Interview With John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part II of II)

The following is the second and final installment of an interview with John McCabe concerning his book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health. Here he ventures beyond his own story and the story of writing this book, and goes on to explain the intentions behind Sunfood Living, and the need in today’s society for the movement that it promotes.

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You call Sunfood Living a “Resource Guide” and have been praised for its clarity and comprehensibility as an “Encyclopedia for Healthy Living.” Is it your intention for the book to be referred to as a reference book or to be read continuously from cover to cover? How do you imagine readers to use Sunfood Living most effectively?

I’ve heard from several people who say they have read it cover-to-cover. I’ll take it as a compliment that anyone did do it.

You never know how certain books will connect with people. Of course, you can’t control what people think of your book. It takes on a life of its own. I’ve heard people describe the book as a “Bible.” I think that might be a compliment.

I didn’t consider that the book was going to be read by people in places like Brazil, China, Australia, and India. But, that is what is going on. I’ve heard from people in those countries, and others. Authors today may want to consider that they are writing for a global market.

I think of the book as a reference book. I suspect that people would most likely read the first half of the book, and then use the resource guide in the second half to look up topics that interest them.

Sunfood Living at once explores both the environment and personal health. Did your interest in writing this book originally stem from one of these two subjects? Or did you anticipate the intimate connection between an individual’s food choices and the health of the environment from the beginning?

I had always been concerned about the environment. Even as a child I liked to plant trees, and I kept a vegetable garden going since I was first able to start using a shovel. As a boy I would go into the nearby woods to clean them of trash. I recently found out that the woods and meadows I hung out in as a child have all been cut down, and most of the area is a large parking lot. Specific trees have been planted, and they are wide enough apart so that a tractor lawn mower can get between them. The dirt pathways have been paved so that people won’t get their shoes soiled. It’s all so pathetic.

By the time I was ten years old I had pretty much concluded that I didn’t want to eat animals. I had no idea that other people avoided meat. I only started to tilt toward a plant-based diet after I saw a deer hanging from my neighbor’s back yard tree, where they had tied it up by its hind legs and slit open its neck to drain its blood. I was alone when I saw this, and it changed my life.

As far as the animal farming industry and the impact it has on the environment, when I was young I had no idea how much of harm animal farming was and is doing to the planet. Now there are many studies concluding that animal farming and all of its related industries cause more global pollution than all trucks, cars, and airplanes combined. The most common use of farmland throughout the world is to grow food for billions of farmed animals, not for people. The most common use of synthetic fertilizers is to grow the food for farmed animals. The fertilizers are the number one cause of dead zones that are now in every ocean. The fertilizers are also major players in the excessive microscopic algae growth that is killing sea coral around the planet. Sea coral support 25% of all life forms in the oceans, and all sea coral have either died, or are growing at stunted rates. The algae is also blocking light in the lakes, rivers, and oceans, which allows bacteria to grow out of control, which is killing all sorts of marine life. The bacteria feed on the sugars from the algae, and the bacteria also feed on the little creatures called polyps that make up the sea coral. Those are some levels of the damage being done by the animal farming industry, and by farms that are using synthetic farming chemicals. I am glad that I am not participating in the animal farming industry.

When we consider what people are eating these days, and what they treating as food, it is easy to make the connection between the health problems they are experiencing (obesity, diabetes, colon cancer, heart disease, arthritis, etc.) and the foods they are eating. This is especially true when you look at people who follow a plant-based diet, and compare them to those who consume whatever commercial culture is advertising as food. If it is advertised on television and radio as food, you can pretty much consider it to be junk food. Real food doesn’t need to be advertised. It is raw fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, mushrooms, and seaweeds that we should be eating. And not fast food and packaged stuff advertised as convenient, and especially not anything that contains synthetic dyes, flavorings, scents, preservatives, or other chemicals. Junk food makes your life inconvenient because consuming it leads to health problems.

As far as how the book happened, I can’t really pinpoint any one thing. I had written a book about the corruption in the medical industry. It was titled Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates. That book got me to thinking of ways that people can maintain and improve their health so that they wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to rely on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and surgery to make them healthful.
I began writing a book in 1994 that was all about the vegetarian diet. Over the years I would work on it a bit, then put it away. Eventually that book is what became Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health.

It wasn’t one thing that got me to write the book. It was many things. Life is a complex combination of intricate details that all play off of and impact one another. Sunfood Living connects the dots. Our health equals the health of wildlife and Earth. We are all connected. What you do each day impacts wildlife thousands of miles away. People should recognize that and adjust their lives accordingly to be a part of the solution rather than carry on being part of the disease we are calling global warming.

As the Foreword describes, this book is infused with ethical consciousness. In what ways do the ethics of global health become linked to politics? Do you see this relationship as productive or problematic?

We are all politicians. We are all campaigning for how we believe the world should be. We do this by our daily choices. We should start being what we want to see.

