New Realities recorded on July 20, 2019
Summary
Alan Steinfeld interviews author James Redfield about the insights from ‘The Celestine Prophecy’. They explore concepts of synchronicity, intuition, overcoming control dramas, and maintaining an energy of love. Redfield also discusses generational shifts in spirituality, particularly among millennials, and introduces his upcoming work involving the Enneagram as a tool for unlocking personal creative power and fulfilling one’s life mission.
Transcript
Alan Steinfeld
Welcome to Alan Steinfeld, also my program New Realities. This is a part of it. I’m very happy to be talking again to James Redfield. Of course, he is the author of the fabulous best-seller, The Celestine Prophecy, which swept through the spiritual community as an awakening of who we really are and the energies that run through us. It was like a textbook for people in this community to start to realize that we’re moving into a different realm, and it’s all about energy. That was a galvanizing force in the 1990s, the Celestine Prophecy, and so it was the beginning of a crystallization of a spiritual culture in the US.
James Redfield
Without a doubt, and that culture is still there. We’re welcoming two more generations to it, and that’s what’s fun.
Alan Steinfeld
James, thanks for being here today.
James Redfield
Nice to be with you.
Alan Steinfeld
Do you want to just review the nine insights that you went through? I mean, if you feel like it, and then we’ll go further to where you are. I think they’re worth reviewing because they were really key in our development.
James Redfield
Right. I’d be glad to do that. I think the book was very, very popular because again, as you say, it was about steps or the recognition of insights that involve our downloading of a higher consciousness. So it was a step that I considered archetypal. I think that I didn’t make these steps up. The nine insights from the first book were something that I was reporting more or less because I was seeing these insights utilized, and they are very practical, but they’re also elevating. I believe to set the stage here a little bit, I believe the insights are archetypal in the sense that it fires up our brains, and what I did, as you know, is write a story about these insights.
Alan Steinfeld
Your gift was that you were able to perceive them and put them in a structure, of course within a narrative, to make them more accessible to people who were just like all over the place saying this. So you put it together in a really great, compact way.
James Redfield
As a story, you don’t have to be just abstract. You can see this consciousness and the steps into a higher consciousness being played out in real time and real settings, and people trying it and losing it and moving into it again. So it’s nine insights or nine archetypal awakenings that define humanity’s growth in consciousness going into the future. These are really discoveries in terms of living life a different way. For instance, the first insight you’ll remember is that there is this force that Carl Jung labeled synchronicity, which is the perception of meaningful coincidences. What happens is that once you start to look and see these mysterious coincidences in your life, you realize you’re being led someplace, and what you’re led to is a destiny, a sense of giving, a service to humanity, participation in the evolution of the world, right? So it’s fundamental to this pathway into consciousness is to grasp that we’re being helped, that there’s a force in the universe that is leading us somewhere if we pay attention. And that gets us out of the scientific materialism and that the universe is dead and there’s no spiritual meaning to it. Once you see synchronicity, you know that there’s a spiritual design in this universe.
Alan Steinfeld
And it’s beyond the logical mind. It doesn’t make sense to people just in a left-brain awareness. It’s a mystery in a sense, but we’re part of it.
James Redfield
That’s right. Things happen and you have to find the meaning. You have to find this path within this mysterious coincidence. What’s the information you’re getting, how does it change your life, how does it lead you forward? So it’s a kind of an investigation into your own journey in life, but it’s pure proof that there’s a spiritual dimension because it can be observed. So that’s the basic number one insight and all the other insights are about getting more of a flow of destiny about your life and using these mysterious coincidences to go through the opportunities they present, and it makes life go easier, it makes our creative life more fulfilling, and there’s a sense of destiny that goes with it that’s very thrilling.
Alan Steinfeld
Talk about the creative life a little bit because I’m writing something, I’m struggling a little bit accessing this creativity. So how does that add to the creative flow?
James Redfield
Well, I think that we come here with a mission. If you start right there, if the world is meaningful, then our lives are meaningful, and the key to a breakthrough high-level creativity is knowing what you’re here to create. So that opening to that memory, in a subsequent book I called it a birth vision, something that you intended to do with this lifetime. So it’s a very again mysterious process, it all leads though to a sense of grounding in your own journey and watching these synchronicities.
