Author Interview: CG Walters

A mystical journey through different dimensions, it was my recent pleasure to review a book titled, “Sacred Vow” by CG Walters. I felt drawn to find out more about the author. What follows is a brief biography and then my conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

“I was born and raised on a farm in the middle of NC. While I have always enjoyed stories and been drawn to the mystical, I spent a lot of years without managing the focus to bring the two interests together in any meaningful way. So what happened? Well . . . sooner or later the Powers That Be call a person to stand for the reason they came.

“Personal lore is a dubious drink, for the flavor changes each time you bring it to your lips. Given enough aging--from my own experience--the product is more fiction than fact--but what fact is not ripe for becoming fiction?--I find that if I scrutinize any moment's ramble of my past, the story often breaks down into a mix of dreams I've had, past conversation, and maybe something I read or heard. A person might say that something such as daydream is not real, and certainly not biographical. I would have to disagree. How can one come to an understanding of the tangible without the ethereal?--Personal myth.

“In dream, I found myself looking next door, up at the 2nd story sleeping porch of an older home on a tree-lined Southern street. There I saw a circle of nine basinets. In each basinet rested a white swan, head tucked down. After taking a moment to consider my location and situation, I returned my attention to the porch to find the swans had become nine brightly dressed old women wearing wide-brimmed Sunday sun hats (my muses, of course), standing side by side, smiling down on me and gaily talking among themselves.

“Dream is fever to the conscious mind, inducing illusion. Illusion? Or, enlightenment? They are one, except by perspective.”

Heather: “‘Sacred Vow’ is about parallel realities coming together to heal a rift in the Collective Consciousness.” But it is also about soulmates, meditation, astral projection, and living life, is it not?

CG: It is all those things, Heather. Ian and Katerina, the main characters are soulmates, but unaware of each other as the story begins—because they live in different dimensions, parallel universes, and their love has not yet manifested in either of their primary worlds.

Ian, who lives in our world, has long followed his intuition as a guide in his life but has never taken time to really understand why it leads him where it does. He is also a long time meditator and has come to realize many ways to find his center, that internal place of his spiritual sanctuary. In this place where “the mind does not know that it cannot not know,” he follows his heart connection into another world to this woman who he has never met but is so instantly familiar.

Heather: The book is fiction, but do you believe these things to be possibilities?

CG: What we see in Sacred Vow is a truth to me. My writings have almost always presented themselves as fiction. I do not see fiction as non-truth, but rather as something more like an extended mantra…a means to comfortably invite the reader (or writer) into opening up and allowing their personal truth to present itself through the story—a living, ever-progressing truth, perfectly fitted to the need of the reader at that time. This is the nature of a myth or a spirit story.

Heather: Do you feel that anyone could train themselves to travel in soul form or do you believe it takes a “sisterhood” and sacred vow to make it possible?

CG: As we believe, so it becomes. Each person’s need is personal and whatever that need, it is perfect. If one feels best pursuing the path in the structure of an order, there is a reason and it should be listened to. I tend to do best most often with a more personally customized path. The path will open to you whatever way you come to it, as long as you come in the manner that is true to yourself and to your request to enter the path.

On the how—focusing mostly on the ‘train yourself’ method since I imagine that I am more familiar with this—there have always been many methods to assist in such travel. I think “travel beyond the generally accepted confines of this reality” is one of those things that we do not so much need to “learn” something new. To make it possible, we need to release the learning that we have already accepted—the learning that has told us that we cannot travel this way, that we alone occupy this space that we imagine our physical world to inhabit.

We are interconnected and interact with many beings of many worlds, but our conscious minds most often filter the experience out because our learning has defined what we perceive as “noise.” We have wrongly learned that “real” experience should present itself in only certain ways.

The best training I know for expanding the possibilities of our experience is spending more time at our “center.” This can come from any activity that makes your more connected with your higher self.

Heather: Was your first goal, in writing this book, to write a work of fiction, or did you have a higher purpose?

CG: For over 20 years I have written as a spiritual practice. Whenever it seemed I could not or would not learn my next lesson otherwise, it would come to me as a story. All I had to do was follow along with an open mind, heart and spirit…like remembering, actually ‘living’ the story. For all that time, I learned my lesson and then I hid the resulting story away. I must admit that I was afraid to bring the works out, but knew that a time would come when I would be expected to follow through with what should come after the writing.

One of my lessons, an unpublished work called “Strike a Chord of Silence,” included a little instruction: “Sometimes the truth comes before the strength to live it.”

I have known all along that at about this time in my life I would have to bring my writing out. In fact, I was warming up to the task with some short stories when “Sacred Vow” first introduced itself to me. I was surprised that this new work would force its way out first, but have come to realize that this sequence is necessary because our own world is in much the same crisis as that of Ian’s and Katerina’s world—a rift in the Collective Consciousness. People are dissociating one from another, from the world they live in, from other life forms, and from the impact of their very thoughts on reality.

Heather: I love your example of the teacher becoming the student and the student becoming the teacher. Have you personally undergone this change and been able to recognize it?

CG: Yes I have, Heather. I have always sought a traditional teacher to provide me with truth, teach me knowledge—that rarefied being, flawless and wise. Many times those efforts have brought me back to the realization that in all instruction—especially subtle mysteries like wisdom and the spirit—the student/teacher relationship is not linear, but more amorphous. One moment you are comfortable in the role of a student and then you are scared to death to realize that the roles have reversed, and then back to being student, and then reversed again.

What I have found is that in such things, a true teacher does not impart wisdom or learning, but draws forth the student’s own wisdom. The act of who is drawing forth, and not any defined role, shows us who is teacher and who is student at that moment.

Heather: What was your most enjoyable part of the writing process? Outlining, conceptualizing, research, actually writing?

CG: As my muses have always been kind to me, Heather, I would say that actually rough drafting a story is my favorite. When it is time for me to write, I am drawn to spiritual consideration—an opening image of reality that does not match what I have assumed before.

I sit in my little 3 foot by 5 foot room and I relax, much like meditation, definitely coming to my spiritual center. At some point, if I am lucky, I get to that place where my conscious mind no longer knows that it cannot know the magic that unfolds before it…so mind, heart and spirit follow.

“Sacred Vow” was rough drafted in two months. Three weeks of that two months was spent writing 10-12 hrs a day, seven days a week. It was like a very intense, deep meditation. For the impact on my body, mind, and spirit—I was living that story. Whenever I would come into the house, my wife said I radiated with a glow.

Heather: Will we be seeing more works of fiction from you?

CG: There are at least three thematic sequels, including the one I was writing when “Sacred Vow” decided it should come first. Each of these books focus on one facet of the multidimensional nature of our loves, our relationships. There are another half a dozen other books around the house in various states of development, and the endless scraps of base outlines starting with “Book Idea: Consider this.” These don’t even take into consideration whatever lessons along the way that my muses may decide it is time for.

Thanks CG! It is a true pleasure to know you.

Interested readers can read the first three chapters of “Sacred Vow” online at http://sacredvow.dragonsbeard.com or they can get a free PDF of the three chapters by sending a request to kathmandau at dragonsbeard.com

They can also keep up with CG’s spiritual musings until the next book, in his blog called “Into the Mist” at www.cgwalters.com