marriage partners, for example, will strive to not rock the boat and to keep things together, spiritual partners understand that their deepest insecurities are going to arise in the context of their partnership. And so, when you’re in a spiritual partnership, it’s time to fasten your seatbelt.
LG: I can tell you’re in a spiritual relationship.
GZ: That’s right. And there are some dynamics of a spiritual partnership that are different, as you’ll see, from any other relationship. For example, spiritual partners stay together as long as they grow together. Marriage partners try to stay together until they die.
LG: Till death do us part, except sometimes the death of the relationship happens long before the death of their physical bodies.
GZ: That’s right. Marriage is a five-sensory institution and from the point of view of the five senses there can be no greater commitment than a commitment unto death. But multisensory humans know that they are more than their muscles and tissues and thoughts; they are their souls as well. Their spiritual partnership can stay intact and serve them only as long as they both grow together. If one of them stops growing spiritually, in other words, simply won’t deal with his anger or his addiction to sex or her need to shop or smoke or won’t challenge her judgmental thoughts, then the relationship will fall apart because the purpose of its being no longer exists, and that’s spiritual growth
Another dynamic of spiritual partnership is this: the partners choose their own roles in the partnership. In five-sensory relationships, the roles are determined by culture, peers, and customs. But spiritual partners choose their own roles, and that means in a spiritual partnership the male may be the one who stays at home and watches the children and the woman may be a CEO or an architect.
A third dynamic of spiritual partnership is that spiritual partners share with each other those things that are most difficult for them to share. In other words, they share those things that they are most frightened will destroy their relationship.
LG: If you can’t be honest with at least one person, how can you be honest with yourself? But speaking of dynamics, here’s another question for you. I sometimes listen to people say how we should get along with our enemies, yet they can’t get along with their own mates. Do you think the energy dynamics of a relationship with our mates and the one we have with the world around us is the same energy dynamic?
GZ: Yes. You have within your personality many, many parts. Some of these parts are based in fear and others are based in love. Spiritual growth requires you to identify, challenge, and heal those parts that are based in fear, and to identify, cultivate, and strengthen those that are based in love. When a frightened part of your personality is active, even if with your spiritual partner, your anger will still come up, your judgment will still come up, your sense of superiority or your need to dominate or to please, all of those things will come into being. It is fear that causes these experiences and it is an unexamined life on your part that allows you to act on them rather than experience them and choose differently than you have in the past, for example, not to shout when you become angry, or not to withdraw when you become jealous. As you challenge the frightening parts of your personality again and again by not doing what they want you to do, eventually they lose their power over you and that is how we create authentic power—choice by choice.
LG: I think we live in a world that gives the illusion that we have no power to make decisions, even in our own lives.
GZ: You cannot meditate, pray, or affirm authentic power into existence. You’ve got to earn it – to create it – and that is accomplished with your decisions. That is where the spiritual path begins, with your decisions. It’s a very challenging path, and it’s also very rewarding. As the loving parts of your personality begin to shine through you, you become an individual who reflects the values of your soul – harmony, cooperation, sharing, and reverence for Life. Your life fills with vitality, joy, creativity, and meaning and those are the experiences of authentic power.
As you create authentic power, you discover that the people in your life whom you thought were your enemies are not really enemies from the point of view of your soul. From the point of view of your soul, they are your friends or you would not be together at all.
LG: It’s too bad everyone can’t understand this and grasp the deep implications of it, including our survival on this planet.
GZ: You can help, and you are helping with this article in the Lotus Guide.