Alan Steinfeld
Let me just ask you one question about that because even if you know what you’re here to create, sometimes I find for me it’s still hard to sit down and actually do what I know I’m here to do. So how do I get beyond that?
James Redfield
Well, it’s interesting because we’ve re-released the Celestine Prophecy, and there’s a reason for that. Millennials and their children, college students, are passing the Celestine Prophecy and other spiritually instructive books around like never before. My publisher called me and said look, I’m working on another book, they said you won’t believe what’s happening with Celestine. Millennials are passing it around like crazy, their children. So I’ve really started to believe that this is a new time in the world and that we’ve got three generations in play. You’ve got Boomers retiring, trying to figure out what they want to do when they grow up. You’ve got Millennials reaching 38, which is that key astrological aspect that says okay, I’ve mastered this, I’ve got the kids, I’m doing pretty good, I’ve got the job, I’m doing pretty good. Is that all there is? Isn’t there more to life? Each generation asks that question around 38 to 41. You hit 40, you know that’s the big thing, right? So and at the same time, you have the children of the Millennials approaching college and some of them in college, and what do you do there? You’re on your own, you go my god, how am I going to get educated without spending a fortune, what do I want to do in life? So you’ve got three generations asking the deeper questions. Now that’s doing something to consciousness right now. So what we did is we decided to re-release the Celestine Prophecy. I wrote a long afterword which I thought I would never do for this book, but I did because Millennials are a little different. They apply everything, they’re unifiers, and their children are highly creative. It’s a highly creative generation, I believe. Now they have to define themselves. I’m not trying to get ahead of them, but I believe it’s a new time. So the creativity part has to do with the energy level, right? Because there’s a phenomenon that we can recognize as inspiration energy, right? And that’s when we get going at it with something we remember, we’re exploring it, we’re doing the background, we’re researching, whatever it is we’re doing that awakens this inspiration energy. And that’s when the synchronicities, if we stay in it, that’s when the synchronicities happen. And I believe there’s a way to stay in that energetic creative modality and I believe it’s a kind of meditation. And so I’m presenting in the workshops that we’re doing, the events we’re doing on this tour, a new kind of meditation. Now it’s a mindfulness meditation, but you know all these meditations use a different mantra. Sometimes it’s just seeking peace, that kind of thing. Or it’s a word to occupy the ego. But what I believe is the amplifier of creativity is to stabilize your emotions. And the way we do that in my view is to download this love center, you know, the Hindus call it opening the heart center. But it’s a focus on love, intending love, finding that love channel within you because love is the natural best emotion that we can hold. And all the other lower emotions, when they pop up, they hit this love center, this stabilizing force, and bounce off.
Alan Steinfeld
Well some people say love isn’t even an emotion because it is who we are when we take everything away. What’s left is love. It’s like the sun is shining even though the clouds are in the way. So we’re always love, but we’re overshadowed with other petty emotions.
James Redfield
That’s right. I mean, whatever you call it, whether you call it just the basic centering process of our emotional center, if you can download this love, and it’s not love for an object. That’s what we all think. Love, you have to love something, and that something brings love out in us. Okay that’s true, it does. But when it becomes a permanent emotional state, that’s when it’s powerful, centers us in our creative purpose, and all of a sudden, I use this all the time, this kind of image. You become the star of your own movie unfolding in life because of centering.
Alan Steinfeld
But how do you get there? How do you find that center?
James Redfield
You have to practice it. It’s like everybody knows, it’s a meditative practice that you do, you start with if you can’t do it but 30 seconds, that’s good, start from there. But get to 20 minutes and do it every day and you don’t have to have your eyes shut. You could take your walk and do nothing but.
Alan Steinfeld
You’re emanating the love field.
James Redfield
That’s right. And the more you practice that, the easier it is until all of a sudden that’s your core emotion and it’s a power that solidifies your journey in life.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay. That’s good. One more thing I wanted to ask you about those nine insights is the one that stands out also for me is the idea of taking energy, people take your energy or give you energy. It’s a little vague because I probably read that 20 years ago.
James Redfield
Well you know it’s the secret. It’s what’s wrong with humanity, right? We’re cut off from our love channel. We’re cut off from this spiritual connection. And so what do we do, but we still want to feel in control of our lives, right? So what does the ego do with that? It starts to suck energy from people. I mean we have this energy and because we’re cut off, we can’t just give everybody all the energy they want to take. It’s hard. So that means there are power struggles. So you’ve got people who are power seekers. They’re trying to dominate as many people out there as they can.
