Laura and I have known each other for over 12 years since we met up at the “Light Body” course held at The School of the Living Light, then based in Ely.  Ever since then, we have phoned each other every week to report on and catch up on each other’s spiritual progress.

So, picture this:  it’s 9 pm on a Saturday and I am huddled in a chilly hallway by the phone, wrapped up in a blanket and with mug of cocoa in hand.  Listen up……………

Lana:  Laura, since I have known you, you have been communicating telepathically with the Masters. Can you describe your unique relationship with the Masters, explaining who they are, and provide this readership with a brief outline of how your telepathy works?

Laura: In order to understand “the Masters”, you first need to understand that everyone in humanity is treading a long, long path of spiritual evolution over many thousands of lifetimes until he or she has completed the “human” evolution and have become perfected beings. At that point, they are known as “Masters” although the Masters themselves regard themselves merely as perfected men and elder brothers of humanity.

Most of those who achieve the level of Master move onto Sirius to continue their evolution but a few remain on Earth inspiring humanity.  At their head, is the World Teacher, Maitreya, who is also known as The Christ, the Iman Mahdi, Krishna, and the Messiah.  Ever since the dying days of Atlantis, they have withdrawn from working openly with humanity but have continued to inspire it from behind the scenes.  They are now preparing to emerge to work openly with humanity again, led by Maitreya who has, since 1977, been living in London.  For any reader who is interested in learning more, I would direct them to Share International at www.share-international.org

I would not regard myself as having a unique relationship with the Masters.   I talk most often with 2 particular Masters through telepathy and occasionally, for reasons I do not always understand, with others from time to time.

Telepathy is a form of non-verbal communication which occurs at all levels of human expression and even in the animal kingdom.  The most familiar to most people is that of the medium who communicates through the solar plexus.  There is a higher level, where communication is either soul to soul or mind to mind and requires the telepath, as a personality, to be somewhat in contact with and subject to the guidance of his soul.  This is how I communicate telepathically.

Lana: Am I right in thinking that your background is one of Theosophy? If so please could you explain a little about the essential facts of that historically and its role in your developing spirituality?

Laura: Yes, you are right.  It’s a long story reaching back to my teens which will require a rather lengthy answer.

Looking back now, I realise that there has always been a strong spiritual theme in my life. My first experience was an orthodox one, attending Methodist Sunday school and accompanying my mother to weekly service at the Chapel, most of which I found utterly boring and I dreaded it.  As I hit my teens, I became frustrated by the superficiality and ignorance of Christian teachings and the total lack of any real religious teaching in schools.  There was a part of me which yearned to learn more, particularly about other world religions

The opportunity to learn more came when I became a student because this gave me access to wider range of books.  I searched and read, following a pull to “move Eastwards” and eventually came across “The Ancient Wisdom” by Annie Besant, a simple book on the essential teachings of Theosophy.  Reading it gave me the answers I had been searching for in a practical, common sense way: it was like finding water in the desert.  This was quickly followed by a reading of the Bhagavid Gita and the two together shattered my illusion that the world “out there” was true reality. I would say now that “The Ancient Wisdom” provided the occult path to spiritual understanding while the Bhagavid Gita provided the mystical path.  This deep shattering of illusion put my life on hold for about 3 days as I absorbed this new realisation. I had found what I had been searching for – the deep spiritual knowledge, both occult and mystic, provided by Theosophy.

Theosophy, for any reader who is unfamiliar with it, is the wisdom and knowledge which stands behind all the world religions (past and present); science and philosophies known to man and shows that, far from being inimical to each other, these different branches of knowledge are simply individual  routes to the same source of wisdom.

I then left the subject entirely alone for another ten years or so when I began to realise and reject the dull daily routine of work/life and the accumulation of material stuff.  I found myself asking “is that all there is?”  The answer came as an idea in my mind to return to spirituality.  So, I returned to Theosophy and joined the Theosophical Society in London which gave me access to like-minded people and the richness of the Theosophical Library.  I started to read the books by Helena Blavatsky,  which provided the foundation of Theosophical knowledge but was quickly “moved on” by events to the books of Alice Bailey.  The ideas they propounded were very challenging at first but, after a great deal of contemplation and brooding, they began to make sense.

The Theosophical Society has been invaluable in another way because  its Dhyana Centre taught me how to meditate and to understand the true purpose of meditation.

