Welcome to Samuel's Interviews from Phoenix Rising, the quarterly newsletter from Phoenix Institute. On this page you'll find over 100 Interviews on a wide variety of searchable topics. Use the search in the sidebar to search all interviews. Have fun!

Spring 2021

After the interview on racism in the winter issue, we decided to devote this issue to some of the questions that have been sent in on that topic and a variety of others.

Ten-minute quiet time

I’m not sure what I am striving for with the ten minutes of quiet time. Am I trying to quiet my mind from thinking or following thoughts or, in addition to that, also have no images, sounds, or thoughts enter my quiet mind?

Both. The first leads to the second. You start out just trying to focus down to even one thing. “I am going to only think about this blade of grass. And I am going to be so focused on this blade of grass that the bird song and the squirrel chatter, and that little nagging voice go away.” Pretty soon you are only focused on that blade of grass.

The next step is to just focus on something you’re not looking at, maybe your breath. “I breathe in; I breath out. I breathe in; I breath out.” And when you’re able to focus fully on just that breath without all the extraneous things intruding, then just sit, close your eyes, and look at the depth of the darkness behind your eyes. Focus on the little image you’ll see.

The biggest thing to do is quiet the voice in your head, then start whittling it down to nothing. Now, you will never have absolutely nothing. As a human being, that is not possible no matter what any forty-year TM yogi will say. It’s not physically possible. At the very least you’re going to hear the blood rushing through your veins. But what you’re doing is releasing the need to be fully hooked in to your conscious expression until you can focus and quiet that—maybe not for ten minutes; maybe for only ten seconds—so that you just watch the dark and listen to your heartbeat. And if you can do ten seconds, maybe you can do fifteen.

And it’s called a lifetime practice for a reason. It starts out being an anti-anxiety activity and it ends up being a means for the Universe to more easily feed you. So go for the quiet ten minutes but do not fool yourself into thinking that you’re going to get it immediately. Do not fool yourself into thinking that it does not take practice and focus to get there.

In the ten-minute quiet time, should we feel some tingling happening in our head and down along our spine? If so, is this tingling the download happening?

It might be, but I cannot really answer that because everybody is going to be experiencing that differently. Most of these readers can’t do the ten seconds of quiet, black Sensurround nothing yet. Instead, they’re watching how the downloads affect their brain and focusing on that, and allowing the chatter to continue. So it might be, but it’s more likely your own body’s energy because you’ve never quieted it down enough to know that’s how you work.

So would that kind of thing be a distraction?

In the biggest picture, yes. But you’re at a higher level if your only distraction is that your body is tingling and you’re feeling that energy move through. That’s a lot better than what a lot of people are experiencing, so I’m very grateful to hear that the person asking the question is getting that. It might be downloads, but theoretically at your highest function you’re not feeling those because you’re matched with that frequency. So I would rather say that it is the personal energy plexus activating and shifting.

When we are not doing the ten-minute quiet time, is the energy download looking for spaces and pauses in our day to slip some downloads into us?

It’s more like the micro-plastics that are always moving through you, but some times more than others. And depending upon the nature of your energetic filter, you’re able to recognize more of it once it’s moved through you. We’re talking Source Field stuff, quantum—it’s information. Tiny particles that don’t hit you, they pass through.

This very day [of the interview], an energy shift is going on. You’re getting a lot of it, or not.

Doesn’t it depend on whether you are matching the frequency?

Right. Now there are downloads that everybody gets all of—we call them things like timeline changes, and whole Density changes.

So if the energy is like the micro-plastics that surround us all the time, and we’re getting it all the time, why do we do the ten minutes?

Because the ten minutes clears your filter that keeps the information away from you, that keeps you unable to absorb more.

The download is happening at the subconscious level, but you don’t want your conscious mind thinking “What is the download I’m getting now?”

Ideally.

Or thinking “What is the download I’m getting now? Oh, I’m getting a picture of a rat. What does a rat mean to me?” We’re setting aside the time to allow it to happen but not consciously thinking about it.

Yes. As soon as you put your conscious mind into it, you’re blocking part of it.

The question continues: “If we are doing another kind of meditation and happen to open up `non-thinking’ spaces, will a download occur?”

Yes.