Alan Steinfeld
Because they feel unloved? Is that what you’re saying? Because they’re not feeling love, they want to take love from others.
James Redfield
That’s right. They take the love-based energy from others rather than open up to it personally. So that’s what’s wrong with the world. If everybody suddenly was practicing this meditation that I’m advocating and suddenly enough to break through so they have a download, they’re open, they’re centered. You can’t take too much energy from them, right? And because we have enough to give, it’s a source. So love is a source. You just give it everywhere. And this is not just Beatles era jargon. This is a fundamental truth that one can prove to themselves. That you can find your center in life, a peace, the scriptures, Buddhism has it, Hinduism, all these scriptures are the same about this. Christianity, you can find a peace that surpasses all understanding.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, I know. The thing is, sometimes you have to walk away or, I mean, we have this unlimited source of love, but we can get drained because some people are a bottomless pit of a need.
James Redfield
Yes, that’s right. You have to know how to conserve your energy while you’re working on this. So that’s what the control dramas represent in the book. So part of the book for those people who haven’t read it yet, are about how to maintain your energy and center in a world where people are trying to use all these ways, passively, aggressively, to force you into either giving you their energy or taking it out right by intimidation and all the rest, criticism. So there’s a solution of course, and that is to give energy all the time anyway, and name the game when you get into one of these control dramas. You know there are two passive ones and two aggressive ones, if you’ll remember.
Alan Steinfeld
I do remember you saying the passive ones, the most passive is the poor me.
James Redfield
Right. The person that when you walk into the energy field they create around them, you start to feel guilty. And they say things like, well you know, I thought you would call yesterday and you didn’t. And all these bad things happened to me yesterday, implying that it’s your fault. So it’s not just a criticism though, it’s a kind of guilt trip.
Alan Steinfeld
And it sucks out your energy. It’s like most people want to be compassionate so the poor me demands the energy.
James Redfield
That’s right. And wants more and more because they have to have it all the time, so it’s a habit.
Alan Steinfeld
Poor me is the passive way. Now what’s the other passive way?
James Redfield
The aloof. And these are devices. Transaction psychologists in the 70s and 80s had a ball with this. The games people play, remember that book. So what I’m doing is taking this reality that has been described by the real pioneers of the human potential movement. You have to recognize it. The aloof, you know you’re walking into the energy field around an aloof, because you can’t get a straight answer. You say where’d you go last night? Oh, I went out.
Alan Steinfeld
Well where? Where’d you go?
James Redfield
I went to a couple of places, had a good time. So what’s that distancing, right?
Alan Steinfeld
And they want you to fall into their game. So it’s another way of sucking energy.
James Redfield
Well that’s right because where attention goes, energy flows. If you give them attention, you’re trying to figure out who they are, so you keep asking questions and they got the energy flowing. And they’ll always have some way to hook you, some dramatic suggestion that what they did was really fun but they’re not going to give you the secret about it. It’s a mystification process.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s just as annoying as the poor me.
James Redfield
But we all do this unconsciously on some level too.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. That’s why we can’t be too judgmental, right? Because we all resort to these control devices in order to feel better because we get attention, we force attention from other people so we feel that. It would be a lot better, think about it, it would be a lot better if everybody just gave each other energy, right? Love energy, where you just gave it, so if someone’s feeling a little low, they just walk down the street and everybody’s giving energy. So again, this sounds idealistically naive, but it’s not. It’s the secret for creating peace on the planet. Because if everybody came back to their own source of spiritual connection, they have this energy, they have this love, they practice it, long enough, they walk with it and that’s when our creativity is amplified beyond belief.
Alan Steinfeld
Now just go over for the people hanging out, the aggressive ways.
James Redfield
Well the interrogator. You know when you run into this field around a person because you start to be nervous because you instantly feel criticized. A person will say, well wow you look a little pale today. What’s wrong with you? Or I can’t believe you wore this to dinner. I mean this is really not appropriate. Or other things like, I would have expected you to have done more with your life by now.
Alan Steinfeld
So they keep you defending yourself. That’s another way they suck your energy.
James Redfield
Yeah. An interrogator, everybody watches because they feel like they have to be doing everything just right or they’re going to get criticized, right? So they give all this energy to the interrogator.