Theosophy, for me, is a spiritual compass to help me recognise what, if anything, of any new spiritual theme or idea I encounter can be accepted as truth.

(For any reader who would like to know more about Theosophy, I would direct them to The Theosophical Society in England  (www.theosophical-society.org.uk) where they can also find details of the free meditation programmes provided by the Dhyana Centre and to the Lucis Trust (www.lucistrust.org.)

Lana: How fascinating. I have known you 12 years and hadn’t heard your story. Now for question 3: Astrology may not be a central theme of your work, but it is nonetheless compelling for me that you often receive astrological information along the lines of the Esoteric Astrology of Alice Bailey. Many people find her work a difficult study. Is there any interconnection between exoteric Astrology as practised by most Western Astrologers (the old bottle) and esoteric Astrology (the new wine), or is the future of Astrology in your view entirely new?

Laura: In my understanding, there is most definitely a connection between the mundane Western astrology  and the esoteric astrological information set out in Alice Bailey’s “Esoteric Astrology” because both are elements of a Greater Astrology.

Mundane astrology relates to the personality and appeals to those who are personality-centred – both astrologers and their clients – because the astrological explanations and predictions match the personal experience. For these people, mundane astrology offers a wide field of investigation and experience.  However, as the individual evolves and start to connect to and become influenced by his soul nature, he finds that mundane astrology no longer works and that is because his soul contact is opening him up to (for him) new astrological influences which are not considered in mundane astrology.

These new influences are the increasing influence of the astrological signs (i.e. the constellations of the sign); the higher power of the planets and the subservience of the planets to the power of the signs.  Not only do the planets transmit their own energy but they also transmit the energy of the signs.  Thus, in order to understand esoteric astrology, the astrologer’s central focus of attention has to shift from the planets to the signs and to understand the transmission of energy inwardly to the Earth from the signs to the planets and also from without the signs from the Stars to the signs.  The whole pattern of astrological influences becomes not only more powerful but also expanded, more complex, fluid and synthetic.

The future of astrology will be, in my view, the expansion of mundane astrology into esoteric astrology and the combining of the two together with esoteric astrology as the dominant influence.

Lana: An excellent clarification. I need to clarify the term “mundane” for the readership. As far as I understand it, in exoteric Astrology the term “mundane” is used for the Astrology of current affairs and politics. As far as Laura uses the term from her more deeply esoteric standpoint, she is using it in the way I use the word “exoteric”. In non-astrological terms the word mundane is used to mean everyday affairs.

When I first knew you, you were working in the material world and commuting. How do you find it works now that you are a freelance Company Secretary? How do you interweave the two experiences in your life, the inner life and the more mundane CoSec work?

Laura: The interweaving of my work as a freelance Company Secretary and my inner spiritual work is not under my conscious control.  It  is, as far as I can tell, an area under the control of my soul nature and one which I follow as each step is revealed to me.

I really can not say any more than that.

Lana:  You were born in a year when Chiron was in Capricorn, in common with other teachers such as Caroline Myss who has a definite style of teaching. I wonder if you can describe the particular healing needed for this placement, and if possible also how you see your Inner Healer.

Laura: I have not found it at all easy to understand role of Chiron in my life because I have not been able to understand the common astrological description of the Chiron, the wounded healer, who had to give up his immortality to heal himself.  I have had to seek information from my guides on this subject.  So far, I have been given three ideas:

1.  In relation to the theme of “immortality. The “immortality” as it applies to humanity, is the belief in the immortality of the personality and therefore its God-like status, to which everything else must be subservient.  We eventually learn, however, that the power of the personality is limited and that in order to progress and gain the power to which we aspire, we must give up our sense of personality immortality and allow our soul nature to control and guide the personality.  It is akin to an adolescent child recognising and accepting that adults have greater wisdom and power than he and that aligning with it is to his benefit.

2.  In relation to the “wound”. There is a part of us which is highly sensitive and therefore more vulnerable to being wounded.  Because we are not aware of it, we cover it up with a psychological shield, scarring or some other form of protection which acts as a barrier between it and the world.  We have effectively walled it up and separated it off from the rest of our personality. That is the first wound. That highly sensitive part of us – indicated by the house position and sign of our natal Chiron – is a gift designed to act as a compass to keep us to our true selves.  The barrier we erect is, symbolically, the “immortality” of Chiron which has to be released in order to recognise and heal the wound.  The resources we draw upon to heal the wound (and to continue to heal the wound as we re-create it by going off-course) becomes a healing power in ourselves which we are able to share with others.

