Doreen Virtue

Yesterday I wrote a little bit about seeing Doreen Virtue in Tampa, and how I enjoyed her lecture there, as well as the readings she did for people in the audience. I also enjoy her weekly radio show on Hay House Radio. She is smart, articulate, and fun to listen to.

I only recently discovered Doreen. A couple of months ago I had a sudden urge to read books about angels, and Doreen has written many. Based on the Amazon reader reviews, I chose her book Angels 101, which as its title suggests is more or less a basic primer. It's a quick, breezy read, but it's a pretty book with a light, positive touch.

Although I enjoyed the book, I was not an instant Doreen Virtue fan. However, about a month after I read Angels 101, I saw her being interviewed in Louise Hay's You Can Heal Your Life DVD (which I rented from Netflix). Something she said in that movie really struck me, and has stayed with me ever since. She was talking about listening to divine guidance, and how that comes through. She said it is a step-by-step process, and the guidance usually directs you one step at a time. When you complete one step, you receive the next step. Eventually the steps lead you to where you need to be.

This immediately made sense to me, and really helped me to relax and focus on my own intuitive next steps, and not think and worry so much about where I'm ultimately going. I suddenly became very clear on exactly what I needed to do with my life, and it got me to the point where I feel very happy with what I'm doing, rather than worrying about what I "should" be doing, or what I'm not doing. Thanks to Doreen for the great advice!

By the way, if you're interested in the You Can Heal Your Life DVD, I strongly recommend that you rent the "expanded version" and skip Disc 1 altogether. Just watch the interviews on Disc 2. Not only is each interview fascinating and engrossing, in total they cover all the principles covered in the actual movie (and more), without the rather irritating narrative intercut throughout the movie about an anonymous every-woman in the process of changing her thinking.

Back to Doreen, if you have an interest in angels, by all means check her out. Personally I struggle a bit with admitting my fascination with angels. Some harsh part of me says that angels are nothing but childish fantasy. Yet the wiser part of me knows that angel consciousness is a very loving, healing, and protective energy to bring into your life and into the world. It is powerful.

Caroline Myss and the Shadow

Although I'm a huge fan of Caroline Myss (see yesterday's post), like everyone else she too has an apparent shadow side. I first observed this a few weeks ago at the conference I attended to hear her speak (I Can Do It! - Tampa). I was fascinated by what she was saying, but her lecture had a definite edge to it. For example, she said to the group, "Your mother and father didn't love you? So what? I don't care that your mother and father didn't love you!" Her point was that people need to get themselves out of their self-pity and self-focus, but she can come across as a bit harsh despite this important message.

Immediately following the lecture, I heard two women talking outside. One had attended the lecture, and the other hadn't. The woman who attended was telling her friend that she "felt like she was in church" and noted the fire-and-brimstone flavor of the talk. I chuckled to myself because I could relate, yet still I found Caroline's message to be ultimately important and affirming. When I later described the workshop to my partner, I said it had an SM quality to it. At times, Caroline seemed angry and punishing, but then she would soften the tone and say the most exquisitely loving things to the audience.

Later that evening, I attended Doreen Virtue's keynote workshop, open to the entire conference. She is a warm, delightful speaker with a great sense of humor (you can hear her on her internet radio show at Hay House Radio). Like Caroline, she is an intuitive, but Doreen works with the angel realm. Caroline is a medical intuitive, and also senses the archetypal patterns in people, so you would expect a reading given by these two women to take rather different approaches.

Well, these approaches completely clashed later in the evening. There were hundreds of people in the audience, most of whom wanted Doreen to do a reading for them. It is fascinating to see Doreen do a reading, because with little or no information she is able to talk to a randomly chosen audience member with complete ease and accuracy. One of the last people to be chosen for a reading was a woman from Brazil. She was a massage therapist, and said that she had a life-long dream of being a healer. Immediately Doreen confirmed that the angels supported her in that path, and that she was meant to be a healer. The woman looked relieved, yet also frustrated. She said that earlier in the day she had told Caroline Myss about her desire to be a healer, and Caroline bluntly replied that she did not see the healer archetype in her "at all." Direct contradiction between two great intuitives! Perhaps there is a way to reconcile these two readings, but nevertheless the incident was rather jarring.