Alan Steinfeld
You know I had a friend who did that but then they would flip over into like the neutral sense and then give energy and when they had you they would start to do that.
James Redfield
Well it’s everywhere. Everybody who’s listening to this recognizes it in the world. But here’s the key point about this. And the last one by the way is the intimidator. This is the person who walks into a room and you just kind of, you know, they give off an air like say the wrong thing to me and see what happens. I’m about to go off here. I’m about to go off. So it’s an aura that they walk in the room with and everybody starts to leave. Which is the best thing to do with an intimidator.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah.
James Redfield
They’re the most insecure, they’re the most short of energy and the most desperate to force it out of you.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah the most commanding, yes, yes.
James Redfield
Yeah. So, but there’s a way to get yourself out of these. And ultimately the source is to go within and open these doors to direct energy over time. But the first thing you can do is just try to take the conversation authentic. And the way you do that is that you name the game. In other words, if it’s an interrogator, you say you know right now as you talk, I’m really feeling criticized. Do you mean to do that? Okay, what have you done? You’ve named the game which means the game can’t be played anymore, right?
Alan Steinfeld
And you do the same thing with all these other devices, these control dramas.
James Redfield
You name the poor victim, you’re being a victim again. But then I’m being a criticizer if I call them a victim, so it’s like.
Alan Steinfeld
Well what you do is you just say this is how I feel. And they want to argue or call you names or whatever, you just say, well, I’m just telling you how I feel. They can’t argue with your feelings because that’s what you’re feeling.
James Redfield
But the best way to be with people, I would say, exude that loving, even if they are one of those types, and be supportive of who they are if we can without.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. If you can give enough energy to feel comfortable in the situation, that’s what you do as you name the game, because you don’t want to, because as soon as you name the game, the conversation goes authentic. Oh, okay, so let’s clear the air, no more games. And now what do we got to talk about?
James Redfield
You see this is what’s so great about your book, 20 years later it is still valuable, it’s still part of, I mean of course it’s been here for thousands of years the way people behave with each other, but it’s still relevant even within a spiritual community awakening because we’ve forgotten those insights I think.
Alan Steinfeld
But here’s the thing. They were all insights. But now the world is, maybe even because things are so ugly in places out there in the world. Everybody’s a little alarmed about that, right? And they want to make it different somehow, right? And that alone, that decision to make it different somehow elevates consciousness. And remember like these millennials and their children are already the majority population on the planet. So if they get this right, then we can move from just insight every now and then when we think about it to real abilities. And all these insights in my view in an environment of higher consciousness become abilities.
James Redfield
Abilities?
Alan Steinfeld
Abilities.
James Redfield
Like explain that a little bit.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, you know it’s an insight that synchronicity exists, right? Synchronicity, meaningful coincidence, they happen to us. Yes. And the ability happens when you learn how to keep that flow of synchronicity going by investigating each happening for the meaning very consciously and very slowly. So each of these insights has a corresponding ability that we have to begin to use.
James Redfield
Ability or power, a way of empowering us I think is another way of saying that.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. That’s right. You know the world is designed in my view, to be a lot less crazy than we’re making it. Okay? It’s designed around, and here’s another insight that’s very important here, it’s designed to be different. And the reason is, and I think this can be proven to yourself. The karmic design of the world revolves around service and giving. Okay? So here’s how it works. And we talk about this in the workshops, until we can practice it. But it works this way. If you’re a giver, if you think first about well how can I be a synchronicity for this other person before you ask well where’s my synchronicity from them? If you’re trying to give energy, if you’re trying to uplift people, if you’re trying to do some service in the world. You’re a giver. And if you’re a giver, what happens? The karmic design is such that you draw more givers, just like you, into your life story. Okay? So people show up just at the right time to give you information that makes your journey clearer and what you want to do in life clear. But if you’re a taker, if you go how can I use this person? How can I sell this person something they don’t need, right? Which happens in this world every day, all over the place. If you’re a taker, guess who you draw into your life? Other takers. So they come in and it’s not for punishment. It’s to give you a sense of what it feels like when you do this behavior. When you’re a taker, when you get taken, you go, oh man, that ruined my whole month. This guy misled me.