Race and Racism

Virtue signaling is the name for the practice of taking a disingen–uous moral stance with the intent of enhancing one’s own image. In anti-racist work it often shows up with people focusing more on policing what is “racist” outside of themselves rather than paying attention to their own racism. How do we prevent this within our community at Phoenix Institute and in the world? Might it recreate a caste system that parallels those found in racism?

I want you to imagine that you are walking down the street with a friend and you see a terrible car crash. A car slid underneath a tractor trailer, which cut off the whole top of the car. It was terrible. Are you getting the full sense of how terrible it is?

Gruesome.

Gruesome, horrible. The sounds and the smells you never even thought about in an accident like that. You’re just walking down the street with a friend, and this horrible thing happens and you see it. What do you do? Well, probably you take out your phone and you call 911, and you go over to see if anyone made it through that. And you wait for the police and people who have better skills to arrive. And then you go home and you never think about it again. Right?

No.

No! You’re probably thinking about it on and off for the rest of your life, aren’t you? It’s going to be the main topic of conversation with everybody you talk to. “I had this incredible experience!” or “You’re not going to believe what I saw. Have you seen it on the news? I was there!” There are a thousand ways you’re going to find to get it into the conversation and discuss it to help get the weight of it off of you, because that’s what talking about it does.

Racism is a horrible, bloody, massive car wreck, and the more you learn about it the more it’s in your head, the more you see it around you, the more you want to call 911 and go over and see if anybody lived through this mess. And if you’re a Guardian, you really want to help somehow. But you’re not going to be able to help by pulling out your wrench and a bottle of motor oil and trying to fix the tractor trailer, or your hammer to try and get that car out from under it. But you’ll probably try something stupid like that just because “I’ve got to do something!”

And any BIPOC on this planet will tell you that it’s kind of sweet watching white people awakening because they’re bringing a Band-Aid to a horrible car crash, and they don’t even know how to put the Band-Aid on or where it should go. But it’s sweet, and it’s a roll-your-eyes, but it’s also very encouraging.

So you’ve got to decide how you choose to see this learning process. As “kind of sweet,” “Mistakes will happen,” “People are learning,” and “No one ever thought that they were skilled surgeons.” Or you’re going to be judging, as in “You’re doing too much.” “You’re not doing enough.” “You’re doing it wrong. You should be doing it this way.” “You should listen to this person and not that person.” And you can be as un-Guardian like as you want with that kind of judgment. But I will tell you that that’s only because you’ve not seen the real car wreck of racism; if you had, you would just be grateful for anybody trying to do anything they could.

Do I worry that Phoenix is going to fall into a caste system of “Who is trying to fight racism and who is not?” Of course I don’t. Everybody who takes part in this work is taking part within their own unique journey. Everybody is getting it at their own place in the spectrum. For you it’s a two. For someone else it’s a twenty. And I cannot say that even the BIPOCs within the group will be a one hundred. It’s an ongoing process. And if anybody thinks that this stumbling process is worth gathering in the corners to chatter about, they would be very, very wrong, because that’s not okay. It’s a judgment and not helpful to anybody.

This is a car wreck unlike any you have ever seen. Your job is to do the best you can where you are with what you have at the time. It’s not to stand on the sidelines and complain that it’s the wrong color Band-Aid.

There is a second part to that question: “What steps can we take to overcome this tendency amongst ourselves individually and collectively within the Phoenix Institute community and beyond?  Well, I think you’ve pretty much answered that.”

I will say that virtue signaling—that was the phrase that started it—is going to happen because white people are taught that that’s how you make connections. “I know about that,” or “Maybe I can help you, because I …” Both of you were taught that, yet you were taught it in very different countries.

It’s a way of finding a commonality with another person.

A Guardian’s job is to do the best you can, where you are, with what you have at the time. And if you feel that it’s someone’s ego speaking, well, that’s a core issue that’s going to leak onto other things. We’ve talked about that a lot.  But it might not be ego; it might simply be somebody who grew up in this society learning to communicate in that way, and who has done it for fifty years and is just now learning how to stop.

The best way to stop a movement is to force everybody to have to do things perfectly. If you stand on the sidelines and pick apart what is being offered, that’s the easiest way to stop people from acting, and I would rather hear somebody tell their story with virtue signaling than not have a story to tell because they’re not taking action, they’re doing no work.