If we don’t change our ways very soon, we won’t have to worry about any of this. The ice caps will melt – they are melting. The ocean currents will change – they are changing. The ocean life will collapse – it is collapsing. When there are no sea creatures to support the circle of life of the land creatures, the land creatures will die. The nuclear power plants on the edges of rivers and oceans will flood. The world will be poisoned beyond anything covered in Al Gore’s documentary, The Inconvenient Truth. Massive extinction will take place – a massive extinction is taking place.

Is that a problem?

People need to become involved in their lives, in becoming part of the solution. The number one way humans interact with Earth is by what we eat. Change what you consume to be more environmentally sustainable.

In Sunfood Living, you present a system with which to approach the world: challenge, action, resolution. Why is this course of action important and what does it achieve?

I try to provide information that will educate people, both through my writing, through quotes I include, and through Web sources and suggested reading material.

The best way for getting people to act is to get them to understand. If they don’t understand something, they are not likely to act on it.

We are Earth and we are each other. We absorb things that are around us. There are substances constantly passing through our skin and bodies that then travel into other things. There is no separation of us and Earth. Thinking that we are separate from each other is fallacy. We are breathing in gasses, drinking water, and eating food. We are taking in wavelengths of light from Sun that are used by our bodies as nutrients. We are producing molecules that leave our bodies and saturate the people and things around us. If you look at us under a supercharged microscope, you can see that nothing in us is actually touching. There is space between the smallest substances. The energy fields of the planet are playing into the energy fields inside of us. What we choose to do impacts other things on subtle levels.

We are alive at an amazing time. We have the opportunity to transform ourselves and to transform the Earth into a much more healthful state.

You are achieving something with every choice you make. But, is it what you wish to be achieving? Are your achievements part of the solution?

You just touched on the fact that we are alive at “an amazing time.” Can you please expand on the particular reason for this book to be written now, for the world today? Are there any changes on a global level that you hope to see resulting from the distribution of Sunfood Living and other books on related topics?

If now isn’t the time to transform human culture to be more Earth friendly, than I don’t know what time it is.

I hope Sunfood Living turns people to a whole new level of health, a different way of dealing with their every day decisions, and gets people to set new standards of how we treat Earth and the web of life on Her.

And I hope Sunfood Living plays a part in getting us to restore and protect wildlife habitat so that we no longer have to worry about another creature or plant going extinct.

CLICK HERE to read Part I of the interview with John McCabe.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s new Sunfood Traveler web site, a simple and free guide to raw food and sustainability.

David Wolfe Featured on Coast to Coast Radio

David Wolfe is the bestselling author of The Sunfood Diet Success System, Naked Chocolate, Eating for Beauty, Amazing Grace and the upcoming Superfoods. On August 7, 2008 Wolfe was a featured guest on Coast to Coast Radio. In this interview, Wolfe offered his insights into the rapidly expanding world of raw foods and expounded upon his motto, “You are what you eat.” He explained that education is critical if people are to reach their peak physical performance. Wolfe encouraged everyone to adopt a raw foods diet, full of high power nutrition. This is important for those who are healthy, as well as those who are sick.

CLICK HERE to download the MP3 and listen to David Wolfe on Coast to Coast Radio.
CLICK HERE to learn more about David Wolfe’s books.

Interview with John McCabe, Author of Sunfood Living (Part I of II)

John McCabe is one of the leading lecturers and authorities on raw food nutrition in the world today. His new book, Sunfood Living: Resource Guide for Global Health, offers solutions and improvements for the consumerist lifestyle that is plaguing society today. He addresses the intimately related subjects of health and the environment, raising awareness while promoting active change toward the lifestyle necessary for the future of our planet. The following is the first installment of an interview with McCabe in which he describes his own involvement in the Sunfood movement as well as his process in writing this new book.

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Your book explains that Sunfoodists “do not eat animal protein of any sort, including from dairy, eggs, meat, or derivatives of these. They eat only uncooked (not heated, fried, boiled, grilled, toasted, blanched, broiled, barbecued, or micro waved) food consisting of the wide variety of edible plants.” How did you come to adopt these dietary choices and lifestyle? What health improvements has this change accomplished for you personally?

Probably the most common definition is of raw food vegans. Some choose to consume bee products (honey, royal jelly, bee pollen, propolis), which does not classify them as vegans.

The term “Sunfoodist” has been around for at least several decades. When Dugald Semple wrote his 1956 book, The Sunfood Way To Health, he pretty much defined Sunfoodists as people who follow an uncooked vegan diet.

David Wolfe’s book, The Sunfood Diet Success System, which I helped to edit, includes raw honey and other unheated bee products in the classification of superfoods. Frederic Patenaude’s recipe book, Sunfood Cuisine, which I helped him to write, includes honey as an optional sweetener for some of the recipes.