When I returned home from the conference, I told my partner how much I had enjoyed hearing Caroline Myss speak. He dug out the Sacred Contracts 5 CD set he bought several years ago, and I listened to them for the first time. It is an excellent set, and I highly recommend it along with the book Sacred Contracts. Since I enjoyed the CDs so much, I looked at the Amazon reviews for her Entering the Castle 9 CD set. I was somewhat surprised to see that several Amazon reviewers rated the set with only 1 star out of a possible 5. However, when I started reading the reviews, I realized that many of the reviewers were complaining about the same harsh tone I had a taste of at the conference (although from the reviews, it sounds like the CDs are worse).

Regardless, I still plan to listen to the Entering the Castle CDs after I've worked with the book for a while longer. If her tone on the CDs is anything like her tone at the conference, it is clear to me that many people are far too quick to take offense. What I witnessed at Caroline's lecture was a woman who is an incredible visionary. She speaks with tremendous passion, and a conviction that what she is saying is useful, relevant, and important to every person in the audience. She is not trying to get people to like her, or even to buy her products. She is saying what she believes, and she is not sugar-coating anything. I found her candor and honesty impressive. And what she is talking about is far beyond programs like "The Secret" or other programs designed for getting what you want (or what you think you want). She addresses the very highest levels of spiritual practice and possibility, and she pushes her audiences to meet her at that level. I love her for that.

Hay House

I love Hay House, the publishing company and so much more, founded by the great Louise Hay). Before I go on, I want to be clear that I am not an employee of Hay House, nor am I affiliated with them in any way whatsoever (although honestly, I wish I were). I must be their ideal customer though, a paragon of their target audience. They are an amazing organization. Here are a few reasons why:

*the books they publish are consistently excellent

*they attract the very best New Age/spiritual authors, even those that have previously published multiple best-sellers with other publishing companies

*they sponsor fantastic events, seminars, and workshops by the authors

*they have great on-line radio programming (Hay House Radio)

I came to truly appreciate Hay House only recently, when I decided to attend one of their events. I was looking to see if Caroline Myss Caroline Myss would be speaking in my area because I am currently working the exercises in her excellent book, Entering the Castle (which, incidentally, is NOT published by Hay House). I noticed on her web site that she would be speaking about Entering the Castle in early October at the Hay House event called "I Can Do It! - Tampa". When I looked up the details of this four day event, I found that in addition to Caroline Myss, several of the authors that I have happened to read recently or have otherwise admired over the years were participating in this conference. I knew I had to go.

I was beyond excited when I registered for the conference, but being there actually exceeded my expectations. Every speaker was phenomenal and extremely inspirational. Not surprisingly, I most enjoyed Caroline Myss - she was, after all, the primary reason I was there. But that in no way diminishes the excellent workshops and lectures I attended, with speakers including Sonia Choquette, Colette Baron-Reid, Marianne Williamson, Doreen Virtue, and several others. It was New Age nirvana!

I plan to write more in future postings about these great authors, but the point here is that it is so impressive that Hay House is able to bring together such a group of brilliant, smart, incredibly talented individuals and then promote them not only through their books, but through live events and programming as well. It amazes me.

If there is a shadow side to Hay House (and just about everything casts a shadow), it is that they are a commercial enterprise after all, and this New Age marketing machine powerhouse takes every opportunity to pummel their patrons with advertising and cross-promotions. It is so tempting for people like me to buy piles of books, attend zillions of workshops, download their podcasts, on and on and on, but as Caroline Myss pointed out during her talk at the conference in Tampa (somewhat ironically), reading a book or attending a workshop does not make a person "spiritual." To be spiritual requires carefully directed thought, action, and especially discipline. With all that said, still I am so grateful for the information and opportunities that Hay House provides.