3.  The healer within us is often the most powerful aspect of our Chironic nature because it is that aspect which enables us to recognise the wound and to evoke the correct healing.

My natal Chiron, being in my first house, indicates the nature of wounds which occur when the sense of self and self expression is not able to flourish because the personality finds itself in an unsupporting environment.  The healing comes from the soul and being able to understand the soul’s perspective of the personality, which it loves unconditionally.  In the end, I think it just comes down to loving oneself as the divine loves its creation. So, the continuous development of self love, self esteem, self regard etc is extremely important and essential to healing the wound.

According to Barbara Hand Clow’s excellent book on Chiron, a Chiron in Capricorn requires the personality to recognise the importance of joy and laughter and not to take life so seriously as it is wont to do due to the influence of Saturn!  I agree with her analysis.

Lana:  Thank you for a very rich answer, full of food for thought (for another interview!) My next question, possibly the penultimate, is about suffering. From what I know of your pattern, you live out the suffering which arises from your evolution in this world, and when you have worked on it to your utmost, insights come from the Soul or the Masters which release you from that particular struggle. What determines how long the suffering continues? Is it a karmic issue?

Laura: I would like to start by putting this question into some sort of context.  Humanity, as a family, is on the 4th ray of harmony through conflict and therefore, its way of evolution is through the use of conflict.  The struggle is for the spirit or divine spark in each of us to overcome its imprisonment in the world of illusion (mental matter); glamour (emotional matter) and maya (etheric-physical matter) so that it can control rather than be controlled by the world.  In short, “to be in the world but not of the world”.  This imprisonment is the source of our suffering, whether we are conscious of it or not.

As an individual evolves to a point where he is in contact with his soul nature, the pace of evolution quickens, intensifies and expands in scope and, with it there is a growing awareness of suffering and the problem of how to respond to the suffering both within ourselves and the “world out there”. .

I recognise that my life over the past 15 years or so, ever since Pluto moved into my 12th house, has been one of intense spiritual growth.  I have always been driven by the “need to know”, to find the truth and the spiritual route is the only which has provided the answers I seek.  Thus, I accept that the present intense spiritual growth is a response from the soul to satisfy my “need to know” and, while frequently overwhelming, is ultimately very rewarding and fascinating.

As far as I can understand my own process, the soul sets the agenda and arranges for the next “crisis” to emerge in my life which I frequently sense, as feelings of aggression (Mars); being undermined in some way (Neptune), a blockage (Saturn) or breakdown (Pluto) which lead to feelings of depression, despair, hopelessness, powerlessness and an inability to see my way out.

I have to sit and wait. What I have learnt is that the planets do not cause these feelings, they reveal them and their role is to help us recognise and release the cause of these feelings which is some thought or behaviour we have created and which is not to our benefit.

I find myself in a point of tension.  The personality attempts to escape by pulling into my awareness all the thoughts, feelings and related past experiences in order to get me to take action.  I find that I can’t.  During this phase of tension and waiting, the subconscious and hidden thoughts and feelings which hold sway over me by remaining hidden are brought into the light.  Everything connected to the theme of the crisis is pulled out and collected together.  They lose power, are weakened and can be ejected from the personality by the soul as the new comes in.

At this point, revelation can come (and with it, the end of the suffering related to the crisis).  The revelation is  the new understanding or approach being given by the soul to the personality but which can only be received when the personality has let go of resistance to the new. Sometimes, that is helped by a phrase or comment given to me by my guides.

Then, there is a phase of calm when the new is integrated into the personality life.  Then, the next crisis can be set up.

Is it a karmic issue?  Not in the sense commonly understood of “suffering” because I imposed suffering on others in a past life.  But in the sense that this lifetime is about taking advantage of a “karmic opportunity” for accelerated spiritual growth.

Lana:  You take delight in encouraging others to do what they love in terms of work, and so for this last question I would like to ask how you see your future work and creative expression?

Laura: Like my Company Secretarial work, my future and/or creative expression is an area under the control of my soul nature and one which I follow as each step is revealed to me.  For the present, it appears to be a long process of (1) observation and the gathering of knowledge, rather than practice, over a wide field and (2) the integration of the mind and heart to a higher creative level.

I do receive hints from time to time as to what I will/could achieve in the future but, until and if they manifest, I would prefer to remain silent on this matter.