Sunfoodists are a variety of people living in various cultures. Not all are so strict as to only consume a totally unheated diet. Many, may drink herbal tea. Some may steam certain foods, such as sweet potatoes. Others may eat soup, which is pretty safe. My book explains that lightly boiling foods does not create the harsh chemicals, acrylamides and glycotoxins, that are created when you bake, fry, sauté, toast, broil, barbeque, micro waved, or otherwise cook foods at high temperatures.

But, mostly, the Sunfood diet consists of unheated, fresh food, and preferably those that have been organically grown, or otherwise whatever is the highest quality available to you. I always advise people to become involved in growing some of their foods. What else could be more healthful than food picked from your own garden?

As far as how I got into eating a raw food diet, that is a long story. But, basically, when I was growing up I always kept a vegetable garden. I grew up poor, and a lot of times the only real food I could get was what was growing outside. It was also what I liked to eat more than anything. There were a lot of wild fruit trees, berry bushes, and even wild tomatoes and melons growing in the nearby woods and meadows. I noticed that I felt great during the summer. In the winter, when I didn’t have access to fresh food, I would always get sick for weeks at a time, and my skin became a mess with eczema and acne. I had mostly been a vegetarian since I was ten, but still ate junk and sometimes meat. As I recognized how good I felt in the summer while eating fresh foods, and how cruddy I felt in the winter eating whatever, my desire grew for fresh fruits and vegetables, so that is what I started doing more and more. I haven’t had a cold in years, and I don’t have the skin issues I did when I was younger. Eliminating all dairy and junk food- especially fried food, and consuming a lot more greens, including green juices, seems to have been the most beneficial dietary move. Daily exercise, becoming educated, and staying physically and intellectually active work in conjunction with diet to maintain health.

When I was young I had no idea that other people were doing this raw food thing, or that there was a classification for it. When I got out of high school I worked in loud and dirty factories and nobody there seemed happy or healthy. I had already known that I wanted something very different for my life. When I was 16 I had hitchhiked across country and also went on long road trips with friends. I found that I liked the ocean. Eventually, after quitting factory work, I moved to California. On my hitchhiking adventure, I had seen fruit growing in California in the middle of winter, which didn’t happen where I grew up. By the time I was 20 I was working as a background extra in a bunch of movies and TV shows, and was also working as a private chef for wealthy people in their mansions – and I worked as a limousine driver. I had lots of exposure to a lot of people who I grew up seeing in movies and hearing sing on the radio. Peggy Lee and Doris Duke, who were best friends, and almost like a mom and aunt to me, taught me how to make smoothies and juices from fresh fruits and vegetables. I found that a lot of the old timers were very much into fresh fruits and vegetables. For instance, Jimmy Stewart kept a vegetable garden next to his house, and he shared them with his neighbor, Lucile Ball.

For a while I moved all over the country and got into all sorts of situations. Wherever I lived and no matter what I was doing, I sought out the most healthful food.

David Wolfe was the first person I met who told me about Sunfoodists. I met him randomly at some natural products convention in the 1990s. He walked past me and I stopped him to find out where he got his hemp backpack. We ended up talking in the middle of crowds of people streaming through the convention. By the time I had met him I had already written two books about the medical industry. He asked me to look at the early manuscript of his book, The Sunfood Diet Success System. I went through it with a red pen and made a ton of notes, then sent it back to him with a lot of information about topics I thought he may want to research. That is how we became involved with our writing projects. I ended up working as a research and content editor on the first six editions of that book. He also used me for his other book, Eating for Beauty. Some other authors have also used me, but the agreement was as a “ghost,” so I’m not allowed to mention the other authors.

When I first started realizing that people were following fresh food diets, there was a big empty void of information about the benefits. Now there are all of these books, Web sites, seminars, and raw food restaurants. It is cool that I helped fuel this thing. Raw food has become this huge movement. Hollywood people and some sports stars have become interested in raw food. Wall Street is beginning to notice. Just recently a major food company purchased the raw food nutrition bar company, Larabar.

I know many people who have dramatically transformed their health by following a Sunfood diet. One is Angela Stokes of RawReform.com. Another is a man in my neighborhood. At one time he looked like a thug-for-hire. Now he looks like a prince. Sergei Boutenko is another who experienced dramatic benefits after switching to a raw food diet. He was diagnosed with diabetes and told that he would need to be on insulin for the rest of his life. Since cleaning up his diet, Sergei no longer takes insulin. With his sister, Valya, he is the co-author of the new recipe book, Fresh.

Outside of your dietary choices, how do you incorporate the theories and values described in Sunfood Living into your life in daily practice?

Just like everyone else, I am here making daily choices, trying to make my way, and hopefully making the better choices.

Diet is just one small part of the book, and it is one small part of who we are.

How we act displays our thoughts and standards.

I believe we can all make better choices, and improve our standards. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to rely on multi-national corporations to supply our every need. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to not be involved in some aspect of growing food. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to purchase soaps and household products that contain chemicals that damage the environment. I don’t think it should be okay anymore to support the animal farming, fast food, and junk food industries when we know that, combined, they do more damage to the planet than any other industries.