You mentioned in the last newsletter that “Guardians making the change within themselves will create the second doorway.” Please explain what the first doorway was or is and how it connects to the second doorway.

Well, you wake up in the morning, and that’s the first doorway, and you get out of bed and that’s the second one. Essentially, you become aware, you awaken, you learn and then you take action. You awaken and you activate. The second doorway is to choose to act on where you are energetically and move forward with that.

The Old Testament of the Bible refers to the Jewish people being the chosen people of God. How does that correlate, if at all, to Black people being the chosen people?

One is about a religion, and the other is not using “the chosen people” in the same way. It is a reference to having different gifts or opportunities, if you will, within their physical structure. I don’t see it as the same at all. I’m not saying the religious version isn’t anything; of course if you are religious it is important to you. So in that case the answer should be more in the direction of “What color do you think those people in the Old Testament were?” I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t white. So if you want to go with the chosen people being people of color, well they were, they are. But it’s kind of like comparing apples and oranges.

DNA

The DNA of our human species has been manipulated and altered over time. Please explain the purpose and the process. Who was responsible for doing any alteration?

One answer is evolution, a natural process of change, your genetic structure, and that is true. And that’s a simple answer and a very true one. You will remember that many things affect your genetic structure. The air that you breathe, the water that you drink, the chemicals that you dumped into your body because you got angry at David—those all have an effect. Your genetic structure isn’t like a cake in which you change an ingredient and everything is different. Your DNA and RNA have thousands of ways to alter a section of one protein out of the thirty thousand proteins that function throughout your body. So genetic change is constant and really necessary.

Another way to answer the question is that human genetics has been played with multiple times on different earths, thinking that perhaps that was the way to allow the Plan to function to full fruition. On this earth, on your current timeline, there has been no genetic alteration. On your former timeline there was pre-Atlantean and Atlantean alteration. And if I say it was done by ancient ones working to help, that probably isn’t going to satisfy, but I’m not going to go any further than that.

You have said that the coronavirus is going to bring about a change in genetics.

Well, that’s not exactly what I said. But it is a transportation device to help do that, yes.

So how does that relate to the answer to the question?

You are undergoing dramatic activation and change. You are. That change was going to come about with or without COVID. COVID is handy and is speeding things up.

Does our DNA only activate with the DNA exercises you’ve given us, or is it done automatically without getting COVID-19, or are there other pathways to upgrade the DNA? Also, does the vaccine prevent the upgrade in the DNA?

“All of the above” is pretty much the answer to the first question. You are upgrading and there’s nothing you can do about it. COVID is a very handy transport system; the easiest way to alter your genetic structure is through a virus.

Now, you have multiple viruses in your body at any given time and many of them suit your body fine and are not a problem at all. However, your body doesn’t like some of them, and when it reacts with antibodies, you call it being sick.

Your genes mutate constantly. The timing of COVID was also the timing of very big earth changes, with everybody and everything being affected energetically. So you’re getting these massive energetic downloads and you’re getting this virus.

With any energetic downloads—maybe I should call them big energy blows or information flows—coming to your planet, depending upon your frequency, you are going to relate to and receive either a small amount of it or quite a large amount of it. You are the magnet, the information is the iron filings. If you are a very strong magnet you’ll get a lot of it. If you are just a little one, you’ll get a whole lot for you but not as much as the strong magnet. The more you relate to the energy in frequency, the more effect that’s going to have on the changes going on within you. A very small magnet will have very small genetic shift. It’s not as though everybody is going to have the same kind of genetic shift.

Doing the DNA exercises allows you, first, to not resist what’s coming to you, so you are better able to consciously open up to those shifts. But the exercises also make you able to control the direction that that energy is hitting. You become the chef who can get an ingredient from here and another one from there and make it into a whole cake.

So the DNA exercises help you make better use of what’s going on genetically. The virus is a means to make what’s going on happen more clearly with people who might otherwise be resistant. Everybody is getting the virus, and when I say everybody, that’s not going to be absolute one hundred percent, but everybody is going to be affected enough to have a viral push. For one person it might look like you felt really bad and you were really achy and you thought maybe you were getting the flu, but it never turned into anything and now you’re all right. For someone else it might be nothing, ever, at all. Another person might actually get sick. Those of you who felt kind of bad but weren’t too sure might have no antibodies in the tests that you get, but the virus is there. And those who had absolutely no symptoms again may have no perceivable antibodies but it’s still there. It’s not meant to be enough to make you sick, just enough to wake up some of your genetic material. And doing the exercises lets that awakened material fit in better.