James Redfield
And some people like that don’t even realize, if they’re that unconscious let’s say, they don’t even realize what they’re doing, so they get caught up in that circle and they’re not awake to their actions.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. So it’s a benevolent universe, it’s designed to reward giving, reward good service in the world. But it also for the people who are takers, it operates to show them the error of their ways, you know? And so I just tell everybody, this is something you can absolutely prove to yourself. It’s like giving money, it’s like tithing. Not meaning the religious tithing, but the active giving actually cash to people in need. If you do that, it changes the financial flow of your life. And I don’t want to sound like a televangelist on television.
James Redfield
So you’re saying, if you give charity, whatever, you create a field that will have people give to you. Is that what you’re saying?
Alan Steinfeld
That’s exactly right. I mean the giving has to be genuine, but it’s important to know that it’s rewarded. It is.
James Redfield
Though that’s not why people do it. They do it out of that sense of love and compassion and seeing someone’s needs, we can help fulfill.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. But you know in the Bible, they say don’t test God, written in the Bible. Don’t test God, right? There’s in the prophet Malachi, I believe it’s the one. He says this is the only area you can test God. If you do good with your money, you can expect to be rewarded. Yeah, I think what that means is you know the system. You know, you’re aligning yourself with the true karmic system of this dimension at least. And again, it’s all about, I can’t send you the scientific evidence for this. But I can tell you if you actually do it, you’ll be able absolutely to prove it to yourself.
James Redfield
Great. Now let’s just move on a little bit. No, thank you for that. So you wrote the nine insights and then there was a tenth insight. And now, can you just, I mean people want to read, they definitely want to reread the Celestine Prophecy just to catch up. And I know we’re going to move into what you’re working on now and how your evolution has built upon that. But what was the tenth insight again? I don’t think I caught.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay the 10th insight was, you know this actually happened. I mean people say, well you’re making these up. And I go no, I’m writing down these principles because so many people are discovering them out there and I can see it. It’s happening. But after the Celestine Prophecy the publisher says, well you got to do another insight book. And I said well I can’t because an insight is when the collective consciousness shifts by some revelation that’s entering the human mind en masse, you know what I mean? So I said I don’t know what I could possibly talk about. Well except during that time, and we’re talking about 96 to 2000. The great revelation was that the afterlife, the place we go to after death and we come from at birth is a real place.
James Redfield
It’s a real place. Or we return to our source kind of thing. Yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
But see, they’re so afraid of death, they couldn’t conceive actually what happened. They knew their religion thought the religious doctrine was you would be okay. But heaven, what was that? What’s that place? What’s everybody doing? Nobody, they couldn’t go there. And it was this mass aha that’s when you know people start exploring angels and the real, you know how do real angels act? A lot of movies out about angels. There was a lot of near-death experience research that began. Right. I said holy Moses, this is an insight, this is a collective insight we’re having. And so that was my second book, the 10th Insight.
James Redfield
Was that the life continues, or this love feeling doesn’t end?
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. We’re eternal. We don’t have to repress our lives, you know, and not even visit people at nursing homes because we can’t stand the idea that we might actually be going to die someday. I mean that’s how repressed the world was. Very repressed.
James Redfield
You know a beautiful example of that is Anita Moorjani, Dying to Be Me, was probably the most beautiful book about her experience of going to the other side and coming back and finding that love for herself, and she is such a great. Do you know her work, Anita Moorjani?
Alan Steinfeld
I do, yeah. I have not widely read in it, but I know the name.
James Redfield
Yeah, no she is just an inspiration for so many people. So that was the 10th insight and you integrate and you know I have to say all these insights are about, let’s call it an ascension energy, we’re at the portal to ascend. And it’s about, you know the fact that you name them, I think is very important to make conscious of what’s happening and to track our evolution as a spiritual culture which is emerging in the west for the last, well since the 60s really, 1960s, but before that, but now there’s a movement that the Celestine Prophecies were a big part of. So now here we are, that was 96, so here we are 20 something years later, what where have you been? Where have you?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, let’s at least briefly mention the next two books. Oh yeah. I did an 11th insight which was another revelation I think was widely surfacing in humanity and that’s the power of intention. Remember the what was that book?
James Redfield
The Intention Experiment. Lynne McTaggart’s work is big in this.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The power of intention, you know The Secret, The Secret came out. The secret is a big deal of the power. You know the trouble with the early versions of understanding of intention is they didn’t separate ego intention versus a kind of higher consciousness derived intention.