Collectively, what we choose to do as individuals can change the world. The collective culture, collective mind, collective diet, and collective choices of all of us can dramatically improve the world, or do otherwise.

I, like everyone, know that the biggest room is the room for improvement.

As far as specific things I’m doing, that would have to include a lot of things. One of them is that I mostly ride a bike to get around. It is something that I have always done. But now it is being looked at as a solution to our problems, and it is. I grow some of my own food. I make food, and I am involved in a network of people who also do the same.

If you look at what Cuba did to save their country after the Soviet Union collapsed, you can get a good idea of what North Americans can be doing.

Cuba once relied on the Soviet Union for food and fuel. But, when the cold war ended and the wall fell, they suddenly found themselves in a terrible situation. Cubans had to change their ways, and they had to do it quickly. They revolutionized their food system. Within a few years the amount of food Cuba was growing increased by several hundred percent. They became involved in biofuel production and in other alternative energy sources. What they did localized their economies, which is more healthful than relying on products and cash flow from distant lands. Suddenly they no longer worried about their next meal, they simply turned to their yard, to neighborhood gardens, and to local farmers’ markets.

I strongly advocate that people turn away from car culture; away from relying on fossil fuels; away from supporting chain restaurants; away from the meat industry; away from celebrity obsession; and away from all of the practices that are greatly damaging the planet.

Much of your book is based in hard facts, convincing statistics, and an immense compilation of relevant resources. Can you describe the course you followed in order to accomplish all of the research to complete the text?

I read a lot. I do a lot of studying to find out what it is that books, newspapers, and other sources of information are saying. I try to find out where people found out the things they learned to make their conclusions. I’m not good at settling for surface answers. I’m not the kind of person who follows gurus or believes everything I hear in the mass media.

When I was an intern at a public radio station they gave me the job of writing the morning news. From that, I realized how much of the stuff you hear on popular news sources is rehashed from other sources. Lots of times they get the facts all wrong, and sometimes they do it on purpose to present a certain slant to a story that serves their agenda. Hollywood, the government, and corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to present information in ways they believe will benefit them. A lot of what you are hearing in the news is some level of mistruth.

To compile my first book, Surgery Electives, I spent loads of time in university libraries reading the textbooks that doctors read to become doctors. The UCLA medical library staff thought I was a medical student. I never told them that I wasn’t, and I had never told them that I was. They helped me in all sorts of ways. I contacted government records offices and got copies of reports and also transcripts of meetings and hearings. I dug up old news stories. I went out and interviewed people, including medical malpractice attorneys, doctors, teachers, legislatures, authors, nurses, government employees, and pharmaceutical and insurance company workers. I met with people who truly repulsed me, including people who did terrible things or who were involved in all sorts of corruption. But I kept a calm manner because I wanted to get information out of them that I could use to write my book in a way that it could be most helpful for the readers. I also spoke with people who were left with their health ruined medical mistakes. I went places and saw things that people like to shove away because it is too terrible to face. A few of the people I interviewed for the book ended up committing suicide because the medical problems they had been left with after surgery mistakes left them debilitated far beyond anything they felt they could deal with. I also spoke to people who lost family members to medical errors, including one particular family whose daughter was killed as two medical students were operating on her for cancer. They accidentally punctured her heart. The autopsy showed that the young woman had no sign of cancer in her body.

What triggered me to write that book was a small article I read in the newspaper one day about a woman who murdered her doctor, and who then committed suicide.

I wrote Sunfood Living by doing lots of reading, and by talking with lots of people. I interviewed slaughterhouse workers, and a whole slew of people who shared information that helped me write the book. I also watched a lot of documentaries and saw things that I would otherwise never care to see.

While writing my books, I developed my own way of writing. I like to include lots of quotes in my books so that the readers know that they are not just reading my opinion, and that when I do state something in a book, I’m basing it on research.

The information that you use to support the central ideas of your book comes from a wide spectrum of sources—everything from quotations about Darwinism to references to Orson Wells’ radio broadcasts to an exploration of the cost of maintaining golf courses. During your inquiries into such a variety of topics, was there anything that you came across that you did not expect to find or that was surprising?

The one thing that surprises me the most is that people have no idea where their food comes from; that most people aren’t involved in growing any of their food, and never have been involved in culinary gardening.

Eating is our most basic need. How could anyone live without coming to the realization that they are completely ignorant about their food sources? But, look at the garbage people are eating. If it looks sexy in an advertisement, they want to put it in their mouth. And it doesn’t seem to matter what is in it, or from where it originated.

I have a friend who eats all sorts of junk food. When I presented her with some basil that I grew, she didn’t believe that it was basil. She thought it only came dried and crumbled in little jars people purchase at the supermarket. When I suggested that she taste it, she winced and said that it needed to be dried first.

