Title:
Interviewed by God - A Journey to Freedom
Author
Name: Beth Banning
Author Bio:
Beth Banning is a best-selling author,
inspirational speaker, and spiritual catalyst who lives in California
with her husband, their cat, and their six pound poodle. She was born
in New York City and from a very young age could sense the feelings
of people around her, felt kundalini energy running through her body,
and experienced other unusual events that she didn't understand. The
well-meaning adults in her life told her she was depressed and that
these experiences were just her imagination. Growing up in this cloud
of ignorance and disbelief, these gifts were buried and unable to
flourish and so she was left confused and lonely.
As a young adult she recognized the
same sense of confusion and loneliness in others and became
passionate about helping people better understand themselves and
those around them. Later in life she took this passion into her work
with her husband Neill and co-founded Focused Attention, Inc. She has
written numerous books, co-created the Pathway to Personal Freedom,
and the Art of Conscious Connection Seminar Series.
After many years of integrating this
consciousness shifting work into her own life and teaching it to
others, she experienced a profound reconnection with God that turned
her life upside down. This radically changed the way she perceives
the world and functions in it. Beth now lives her life guided by her
inner source of divine wisdom. She is committed to helping others
discover this for themselves and fully experience the essence of who
they truly are.
Author Links -
Book Genre: Spirituality
Publisher:
PuddleDancer Press
Release Date:
September 1, 2014
GUEST POST by Beth Banning
My 10 Favorite Authors and the Irony That Can and Can't
Define Me#
I am sure most of us can relate to life’s little
ironies. Like how it seems that every
time we spill something on our clothes we happen to be wearing white. Or, the way the car battery is dead when you
are in a particular rush. An irony of my life is that I'm a writer but not much
of a reader I
have dyslexia and reading has always been quite difficult for me. There were
writers however that did interest me, and when I was interested and engaged in
the writing I would read. I was mostly drawn
to those writers who wrote about universal truths, consciousness, and human
evolution.
Writers
like Ram Dass, Eckhart Tolle, Gary Zukav, Neale Donald Walsch, Dan Millman,
James Redfield, Benjamin Zander, Lynn twister, Malcolm Gladwell, David Hawkins and
many others. The concepts, ideas, and quality of thinking presented by these
authors held my attention well enough that I was willing to read even with my
challenges. And when I did read what I loved is finding myself in what I was
reading.
Just like
Ram Dass rejected labels, I refused to let the label of ‘dyslexia’ define
me. We are all more than our labels.
Labels are often a by-product of a society’s expectations…expectations that are
trained into us from birth. Just like
the label of ‘beautiful’ is applied differently by different cultures; ideas,
thoughts, wants, desires, are all a by-product of our society’s values. The idea that a person with dyslexia could
not become a successful author is just part of a label that I wasn’t going to
apply to myself.
In his
book, The New Earth, Tolle writes
that “the primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts
about it.” But with all the expectations,
both subtle and overt, that are put in our thoughts our entire life, how can we
even know our true thoughts?
Each of
the authors I mentioned above, as well as many others who explore these ideas
of consciousness and self, have a common theme in their life. Each has, at some point in their life, been
inspired to look beyond their self-limiting boundaries. For Zukav, it was perhaps the deaths in the
south during the right-to-vote struggles.
Certainly Redfield was deeply influenced by the Human Potential
Movement.
In
exploring myself, as I describe in
Interviewed by God, I too looked to find my own human potential. I was inspired by writers who challenged me
to seek my own truth. My irony turned out to be my asset. Because reading was such a struggle, the
scope of my reading was fairly limited to writers who wrote about things that
touched my soul. I was being enriched by
the words, so the struggle was worth the payoff. The freedom of really, really knowing yourself is the same: a struggle worth the payoff.
Book Description:
Interviewed by
God is an account of Beth Banning’s
journey of spiritual awakening—her conscious connection with God
and the lessons she’s learned along the way. From a very young age,
Banning experienced phenomena that could only be called
extraordinary: she’s received messages from spirit animals, felt
kundalini energy
awaken in her, and experienced dimensional shifts in her awareness
that have allowed her to witness what only a few have seen. She was
visited by totem animals, took ritualistic baths, and visited shamans
and healers; she experienced ecstatic states and received messages;
her ego mind began to battle against her higher mind. As she
experienced her spiritual journey, a small voice within guided her.
With doubt as her constant companion she continued to follow her
inner promptings, which led her to higher levels of truth about her
connection to herself and the world and reality as we know it.
Written in a format in which the author is “interviewed by God,”
the book is meant to be a mirror for the reader to reflect their own
experiences back to them, and a gentle guide for those who are at the
precipice of an extraordinary adventure and are either scared to jump
or who hunger for answers and understanding.
EXCERPT:
Interviewed by God
Chapter 2, What is REALLY Real?
Pg. 11
God: Are you ready to get going?
Beth: I'm not sure why I'm writing about any of this. Who's
going to care?
God: There are many people who are having experiences
similar to yours and they're embarrassed or think it's all their
imagination and are not allowing these experiences to blossom. There
are others who are right at the precipice of these extraordinary,
life-changing experiences, but they are pushing them away. These
people need to know they're not alone and what they're experiencing
is actually more real than what they thought was true.
Beth: They need to know that there is more to life than
they are told about, is that it? They need to know that the world is
much richer and more wonderful than they ever imagined.
God: Yes, it's time for people to know just how much more
there is to life. You've already begun the process of transformation,
and your experiences can help to guide them. I've heard you say you
have had many unusual experiences. What do you mean by this?
Beth: Over the last four years, many things have happened
to me that are outside the realm of ordinary human life. They come in
different forms. I may feel them, hear them, or see them, but they
are nothing like my previous day-to-day existence. Research has
showed me that these types of experiences are not completely
uncommon. On one hand, knowing that others have had similar
experiences helped me at times when I thought I was going crazy. On
the other hand, I mostly found that saints, eccentric geniuses or
gurus in India were the ones having these experiences. There were
only a few stories involving ordinary people like me.
God: So what has changed in your life over the last few
years?
Beth: In short, I have gone from wanting to know
everything, understand everything and control everything in my life,
to a place of peacefulness and acceptance to a degree that I've never
known. I don't mind now when plans change, or someone else thinks
they have a better idea about how to do things. And I don't have to
agree with or understand exactly what someone is talking about in
order to hear what they're saying and be able to empathize with them.
My whole being has shifted. As I continue to have these unique
experiences, they change me and how I perceive the world in
incredible ways. I've gone from an almost compulsive need to "know"
everything to an acceptance of just what's going on in the moment,
and a sense of calm trusting about the future.