Does getting the vaccine prevent the upgrade in the DNA? Does it prevent the DNA changes that the virus would normally help?

No, but I will say that they’re not great vaccines, if that matters.

Because the virus is changing so fast?

Yes. I imagine that vaccines are pretty good for the herd immunity idea. I’m just not so certain that they’re as safe as they should be for everybody to be getting it willy-nilly.

On the seventh step of the DNA exercises, do we have to visually see the person on the spiral staircase or can we just feel the energy of that person?

See it. You need to see it. It’s a visualization. Just see it.

Like a picture in your mind.

Like you picture a banana, picture yourself. You must see it.

For several years, when I merged with my Higher Self on that step, the image appeared clearly, but recently I see only a vague smear of her presence. What can I do to rectify this situation? 

You need to take a breath, reset your mind into thinking you are a changed being and what you’re going to see is a changed being. Allow that being to show up—it should still look like you.

You see, it’s in the head, not in the aura. You are visualizing. You are in charge of this. Do not let the visualization take it over. If suddenly you’re not seeing yourself, maybe it’s because you’re not keeping up with yourself and you’re still trying to be that old you, and your Higher Self is saying, “I don’t want to be that person. This is who I am now.”

Now for all of those Guardians who want to say, “That’s right! And my Higher Self was this giant pillar of Light!” No! It looks like you, because it’s using you for that connection. It’s you with all the Zoom filters on.

What does it mean if you never get any images on the steps in the second stage?

It means you’re letting it control you instead of you controlling it. There are images there, so look for them. Perhaps they are not showing up to you as you expect. So just sit with it, give it a little time, and tell the Universe that it needs to be a symbol that you can recognize.

While on the third stage of the DNA exercises, a thought about my childhood brought tears to my eyes. Why is there a lot of possible emotion involved in the third stage and why do we need to move through it?

Because it’s things that you are not working with to do the exercise. It may be things that you need to work through but not for this exercise. It can delay or distract you, so make a note that you’re going to go back to it in a meditation time. It may be good stuff.

Plants

Do different plant species each have their own group soul?

Yes they do, but there is also what I would call the greater Oversoul of the plant kingdom as a whole. That’s like asking “Do poodles have their own group soul outside of canines as a whole?” They don’t; it doesn’t work like that. There is a version of a group soul for the carnivorous plants, for the trees, and even for certain types of evergreens. But it’s not fully like a group Oversoul. It’s more of an intersection.

So the Oversoul would be the plant kingdom as a whole?

Right. What it moves into is Guardian Spirits. The different species will have Guardian Spirits that will hold the energy and keep it processing and moving from type to type.

How does the process of individuation work in the plant kingdom generally?

Plants—with the exception of Guardian energy—do not individuate in a way you would recognize at all. They always have a group soul. A plant doesn’t want to individuate.

But you said Guardian plants are different.

There is a very beautiful evergreen tree in the backyard at Phoenix, a lovely tall blue spruce. Within that area, and by that I mean for acres around it, it is the Guardian tree. Here, at this house, the Guardian tree for this area is farther out and into the park. But in this backyard there are two, among multiple other trees, that work as a part of the messenger system that connects to the Guardian tree by way of the Elementals.

So plants are an alien being for you. If you really get into plants, you recognize their individual nature and their group connection, but it’s not like animals at all. It’s not even as easy to understand as minerals.

I realize that’s not a very helpful answer, but I don’t have words for it. It’s not a hierarchy. It’s a banyan tree that has put out a multitude of roots and traveled a mile that way. It’s a very different kind of life force.

How is the plant kingdom responding to density changes that are happening as part of the Ascension process?

The earth as a whole is having quite a bit of upheaval. Everything to do with the planet, the Elemental kingdom, the fungi, the plants, the rocks, everything on your planet is undergoing a shift. As a result, you’re seeing a lot of beings within the kingdoms leaving, and some new ones evolving.