We are living in a time when most people depend on stores and restaurants to supply their food. That shows how distanced people are from Nature, and provides evidence of why the world is in such a messed up state of health.

McCabe is the author of Surgery Electives: What to Know Before the Doctor Operates and has been a ghost co-writer on health-related books by other authors. He has also been a content and research editor on books written by David Wolfe, including the best selling raw vegan lifestyle book The Sunfood Diet Success System. His next project is the upcoming book Hemp: What the World Needs Now.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Sunfood Living: A Resource Guide for Global Health.

CLICK HERE to visit John McCabe’s Sunfood Living web site.

Podcast Interview with Gabriel Cousens

“There is never enough food to feed a hungry soul.”
—Gabriel Cousens, MD

Gabriel Cousens, holistic medical doctor and best-selling author, was recently interviewed on Janette Merrill’s Birthing Soul podcast about his newly released book, There is a Cure for Diabetes. The book follows Cousens’ specialties of live-food diet, natural and holistic approaches to health, and the intimate connection between mental, emotional and physical well being, and then applies them in a practical and effective approach to curing the pandemic of diabetes. He asserts that a mere twenty-one days of following the Tree of Life program described in the book can make significant progress in curing diabetes. This diet is more than a program; it is a lifestyle. As Merrill aptly puts it, “what you are telling people is that you have an option, it’s not a death sentence, diabetes… a quality of life beyond your imagination is [possible].”

In Cousens’ Birthing Soul podcast, he details many aspects of There is a Cure for Diabetes and the choices that it promotes. He touches on a variety of aspects including: how he became part of the live-food movement; the extent to which diabetes is affecting the world’s population; a general description of what the Tree of Life philosophy and lifestyle promote and include; a general history of live and raw food; and the big picture of this pandemic. He not only explores the crippling effects of diabetes in emotional, mental, and physical ways, but also explains how the threat of this disease reaches beyond its individual victims and to the global population as a whole. He also discusses the way in which the human actions that often result in diabetes affect the environment and other, non-human populations of the world.

Cousens’ approach is geared toward the root of the problem rather than toward its medical manifestations. “The essence is that you’ve got to connect to your soul… If you don’t connect with your soul what you’re doing is trying to feed your soul with food and there is never enough food to feed a hungry soul.” In particular, he emphasizes diabetes as a symptom of the ‘culture of death’ that must be cured. In exchange, the ‘Culture of Life’ must be seized in order for people to “fulfill [their] destiny which is to uplift the consciousness of the planet and also to uplift [one’s] own consciousness and therefore become one with the divine”… healing diabetes along the way.

The prescription of Cousens’ book— as well as his spoken words in this interview—is larger than a doctor’s diagnosis. “This is a social action, this isn’t about getting a few people in a private clinic… when we create a social thing about loving yourself, loving the planet, then it’s a social movement… I think we’re going to really touch on the healing of diabetes on a pandemic level.”

CLICK HERE to listen to Cousens’ Birthing Soul podcast interview.
CLICK HERE to visit Cousens’ new Culture of Life web site, a social-spiritual media designed to promote conscious living and the transition from the culture of death to the Culture of Life.
CLICK HERE for more information about the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center.
CLICK HERE to learn more about There is a Cure for Diabetes.

Interview with Mark Borax, Author of 2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future

2012: Crossing the Bridge to the Future is an engaging personal narrative through Mark Borax’s apprenticeship with master astrologer William Lonsdale, who teaches him how to access a source of great power and creativity buried within the human soul.

2012 begins in August 1987 on the slopes of Mount Shasta as author Mark Borax witnesses the Harmonic Convergence. This famous astrological event sparked a 25-year countdown to 2012, the year that marks the “end of history” in the Mayan calendar. Borax tells of his apprenticeship with a master astrologer to study how the period between 1987 and 2012 can be used for a cosmic purging of negativity to release humanity’s core forces and restore universal balance. Borax and his fellow students discover truths about life after death, karma, reincarnation, past lives, human evolution, and the purpose of existence on Earth.

The following interview with Mark Borax gives an inside look into what inspired him to write 2012, how he became interested in astrology, who his mentors were and how they shaped his life, and what he hopes readers will learn from reading 2012.

CLICK HERE to order a copy of 2012.

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2012 is a unique title that holds appeal for different kinds of readers. Which audiences do you think respond most to the book? What will readers find?

I’m surprised by the diversity of responses I’ve received from readers since the book came out last month. I’m hearing from people in all walks of life, each of whom seem to find something different in the book. It’s quite striking—they might almost be describing twenty different books! Stockbrokers, artists, photographers, astrologers, people in the deep South, in the country, or in big cities, old and young, living many different lives in many different countries are emailing to tell me how the book is changing their lives. Many of them are folks who don’t necessarily know much about astrology or metaphysics, but are open to new ideas. People all over are responding excitedly to the book’s message of hope, to the main theme of our need to become fully embodied and fully human before transcending our humanity and departing the material world for higher planes. It’s very satisfying to me as author to see that my struggle to bring cosmic principles down to earth seems to be working.