James Redfield
That’s a good point. No one’s ever, I mean people said, well, something’s wrong here if no one has pinpointed what is the problem.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I can tell I in the 11th Insight I talked about that. And then of course there was the 12th Insight, which happened around 2012. Oh wait. Oh okay. Was that part of it? The 12th insight was a view of what the world would look like if we actually integrated all this awareness into personal life, okay? Now I wrote that book and it’s been still, it’s out there bouncing around. And you know the wave of that integration really I concluded, was waiting on the next two generations to come into play. Because Baby Boomers, Baby Boomers are, we’re abstract thinkers, okay? Right. We think all about this intellectual system, you know. Well Millennials are they’re integrators I believe, because they don’t think in terms of intellectual systems, you know, that you can sit down and write down and debate, while you’re driving your gas guzzling car. You know, they’re integrators, they want life to go better, but they want everyone to be okay in life, alright? Now there are other things that, you know the world’s pretty crazy, and so Millennials had a harder time engaging in a career and all that. But that’s because they needed to think in, you know what’s good for all of us. You know how do we, they’re like the World War II generation if you remember, they were unifiers, they thought of themselves as all together and believing the same things, even though they didn’t altogether, but they wanted to have certain values that they all embraced. Same thing with the Millennials.
James Redfield
Now their children they are going to stretch the bubble some more like Boomers did. With intellectual ideas. But for now…
Alan Steinfeld
The children of Millennials you’re saying? So there’s the Boomers and after the Boomers were the Generation X or whatever you want to call them. And then the Millennials, right?
James Redfield
No, the Millennials are children of baby boomers. Oh okay, okay. I got your reference. Okay. But their children they’re going to push the envelope. They’re going to want to discover new revelations about life, much like the baby boomers wanted to. Right, right. But so this is a process, you know, it’s like collect, it’s like you know press the envelope then try to keep all the good things and throw out the bad. And then another generation wants to push the envelope and try new things in life and then the next generation wants to consolidate this in a unifying mode. But so that’s where we are. We’re in a unifying mode. So talking to Millennials, you can’t talk abstracts. You say well how does this change the way I live? They want to know, well how does this change the way I live and the way everybody could live? So that’s the language I use out there right now because it’s a unifying world. We’re all Millennials in this sense because they’re the majority population them and their children.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. So your next work, I mean you laid out the groundwork and now it’s about unifying all these generations and of course what we’re seeing in politics and all sorts of government in the world is a vast separation though too. It’s drawing the divisions very clearly.
James Redfield
That’s right. And hating the other side, you know, it’s a, but you know the people that do that you know are, each side thinks they’re winning. Well both of those sides are just two subgroups fighting, alright? And one group watches Fox and one group watches CNN, right? But the number of people watching is going down every year because everybody else is living their life. Yeah. And that’s the big pool out of which progress will be made. Out of that grassroots pool of people living their life in a different way.
Alan Steinfeld
So what is your solution in this next book and the re-release, but also in what you’re working on now? What do you, what are you, how’s…
James Redfield
Well it’s to speed up the breakthrough points in consciousness. Okay. So we’re still spending too much time on our addictions and our coping devices. So we go back to, you know, we gotta just have that chocolate cake or that fast food, or we have to watch movies, I won’t say what kind, or we have to divert ourselves and just kind of cover up this yearning in here because we don’t know exactly how to do it. We don’t know how to break through. And so I’m proposing with the new book that will be out in a year and a half or so, that we have a high-speed breakthrough to creativity that is very practical and it’s using this very mysterious symbol called the Enneagram.
Alan Steinfeld
Mm.
James Redfield
And a lot of people use the Enneagram in different ways, but the main thing is it defines our gift to the world. There’s nine personality types. We’re still very individualist within those. But there are nine major sort of types in terms of the kind of missions we’re on.
Alan Steinfeld
Nine different missions really that…
James Redfield
That’s right. And once you know those, it explains why all your friends are different for one thing, but it also defines the gift of each side of each type.
Alan Steinfeld
Was this a Gurdjieff thing? The Enneagram? Yes. Yeah.
