This is an interview with Kathy Zavada, the minister of the Unity Church of Oroville. We’re going to dive right in and I’m going to take a few excerpts from the interview, which can be viewed on our YouTube channel at www.YouTube.com/LotusGuide. I also interviewed Kathy for my Spiritual Activist radio show at www.BBSradio.com/spiritualactivist. We covered a lot of territory in the interview so I highly suggest you watch and listen to the whole interview when you get a chance.
Lotus Guide: So what brought you here to the Unity Church in our area?
Kathy Zavada: I came here to guest speak about a year ago and I’ve been traveling around for about 25 years all over the country. I came here and I love this community; it’s loving and warm and they said they needed a minister. I’ve been touring for years and the idea of being here took hold and here I am. Now I feel like I’m part of the family, part of the community, and we all feel like we’re in this together.
LG: It seems to me that the only way you can see what is limited in our world is to push the boundaries of even what we call beliefs. The way I’m looking at the world right now, it appears like we are in trouble on one level. This very well could be the chaos in between systems and if that’s the case, it’s important to embrace the chaos. If you look closely you can see that something is emerging; call it a sacred reality or transformation.
KZ: Two of my heroes are Martin Luther King and Gandhi. They both believed in a quiet revolution with a lot of consciousness and a commitment to nonviolence. I actually spoke on that last month, and how taking action is so important. Putting love into action and talking about social justice is a large part of my message. Part of our work here is uprooting the subconscious patterns, behaviors, and conditioning. If we can do this we awaken our true potential. We have possibilities that we haven’t even imagined yet.
LG: And this can really get uncomfortable at times. Some of the patterns that we’re stuck in actually create more unconsciousness. I remember Joe Dispenza wrote a book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself with the subtitle How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One; this can be difficult.
(Here we get into the Fibonacci sequence and how nature itself is stepping into the mystery one step at a time.)
KZ: It is uncomfortable to change ourselves and that requires a lot of inner reflection, humility, and the willingness to look at yourself honestly. And to sit down with someone else and ask, “How do you see me?” takes a lot of courage. I have a degree in psychology and I’ve been looking at what is actually stored in the subconscious. This is where our habits and patterns and conditioning are to be found. I like Joe Dispenza’s teaching because he gets into how meditation can actually change your brain waves and calm down our nervous system.
LG: I found out while doing Satsang meditations that every time I would find a quiet place in my mind, there was an ego personality, an identity that would step in and say, “Ah, I’m in that quiet place in my mind.” Of course at that point you’re back in the mind again. I realized rather quickly how deceptive our mind can be and why this takes a lot of work.
(At this point, Kathy tells about an awakening experience she had while staying at Brighton Bush in Oregon. I truly hesitate to even attempt to put this into words so you need to listen to the full interview. I went on to talk about how I don’t exactly resonate with organized belief systems, so this is where Kathy responds.)
KZ: There is such a difference between intellectual understanding and true experience. I actually like Buddhism and did a two-year seminary in which I studied all the world religions. Through my own experience I have seen that truth can be found in all religions. I really like Buddhism because their teaching says, “Don’t take it from me; check it out for yourself.” They lean toward having a direct experience before you believe in anything.
LG: I think as we go through life we realize the importance of every passing moment because it’s within those moments that we have experiences that change the direction of our lives.
KZ: I can trace this back to when my mother took me to an audition and the teacher realized that music would be a big part of my life, and that obviously set me off on a course where music was very important.
LG: I would like to get your thoughts on this. I’ve been reading a little of the philosophy of Hegel and he says whenever you come up with an idea or thought it inevitably creates the polar opposite. He says that it’s really important to realize that that polar opposite isn’t necessarily right or wrong, good or bad, it’s just the inevitable manifestation of the original thought. He brings up the point that the truth inevitably lies between these polar opposites and how we get to the truth comes about through open, truthful communication, or conversation. Most disagreements are a disagreement based upon a perspective that inevitably traces back to a person,s own personal experiences.
(We talk a little about the Internet and the algorithms on search engines that are set up specifically to give us search results based only upon our original questions. This has alienated so many people. We also talked about the analogy of waking from a dream, Christ consciousness, and the need for religions to evolve.)
KZ: Well, we’re to the point where religions need to evolve so they don’t become obsolete. I actually love Unity because it’s not a religion, it’s a philosophy. I feel that religion is evolving and we are waking up. I love it when Joe Dispenza says that to enter the field you have to enter as nobody and no thing and let go of basically everything. I believe the true awakening is awakening to the truth that you are more than this body, you are infinite awareness. We can hold onto our identity and play roles; this is part of life. This is part of the play, Maya, but the problem is that we forget we are playing and we become identified with the roles that we play. Michael Sanger once said that we are a third chakra planet and what we need to do now is evolve to the fourth chakra, which is the heart.
Kathy Zavada
Note from Lotus Guide: If you take the time to visit our YouTube channel you will find that the only reason this interview is ending here is because of a lack of space in the magazine and definitely because of a lack of inspiration, imagination, and amazing things to talk about. So visit www.BBSradio.com/spiritualactivist, turn up your volume, and enjoy the interview.