Elia Wise: Teacher from Experience by Steve McCardell I remember the teacher of a junior college religion class I attended assuring us that, although who, what, when, and where are good for giving us footing, it is the why and how questions that make a topic meaningful. The first questions, he explained, told us that, In the beginning, God created everything, and everywhere. But the why gives us a reason to be here, and the how empowers us to understand creation, and so to create. It seems to me that these latter questions are the expressions of Elia Wise, both in person and in her new book, Letter to Earth. Elia and I had spoken once on our mutual interest in education before I interviewed her, and talking with her again was similar in that both conversations were comfortable — we were able to slip right into what really mattered. But Elia is one of those rare people who can rightly combine a relaxed conversation with a powerful message. From the start, she spoke with purpose — as directed as one might be if lucky enough to have a script. No script here, though: Elia speaks from a lifetime of experiencing the very truths expressed in our conversation and in her book. The fast-growing success of Letter to Earth (reviewed in the February 2000 issue of The New Times) is a case in point. Her book speaks often of what she calls "sympathetic vibrational magnetism" — better known in the spiritual community as synchronicity. Why the more complicated name? Because Elia is not simply naming the phenomenon, but is explaining how it works. This is how she empowers people to create, in this case, synchronicities in their own lives. The success of her book demonstrates this: just as she discusses in Letter to Earth, she sent out a "vibrational stimulus into the world," and this is a magnetic call that "ripples through the energy of the world — and possibly the universe — scanning for resonance and seeking sympathetic alignments." In other words, it was the very energy she fed the book process that drew in synchronicities to make her work a success. Most of us realize by now how often these things happen in our own lives; Elia uses the common examples of a friend calling when you are just thinking of her, or a word you just learned showing up everywhere. But there is a difference in the intensity of such events when you are conscious of and focused on the energy you are sending out. Elia’s focus on her book is an inspiring illustration. Letter to Earth was first self-published, and Elia devoted a vast energy to this publication: she used her savings to give herself time to write. Then, feeling that the book was such an important and beautiful expression of her purpose and her teaching, she again threw her whole effort into making it outwardly beautiful: she made up bookmarks, used gorgeous end papers, and so on. She explains that it was as if "writing a love letter to the planet." She was so focused on producing this thing she truly believed in that she insists she didn’t even think of it in terms of marketing. But when the product was finished and she sent it into the world, she says, "It was clear to everyone who touched it that something was really different here." That "something different" drove in rave reviews, and the book sold out quickly, only to be picked up by Harmony Books, which now publishes the work. All this is to say that Elia indeed speaks from experience; though synchronicities have long been acknowledged by the spiritual community, she shows why they work, and she encourages people to use them consciously in order to create more powerfully in their own lives. The beauty of Elia’s teachings is that they are practical like that. This is an important point, because Elia believes that as our old, mechanistic worldview disintegrates — seen even as science pushes to include human consciousness in its approach — we cannot replace what has served us practically with abstract spiritual and consciousness theories. "You have to have something really substantive that people can test and study and apply and watch reflected back before anyone can say, ‘This could be fundamental to our understanding of ourselves, and our place in the universe, and the universe itself.' " Practical ideas expressing universal principles allow us to create something of an overarching system, a bridge from which we can look out onto our current structures and lift them up. This is as opposed to a new "underpinning," as Wise calls it, which would simply be molded to the structures we have. By applying newly understood principles that are truly universal and practical to the old models, we can create new models of every kind for our society. I couldn’t resist; talking to someone with such a unique overall perspective, I had to know what her path was in learning what she had. How had she come to all of this? Her response painted a fascinating portrait. Dealing with some spiritual experiences from her very early years, Elia came into her teens without much material available; the spiritual genre just wasn’t there, but for the writings of Bailey or Blavatsky perhaps, and these were too advanced for a teen. But coming upon her sister’s college philosophy text, she "happened" to open directly to Plato's "cave allegory" of prisoners chained to face a cavern wall on which shadows of outdoor objects appear; this, they believe, is reality. Similarly flawed is our belief in the physical realm as reality; this concept was fundamental to Elia's consciousness development. She sought out those with whom she could talk about these larger issues, but it wasn’t until she was 22 that she met the person to whom she now refers as her "cosmic mentor." Elia spent four years under this woman’s direct tutelage, but it was not verbal lessons by which Elia learned. "To this day, she is still an enigma in some ways because of her inconsistencies…She could not articulate very well, and over the whole four-year period, I maybe got two or three conceptual conversations that could be made sense of." But the learning was not about words; it was about experience. "She worked very much like the story of Merlin with Arthur. If I wanted to know something, she just popped me into it and I became the experience; I had a direct experience." All of this challenged her sense of reality to the point that she could open a tube of toothpaste and literally not know what might emerge. She came to realize that anything could be a window to another reality, and this brought her into the moment in a profound way, even during the most mundane events. But Ms. Wise points out something important: it is not her path or anyone else’s path that a person must follow to achieve success and enlightenment in life. "Love is the expander," she explains. We see mighty figures like Mother Teresa, who lived an incredible and selfless life, but everyone expresses love in a unique way, and it is simply the focus of expressing love that brings spiritual light to any person. That is where our focus should be, and now, Elia will have more of that very opportunity. She will grow stronger through experience once again, for now, after all she has lived and seen, she has a new and powerful teacher in her life: her daughter, now six years old. There is always another door that stands open. Steve McCardell is the author of The Merlin Interview; check it out at <http://members.aol.com/merlin3783/>.