A best-selling author for decades, Wayne Dyer was one of the most popular teachers in the self-help, mind/body/spirit, and New Age communities. This interview was my first with Wayne. At the time I was editor in chief of New Age Retailer (now Retailing Insight), the main industry trade magazine for the category, and this piece originally…
It has been a great year in the blogosphere, easily setting a record for highest amount of traffic since RayHemachandra.com replaced the prominently indexed former static site Hemachandra.com, which closed at the end of 2011. (You can still take a limited peek at that site via the cool time travel mechanism the Wayback Machine.) I…
I love talking to Wayne Dyer. First of all, the breadth and depth of thought across disciplines he brings to a conversation are amazing. I always learn new and important things. Secondly, the last time he saw me, he exclaimed, “Ray Hemachandra-dandra-dandra!” When Wayne Dyer starts calling you buddy nicknames, you feel pretty good about…
What’s the most common meme people hold? A minister in Maui told me about a boy who was five years old, and his mom came home with a brand new baby. He was a rambunctious five year old, and his parents were afraid that he might do some damage to the baby. They kept…
Ray: Is feeling good a significant spiritual goal? Wayne: The No. 1 principle in the universe is “I intend to feel good.” Feeling good is what you should be doing every day of your life. A friend of mine visited Swami Muktananda back in the 1970s in India. As my friend was going…
Ray: Let’s talk about memes a little bit more. How do political and cultural shifts happen when there are collective memes, or seem to be— Wayne: —oh, yes, there are millions of them— Ray: —and is there a tipping point at which you have enough people changing their thinking that a societal meme actually shifts?…
Ray: If the dharma for all human beings is doing good and being good, it still manifests itself differently for different people. Are the differences in our dharmas based on choices we make—on free will—or is our specific dharma something with which we’re born? Wayne: We’re all individualized expressions of God, of oneness. We do…
Ray: What do you think we owe future generations, and how are we doing? Wayne: Oh, we’re doing terribly. We’re leaving these unborn children trillions of dollars of debt, which is just horrific. We’re leaving nuclear weapons—enough to end life as we know it—all over the planet. We’re leaving a legacy of violence and killing…
Ray: If you’re raised with pessimistic, negative beliefs—those very excuses you’re talking about—that’s your world. That’s your understanding of reality. So, in a fundamental way, abandoning those unhealthy beliefs means abandoning your life. That requires a real leap of faith, doesn’t it? Wayne: You’ve already abandoned everything you’ve ever known. All you have is now.…
Ray: What’s the main message you’re trying to express today? Wayne: The message is don’t die with your music still in you. You came here with something to do. You are part of a universal consciousness, and there are no accidents in it. In your true essence—not the false self, not the ego part of…