For the next couple of years you’re going to continue seeing a lot of earth change. In the very same way that your blueprint is being affected by these energy downloads, so is the planet’s. So anything that has to do with the spiritual function of a plant—or animal, or rock—is going to be in process just as it is with you.

Other questions

What are the implications of Guardians donating blood to, first, other Guardians and, second, to those who function at lower frequencies?

Well, here’s the good news: your blood does regenerate itself, and assuming that one gives oneself the hydration that is needed to help that replenishment cycle happen, I do not see why one could not go on giving blood as long as one is healthy.

The effect on anybody receiving the blood of a Guardian is only going to be temporary, and in all likelihood by the time your blood is outside of your body and mixed with the chemicals that are going to preserve it for use in someone else’s body, any energetic essence is lost. But the good news is that someone can still use your blood, assuming the blood types are compatible. There are so many reasons someone might need blood. Assuming that they are going to continue living and having a healthy circulatory process, they will benefit from it, but it’s not that their energy will be more Guardian-like because of it.

There has been increasing information emerging on the “Great Reset.” On the surface it sounds like a positive move for the world. One part of the reset I’ve read about says no one will own anything; we would rent whatever we need. And people would not work in jobs they don’t like, but would focus on work that feeds them. It’s also supposed to focus on saving the environment, eliminating racism, financial inequity, and much more. It all sounds groovy, but since it involves people who have a tendency to be greedy and power hungry, especially at the top of the food chain, my question is this: Is the Great Reset what you have been talking about in terms of coming change? If it is, what do we need to know about it for the highest good of all? [See Great Reset – Wikipedia for more information]

I really like that phrase—it’s very marketable. It’s sort of catchy. But there is no reset. Reset sounds like your computer wasn’t working right and so you turned if off and back on to sort of reset everything and it keeps going as it was. No. No. No!  We are talking paradigm shift.

Communal living is great for a lot of reasons, but not everybody would be inclined toward it. I could see many of the changes leading to more equitable and just situations. But what you’ve described is not a future that I see in any of the probability lines. Nice ideas, but maybe a little outside of human nature.

It has a very catchy title and if you keep it broad enough, you can put anything under that umbrella. But it will always, always, always be a choice for you. And if you don’t want to go in that direction, that will be okay too.

Back in the summer you said there would not be a COVID-19 vaccine that would be made available that would work. Will there ever be a vaccine that works against the COVID-19 virus, and if not, will you give specifics as to the best things we can be doing right now to protect ourselves? Some of us have no choice but to make runs for groceries, medicines, and doctor appointments.

Some people cannot help but have to do that, and that’s exactly the reason this virus is going to continue. It’s going to continue to change, and become a different virus that is not particularly affected by the vaccines you have. Eventually, it might be that the human body develops a resistance to the coronaviruses in general. Maybe. I think it’s much more likely that it will go along the lines of your flu vaccinations in which every year they hope they’ve made one that’s going to be one of the strains that show up where you are.

And it’s not that I don’t believe that your science can come up with something; it’s just that this is a brand new virus for humans, and it’s much nastier than those of you in the United States think it is. Unfortunately your past President did not help by putting the fear of all the gods into you about this, because that might have made a difference in how widely it has spread, and how deadly it has become.

What you need to do is act as though there is a pandemic going on in the world. Do the things that you need to do to avoid getting sick. If you cannot have your groceries delivered or pick them up and you actually have to go into the grocery store, wear the correct mask. I would go so far as to say put on plastic gloves for the things you touch, and don’t touch everything. Make it a game. “What can I not touch?” “Can I keep my hands in my pockets except to reach out and get what I’m looking for?” Just act like there’s a pandemic. Don’t be stupid. Do what you can to play it safe.

Luckily, any vaccine that you’re given will at least stimulate your immune system into acting.

I’m all for you taking the vaccine. I’m just not for your whole world saying, “Oh, I’ve got the vaccine so everything is back to normal.” The vaccines are just not that good, and there’s a whole lot you’re not hearing about people reacting to those vaccines. They’re not fully proven so …

Often we invoke the following: “toward the successful completion of the Plan for planet and all life force upon it.” I’m not sure how I missed it, but what is the Plan?

Ascension.

What is the experiment, really?

Ascension.