What is the significance of the year 2012? What does it mean for different cultures and religions?

The Maya view 2012 as the coming of a new Sun, which marks the start of a whole new cycle of time-keeping. I think time is of the essence here. I haven’t studied the prophecies of all the different cultures, because my book presents a very here-and-now personal human being’s journey through these mysteries. Nevertheless, I believe we’re all being offered a new way to think about time, to conceive time, to use time, that isn’t so limiting. For our culture and many others who live in the present, the present is becoming more than the present. Obsolete ideas about how to use our lives, and about how life itself flows, how earth moves through time and space, are going to give way to radical new forms of perception.

Ultimately I see 2012 as a vital choice point in human evolution. We’re all being asked to find a life that honors our innermost truth, rather than living life at the expense of our inner truth. It comes down to asking yourself: What world am I creating with my thought forms and acts? Is it the world I truly dream of, or am I settling for less? What the hell am I doing with my life? Instead of being hamstrung by the dominant paradigm, can I dream some new dream here, and get to work on it, recruiting others who see similarly?

You are an astrologer by trade. Are there specific planetary events and physical hallmarks that will mark 2012? How is the universe preparing for this transition?

In March of 2010 the transcendent planets Alpha-Omega (Chiron) and Neptune come together in late Aquarius, a strong harbinger of the Aquarian Age. The Aquarian Age is where the slumbering consciousness of the collective awakens and realizes it has power to change things, power to redirect civilization along more enlightened lines. Alpha-Omega unbinds time and ushers multi-dimensional awareness into the normal perception of linear events. Neptune stretches the personal human ego to become more in service of collective evolution. When these planets conjoin in Aquarius, the low ceiling on species awareness that keeps us going around in circles is raised. High dreams flood into our normal consciousness.

Suddenly we’re aware of more than we used to be. Our vision of what we’re capable of as a mass organism expands, and this is very contagious. The more people band together to challenge the status quo, the more support we each get from the awakening Aquarian force of the collective.

Then, in 2011, Neptune enters Pisces, sounding a great collective cry for the human being to take its rightful place in the unfoldment of world policies and events. The machine-like existence that has replaced human beings in recent centuries will be challenged by the deeper need to speak up from the soul and be heard. This Cry for True Belonging will no longer be content to be swept under the rug, but will seek out its true place in the role of world policies.

Finally, at Winter Solstice 2012 a yod is formed with Jupiter at the point. A yod occurs when two planets, 60 degrees apart, each form a long pointer toward a third planet which is 150 degrees from both of them. Yod means “Finger of God,” and is the word for the pointer Jewish scholars use when studying the Sacred Texts. In this yod, Jupiter (Species Awareness) is hurtling into fresh territories of seeing and being that serve the living future, while Saturn and Pluto yank back hard, reminding us of everything in the way of change. This will create a powerful wrestling match between those visionaries who know the world is changing and all those who say it can’t be done. Evolutionary forces will wrestle with ego.

The purpose of these three planetary timings, in 2010, 2011, and 2012 is to create a three-stage upending of our limited assumptions of normality, and usher in a more optimal future. At the same time our species stretches toward inhabiting its higher consciousness, the low end of humanity will cry out for belongingness in a world that’s becoming very isolated from its own heart force. This drama of species alienation and isolation is going to play out to its fullest before giving way to something new. It won’t come easy, though. There’s always a price to pay. We have to be willing to sacrifice who we think we are, in order to become who we really are. We have to challenge our own assumptions. Most of all we have to get past archaic belief systems that pit this against that, you against me, all things divided up in opposition against all other things. The next five years will be a very juicy, frictional, and potent period on Planet Earth!

How do you interpret and understand the meaning of 2012? What does the bridge to the future look like?

In 1987 when I witnessed the Harmonic Convergence, I learned of the twenty-five year purging period from then to 2012. In order to bridge our time to the post-2012 future, we’re being asked to clear everything in the way of Truth. We have to purify. We have to be bold enough to face our fears and develop a heart-centered, mystical and very real way to care about this world we live in. Let’s face it—very few of us are living the lives we were born to. To usher in the optimal future for humanity, which awaits us on the other side of 2012, we must confront ourselves rigorously and get out of our own ways. I mean, what are we all doing here anyway, spinning our wheels, making money at the expense of the soul? How has humanity gotten stuck like a dinosaur in such a tar pit? Isn’t there a whole other way to be that uplifts the soul toward the rapture of being? To create a bridge to this future, we have to overcome deep set feelings of helplessness, underlying depression at not being able to live a life that matters. We have to get past our clinging to the idea that someone somewhere is better than someone somewhere else. We have to bust through the Trance of Normalcy that each day leeches soul force out of us, that leaves us drained and numb at the end of the work week.