James Redfield
Gurdjieff you know is for everybody, this was he was an early 20th century mystic came back from the Orient to Western civilization with this symbol called the Enneagram. It’s a circle with a triangle within it and nine points around the circle. Right right right. And lines that go between the points and in a particular way. So the thing, once you realize what you define your mission, you know your heart’s desire, your spark of the divine that you’re moving helping with. Then you know how to recognize when you go backward on the lines of this Enneagram. You go backward to another we’re a blend, really. But you can go backward into your ego and know exactly what that looks like. Everybody else can know exactly what that looks like. So everybody knows where you’re going backwards or how you go forward. And it’s all very synchronistic how you go forward because we meet people that show us their type and we blend it a little bit into our own type. You don’t ever abandon your type, but the healthier you are and the more conscious you are, you blend more of the other types into your type. So it’s fascinating the way it works.
Alan Steinfeld
What’s the name what are you calling this new book? What are you calling it? The new book.
James Redfield
That new book it’s probably going to be a I don’t know what I’ll call it yet, but it’s going to be more of a direct sequel to the original Celestine Prophecy.
Alan Steinfeld
So do you want to go through these nine types or is that too complicated here? Do you want to get…
James Redfield
Maybe we can do that in another interview.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay. Okay. But just to say these nine types will access the creative potential in each one of us when we discover which persona we embody.
James Redfield
That’s right.
Alan Steinfeld
But sometimes when I’ve read about this, you think you’re one thing because of your conditioning and your survival mechanism and it’s not going anywhere because that is not your soul alignment, so you have to undo the Enneagram you thought you were and find your true path.
James Redfield
That’s right. That’s right. You have to get your number correct. Oh right. And but once you do, it’s a revelation. And I’ll just give you one example, okay? I’m a five, okay? And you can call it personality type. I don’t really like that. It’s more of an energetic orientation or calling or whatever. But it’s limiting. I really it’s a way of service. You know, it reveals my way of service. And a five is wants to reveal undiscovered information for the world.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay. I think I might be a five. Anyway.
James Redfield
So you probably are. Because a whole bunch of people listening to this probably say oh yeah I’m a five too you know. Because we sit around in our cave you know and we’re plotting and reading and experiencing and but guess what? A lot of fives, staying in the cave is our primary coping device. Right. Don’t want to get out of the cave because then you’d have to explain yourself. Right. Because short of energy, a five is unsure of what the discoveries are they’re making and how to present it to the world, right? Now get this, on the lines of the Enneagram, the five is shown to go to the eight. Now the eight is, you know John Wayne was an eight. Eights are warriors, they’re…
Alan Steinfeld
Shown to go. I mean you’re a five and what does that mean that you…
James Redfield
Well if you look at the Enneagram and you see well where’s the five, there’s a line going forward from the five to the eight. Oh I see, I see. So for the five to be fully conscious and able to operate in the world, they have to be more like an eight. So they have to download this eight energy as well. Now eights, people who are eights, when an eight comes into the room, yeah they kind of suck all the energy out. They’re very, I’m here. I’m here. You know what can I do? And they have an aspect of them that’s something of a bully until they realize they have to give that strong energy to really actualize themselves.
Alan Steinfeld
So the five in order to actuate its full expression has to somehow pull in from that energy field of an eight the confidence to…
James Redfield
That’s absolutely right. The five sitting around in a cave going okay I’ve got this information, this seems very important to get out in the world, but you know it’s kind of scary to go outside the cave and deliver this in the world. But if they grow into eight, then they have that energy. You know, they have that energy. Um, you know, when I first wrote the Celestine Prophecy, I had to go into eight because everybody wanted to hear about it, correct? You know, so if I’m acting like an eight, people have to understand well I really love all this attention but I’m going to have to go back to my cave to figure out the next steps of consciousness here.
Alan Steinfeld
Well you know, because a five is not necessarily an eight.
James Redfield
Because the eight goes down to two. So an egoistic eight learns how to drop the bully part of themselves and just become more of a two which is a highly loving caregiver. So it’s a map. And that’s what we talk about here on the events that we do out in the world. So, but this stuff is available to everybody.
Alan Steinfeld
That is a map. A specific map to find your way home really to yourself.
James Redfield
Right. But it’s we’ve defined it spiritually. Which is what my calling is anyway. And so the events we hold, these weekend events or two day events or one day events are to walk step to step how to break through to your creative power and how to use it right now. How to feel better. Because you only feel better when you’re engaging your true calling here. And it takes courage to look and say is the life I have right now an authentic calling of who I am? So those are big questions.