You have mentioned that we should not have our money in the stock market. What are your thoughts on employees’ retirement packages, i.e. 401(k)s and 403(b)s? If we pulled our money out of them we would be penalized over 50%. I just want to be clear about whether or not we will be losing our retirement accounts in the next six to ten years.

It would be really nice if I could give that kind of information. EarthLight would not have to think about money issues and the newsletter editors would just be rolling in dough, because I could give you all kinds of good under-the-table information.

But I can tell you this: Your country has had market losses in which whole retirement systems were lost. It happened to Stuart’s parents.

Stuart: In 2008 their retirement account went back to what it was about twenty years ago. They didn’t lose everything, but they did lose all of the gains they had made.

So this does happen. It’s not just pulling a worry out of the worry bowl: “Oh, I haven’t anything better to do. Let’s worry about this.” But I see the stock market as gambling, and I’m not a fan of gambling—too much human nature involved. There are some kinds of stocks that are safer than others.

Frank: There’s a lot of investments not in the stock market. There’s municipal bonds and mutual funds that only invest in those bonds, and well-rated bonds are about as safe as you can get without going into treasury bonds and savings accounts.

So there are options.

As a whole, your economic system is going to be on a roller coaster this year, and probably for the next three years. Banking must change in the West—Europe, America, the Western Hemisphere. The economics of everything is changing right now and that includes finance.

I’ve spent years not recommending the stock market. Some people who have stayed in have done very well, but it was by intelligently selecting where they put their money, not just letting somebody else do the figuring for them and hoping for the best. Some who stayed in the market lost pretty much everything. It’s a gamble. Shore yourself up the best you can, and as Frank just mentioned, there are ways to shift your retirement plans without being penalized for it. So look into that.

Doesn’t it also go back to your February first-Sunday teaching? How are you going to deal with a sudden change? Will it be as if it’s a disaster, or just something you deal with as best you can?

That’s right. How do you deal with these things now? You might want to start strengthening your muscles, because it’s going to be a wild ride.

You know it’s all related. It’s all about using power. Right power or wrong power. Money. Some people cannot deal with thinking about financial stuff. They can even have millions of dollars and still be very afraid. Then there are people who just kind of scrape by and are all right with that. And you’ve got to determine where you’re going to be in that spectrum. This year is a whole lot about “What do you really want?” It’s a plastic world right now—very moldable is what I mean by that—and you are going to be planting those seeds now. What kind of seeds are you going to be planting? They will probably be seeds based on what you want, but is that going to be what you want or what you think somebody wants you to want, like me, or your family?

Simplify your life. If fear owns you, come to a place where you don’t have those fears, whether that’s with a big fat bank account or not. You will always have what you need. And maybe those changes are lessons in how you help each other. For someone else it might be lessons in helping another. Or it might be lessons in finally standing alone, being self-sufficient. But you will always have what you need. You just have to make sure that what you need isn’t based on the wrong use of power, a misunderstanding of your true self.

Please explain what the space object called Oumuamua is. It’s a Hawaiian word that means “first scout from a distant place” or wanderer. The object isn’t an asteroid or comet. You hinted back around 2017 that something was likely to be seen coming from the direction of the asteroid belt that would have originated from a non-human civilization. Is this the object that you were referring to back around 2017?

That is not the object or objects I was referring to. I didn’t think I was alluding to anything. I thought I was pretty clear about it. You are going to be seeing these things.

Oumuamua is a kind of natural object that you are going to see more of. There isn’t anything that I can see on this object that speaks of any kind of visitor coming your way, because as I have said before, any civilization that can actually come visit—and there are very, very few because you have been closed off for good reason—is far beyond using some kind of clunky space ship. It just isn’t necessary. The speed of thought is far faster. The speed of your quantum self, which is translatable through time and space, is far faster. At any given time you already have the visitors, and this cometoid isn’t it.

I think it’s intriguing because it’s so difficult to see and calculate how big it is. At first scientists thought it was cigar-shaped, but now they think it’s more round. It’s very intriguing for people who are into that kind of thing, and there’s a lot of guesswork going on

And it doesn’t follow typical guidance patterns. It doesn’t seem to go with gravitational shifts.

You mean like debris?

Like most space objects, yes, I guess debris is the word—be it a slow collection of chemicals and micro-expressions and that which makes rocks and dirt happen over billions of years. I don’t see it as a receiver or a transmitter.