What began your apprenticeship with Ellias Lonsdale? What about this teacher encouraged you to follow through with the entire apprenticeship?

In 1979 in Ashland, Oregon, for my twenty-fifth birthday a girlfriend got me a surprise astrology reading with a female astrologer who blew me away with the truth of her perceptions, and made me take a deep long look at the ancient art of astrology. In 1984, a later girlfriend, in Burlington, Vermont (called “Elizabeth” in the book) gave me my first astrology book, for my thirtieth birthday, which I studied for four years. At the end of that time my friend Susan (called “Sita” in the book) got a reading from Ellias, (called William then) which astounded me. I stood in line to get a piece of what she’d just received. At the end of that reading, soaked in tears, I got into my car and said, “I want to do for others what this guy just did for me.” Within two days I performed my first professional astrology reading. Ellias led me in a “graduate” course in Star Genesis, the new branch of astrology he was then birthing. I couldn’t get enough. For seven years we pushed the envelope of all that astrology had been. There was revolution in the air, in that little cabin under the redwoods that worked underground in me for twenty years, until I finally found a way to let the genie out of the lamp and spill the story, let others in on the mysteries we studied.

Ellias is one of those big men who carries an enormous resonance in the things he says. You get the feeling that his truths bubble up from some bottomless well of the ages inside him. It’s hard to resist the lure of those teachings at source point, when they come from such a profound place. I hope that the retelling of these mysteries in my own voice does them justice. I labored for six years of rewrite to get the manuscript right in this regard.

Also, and perhaps even more to the point, since the day we met, Ellias has stood guard over my right to take forever to become who I am inside. I’ve seen him do this for hundreds of others over the years. This is what he taught each of us to do—locate a center point, a soul source in each person that deserves to find its place in the sun, no matter how long it takes. No matter how many times through the years I came running to him for insight, he never gave up on me, never lost sight of this soul place. He taught me to paint pictures of the soul, to get past the endless posturing of ego, and expose the deeper version of who we each are. Every person has their own favorite ways of hiding out from themselves. At this point human nature has become a distorted fragmented version of something unified and whole that lies within.

Ellias became the champion of my inner nature. He held out in front of me a soul picture of who he saw me as. He holds out a clear depiction of the man I’d be if I was fully being who I was meant to be. This form of star work is addictive. It’s given me a powerful self-image to live up to, a magically real life to inhabit. No matter how long it takes, no matter how many backslides occur in me and you and all of our species, that stubborn wizard will not give up on humanity! It’s uncanny, how deeply he’s pulling for our race to win through its blindness, and become the species we were born to be. And he holds this picture in such a deep place that heaven and hell themselves could not move it. Could you walk away from a teacher like that?

What practices and teachings did Lonsdale encourage? Who were his teachers and mentors?

Ellias and Sara Lonsdale didn’t encourage any practices, so to speak. It was rather that they themselves were the embodiment of the teachings. The one thing they grinded into us, over and over, is the need to dig our heels into the dirt and release the vast creative force locked inside us. They hammered it into us that there was a soul purpose we had in first choosing to incarnate into these bodies. That each of us has a role to play in the Grand Design.

Ellias, along with his wife Sara—who was very instrumental to the teachings—lived and taught in a way that was positively infectious. Their beliefs were their lives, and everything they did partook of this. Cosmos was infused into earth, and life inseparable from cosmos. Whether you go far enough out into the stars, or plumb deep enough down into your own inner nature, you always get to the same place. The mysteries were brought down to earth, and as such, did not require any special practices to make use of them. Unless my whole life became the spirit practice, in other words, what good was any of it?

The Lonsdales’ belief in alternate planes of existence that coincide with our plane, was immovable, unshakeable, completely contagious and inspirational. That level of faith rubs off on you. Just to be around such devotion to the mysteries once a week gets into the blood and stays there. It got into me so deeply that it took twenty years before I could write about it.

As far as influences, Ellias was greatly influenced by the massive body of spirit work of Rudolf Steiner, who, along with Ellias’s dream of Atlantis, forms the main basis of Star Genesis. In mystery school we studied the twelve senses discovered by Steiner, and linked each to a different sign of the zodiac. Steiner had a vast incomparable intellect that ranged far and wide through physics, metaphysics, education, color theory, chemistry, economy, dance, theater and politics. His contributions to each of these fields were of genius quality, which is hard to fathom.

Ellias was also influenced by his personal work with his former teacher Ann Re Colton, a highly developed psychic who lived and taught in southern California. He also mentioned Sri Aurobindo occasionally. Then there were his two astrology mentors Marc Edmund Jones and Dane Rudhyar, whom he worked with closely for a short time in the 1970s. Beyond these key figures, there’s the usual gang of suspects from spirituality and metaphysics: Krishnamurti, Rumi, various historical Christian mystics, science fiction writers, philosophers, Herman Hesse, Gurdjieef, playwrights and filmmakers of various kinds. Ellias wasn’t just influenced by metaphysicians but by all kinds of writers, thinkers, and historians. He was also very shaped by 1960s spiritual vision, poets, musicians, Beats, and others.