Alan Steinfeld
So to fulfill this destiny that we have set out inside that birth vision basically.
James Redfield
That’s exactly right. And everybody has it to access. We’re coming from the spiritual dimension and moving back there. And we’re going to get an evaluation, there’s a life review. So it’s pure truth about our journey through this earthly dimension anyway.
Alan Steinfeld
How do you work with people to get out the old patterns that somehow, because people have these defense mechanisms that cover up the trauma. So to access this higher realm, isn’t there something in the way that needs to be brought to peace?
James Redfield
Right. All these early insights are about laying the foundation, right? Seeing the spiritual dimension, learning how to download the right emotion. And because we haven’t even talked about the next steps. We’ll have to have some time to get back to the process here. I haven’t really gotten to that yet. What I’m doing now is talking about the breakthroughs in creativity we can find just with the knowledge we already have.
Alan Steinfeld
Like give me an example of that. What do you mean, what kind of breakthroughs?
James Redfield
Well, you know, most people have emotional outbursts or emotional waves and cycles where they drop back and fall into feeling bad, right? That there are three basic emotions that hold them back from their creativity. Yeah. And all therapists know everybody is trying to manage one of three emotions. Either anxiety, kind of fear of the world. Anger outbursts, which make you go off and chop people’s heads off with your language and your voice. And the third one are people are managing the hurts they think other people have done to them. Okay, so those are the three whammies that hit people that hold them back. Right. So, but the solution happens in meditation. You can’t just stop doing all that. That’s an ingrained pattern. That’s a coping device. It’s something that is very, but what happens, the only way you stop it is when the emotion anxiety comes into your space you let it go. And you come back to the intention of love. Okay. And same thing with anger, and same thing with hurts, emotional hurts. You have to practice letting them go. And as soon as if you practice that in meditation, let it go come back, let them go, you come back. You do it day after day after day. But it absolutely, and I make this assertion all the time. It always works if you stick with it. It always works.
Alan Steinfeld
Well I have to say you’re obviously someone who’s practiced this, you know, can you just talk about your personal experience because you’re sort of like a bodhisattva, you dedicated your life to the upliftment of consciousness and you’ve used your own self to whatever the Dalai Lama clean the inside, you know clean the junk out that’s in the way. But talk about your experience in this if you can.
James Redfield
Well you know I’m a living example that you can get over your fears and you know a five is one of the anxiety types. So you know it’s running from whatever reminds you of existential uncertainty in your life. And on and on. Again, meditation was the solution for me. And but see this thing, you don’t have to sit with your eyes closed. The meditation that I think works the best is that you can walk. Everybody needs to walk every day anyway. Walk and every time some junk emotion or idea comes in, you just let it go. You do nothing during that walk but let go of the crap that comes in and build longer periods of time that you’re focused on this emotion of agape love, love without an object. You just feel it. Do whatever it takes to feel it, you think about your departed loved ones, you know, you loved a little puppy when you were a kid. Anything to remember what it feels like, right? Because it’s hard to, you know, your grandchildren elicit love, right? That’s all you have to do is look at your grandchildren. But when they’re not there, how do you feel love? So you can, you know it’s a feeling, it’s an emotion, it lives right here in your heart. And you just practice that over time. And, you know, after that it’s just living this replacement self instead of the emotional self. You are living for your inspiration energy and you’re trying to follow your intuitions and it leads to all these synchronicities and you discover, wow, I have a truth to tell the world, how do I get that out? And suddenly you have this feeling, and then synchronicity happens and you go, oh my goodness, um, wow, doors are opening. I can believe in this. I’m being helped with my mission of service in the world. You know, that’s what we’re all doing. And listen, I’m not trying to put myself as a model. The reason I know this works is I can see people out there. And now, more and more people are coming to a place where they can reach that. I’m thoroughly convinced.
Alan Steinfeld
So do you feel the vibration of the planet is shifting to that higher?
James Redfield
Yeah, I do. I do because people are asking these deeper questions right now.
Alan Steinfeld
James, thanks for continuing the good work, fighting the good fight.
James Redfield
Well thank you.
Alan Steinfeld
It’s great to reconnect with you and thank Neil Gaur for creating this platform, Portal to Ascension. People can find me at my YouTube channel, youtube.com/newrealities.