(Q) I have been following you on facebook since I sent you a friends request several months ago. I read your page everyday. I try to read everything you post. I find much of what you post on your facebook page and on the “The Whole World is a Single Flower” page to be comforting and calming for me. Now I want to know a little bit about the man behind the words and I also have a few other questions. I hope I will not ask too much. I hope you will be able to answer all my questions. First, what is your training? Are you a spiritual teacher? If so, are you accepting students? Do you have a training center? Also, I notice on your facebook page that you often post things that are clearly speaking to our higher God-like selves. I also notice that you sometimes post things that sound pessimistic to me. That confuses me. Can you clarify? I also took notice a few months ago of your decision to stop posting “negative news stories” on your page, why did you do that?
(Raven) Yes. Thank you. I am able to answer all your questions.
I have undergraduate degrees in sociology and cross cultural/diversity studies. I hold an advanced degree in clinical psychology. So by academic and professional training I am a psychotherapist. I have done many things under that designation including having a private practice for more than ten years and working in the area of HIV/AIDS education, prevention, research, program development and program evaluation for another 10 years. I have also worked extensively in the areas of domestic violence, substance abuse and hospice/death and dying within that 20 year span. I am also a Reiki Master.
All of this education and experience has served me extremely well in my life. I use the training daily. However, I no longer consider myself a psychotherapist in any real functional shape or form. When people ask me today what I am, my first response is that I am a writer. If they persist I may also say that I am a spiritual teacher. So yes, for all intents and purposes I do consider myself a spiritual teacher. I am a non-aligned spiritual teacher. This means in my teaching work and in my life I am not formally bound to or by any specific spiritual or religious tradition.
As for formal students and a practice center---I do not take formal students and I do not have a practice center. These two things are not likely to change. I have been asked numerous times to do both. There are many spiritual teachers who have, as part of their spiritual teaching purpose, the taking on of formal students and/or the desire to establish some sort of spiritual center, church or formal ministry of some sort. Such things are of little importance to me and are not a part of my purpose as a spiritual teacher.
As for my style of posting things on my page, your observation is very astute. You are correct in it. Now I will shed some light on the meaning of it. When I am in my aspect as a spiritual teacher there are two principal levels I am speaking on. I am constantly alternating between the two. On the one hand I am drawing attention to either the individual or collective false self or ego or the general and pervasive unconsciousness in our world. This is important so that we can recognize it, see it for what it is and also know that it is ultimately not who we are nor who we are collectively either. These are the writings you referred to as “pessimistic.” I am imagining you now see they are not in the least bit pessimistic. They are pointing out that which on some level is “that which is.” Underneath that energy however, resides a glimpse towards the spirit and reality of transformation. This glimpse blossoms into a full flower in what you refer to as my writings that are “speaking to our higher God-like selves.” That is the second level of communication I regularly use. I am affirming and validating those of us who already live anywhere from sometimes to continuously in this awareness of transformation and I am providing an alternate paradigm for those who don’t regularly live in it at all.
My decision to no longer post items on my facebook page that speak to or reflect the lowest and most destructive expressions of ego consciousness on the planet was made for several reasons. Chief among these reasons is my awareness that it had become inauthentic for me to continue to post such items. In other words, such items no longer reflected my head-space nor consciousness. Second, such information is readily available everywhere. My facebook page does not need to be yet another outlet for the dissemination of such information.
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