What do you consider the most important things you learned during your apprenticeship? Could you have learned them any other way?

The key piece of my apprenticeship was the idea that the more important part of becoming enlightened is the human part, rather than the transcendent part. Many spiritual teachers get this one backwards, accenting ascension over simply being human. The Lonsdales taught us that it’s all about incarnation rather than transcendence—that in order to evolve we have to become more, not less, fully human. Over and over we kept coming back to the crying need to embody ourselves, to find a way to fully show up in the physical plane, rather than trading Earth for some higher plane. We probed the idea of a limitless source of power hidden inside even the most commonplace human being, which can remake the world. The best way to tap this source power is by daring ourselves to dream bigger, and to learn how each personal dream can link into a cosmic design.

I suppose I could have learned these things in other ways. I was already hot on their track through my personal studies of writing, art, music, love, sexuality, and metaphysics. But the fact is that just as Ellias and Sara were bringing a whole new form of star wisdom into the world, I was hungry for mastery, as a man, a spiritual seeker, and an astrologer. They were in the right place at the right time for me, and I rose to the fullest of my abilities to make use of their teachings.

It has been twenty years since your relationship with Lonsdale first began. How did you know that 2007 was the right time for a book about your spiritual apprenticeship?

I began conceiving this book way back when I was still in mystery school during the time periods in the book. In the years immediately following I tried, once or twice, to put everything into words, but it was too big and unwieldy. I wasn’t sure what story I was trying to tell—a karmic bugaboo that’s haunted me on and off during the years when I’ve picked up the pen. I tried again somewhere around 1995, but it didn’t come out right then, either. Then I took another crack at it in South Starksboro, Vermont, where I was about to become a father, in 2002. It took six years to go from that initial draft, which was later completed and thrown away, to a couple following drafts that also ended up being canned, before I was able to zero in on what became the final draft and published version. In the final years of rewrite, the more I sank into my story, creating and destroying and then composting down whole chapters, bit by bit separating the wheat from the chaff, the more I was captured by the link between 1987 and 2012. As I sifted my own personal experiences for meaning, a greater arc of history took shape in my mind’s eye, stretching even further back through my entire life, and the life of our species. Things we’d discussed in class took on new meaning. Certain statements of Ellias or myself or classmates began to haunt me. Atlantis and modern politics became linked, as I recalled the Lonsdales’ tale of our first fall from grace that set human karma in motion—the karma of the corrupt few lording over the many. I began to feel that I could draw these threads through from my own adventures as a young man, into some clear body of work that could be of service to readers currently striving to make sense of some of the same things.

How do you hope that reading about your journey will provide instruction and inspiration for readers?

There are two main ways my book is intended to work. Firstly, I met Ellias and Sara at a time of great turmoil in my life. The cosmic paradigm they offered me framed life and time in an elegant pantheon of planet gods and historical significance. They kept coming back to a sense of divine order. That cosmic design has fueled humanity’s crazy-quilt journey through the ages. They turned astrology into a fascinating star art with layer upon layer, dimension upon dimension. One of my aims with the book is to ignite the same force in readers that my teachers ignited in me. To inspire others to break out of modern apathy, numbness, isolation, and alienation, and take an active hand in the course of the future.

Secondly, any reader who is left inspired by my tale and hungry for more is welcome to contact me for a soul level reading, so they can receive the legacy of my apprenticeship in the form of deep counsel for their own life. Ellias taught me to champion the right of others to fulfill their place in the grand design, just as he championed mine. And so the cosmic tale of the book can leap off the pages and be of service in your own personal life.

Do you have any recommendations for readers who are inspired to begin or continue their own spiritual journeys in earnest?

I pass on Maestro Rudolf Steiner’s advice: for every step you wish to take to achieve psychic mastery, you must take three steps toward becoming a better human being. Early in my apprenticeship I stumbled upon this saying, which has been my approach to metaphysics and spirituality ever since. I’m firmly convinced that the purpose of magic and metaphysics is to make us more, not less, human. I learned from William and Sara the truth of what this means. In the last twenty years of applying this to my daily existence, it’s true I don’t always succeed. I still tend to get caught in my own karmic traps, and then freed. I’ve been spending less and less time in the karmic tar pits, lately, though, and have come to enjoy life more than ever, especially my role of fatherhood, which has become more satisfying to me than everything else I do. I love my little boy!

Apart from this, read Herman Hesse – his nonfiction is as good as or better than his more well-known novels, and Miracle of Love, by Ram Dass, and Autobiography of a Yogi, by Yogananda. Read anything you can by Rumi, and The Duino Elegies, by Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Seek out what the sages have said through the ages, but don’t settle for anyone else’s truth. Wrestle with those high concepts until you make them your own.

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