Interview with Alan Cohen
By Ron McCray

I interviewed Alan Cohen by telephone at his home on Maui on October 17, 2000. As a monthly contributor to PlanetLightworker his humor, insights, and anecdotes have inspired and amused thousands of our readers during this year. If I were asked to characterize the man from the telephone interview and having had no prior contact with him, my reply would be is that Alan Cohen is a very deeply spiritual human being who has accepted and lived into his contract for this lifetime. Thank you Alan for the interview and for all that you bring to us through your work.

Question: Alan, thanks for consenting to this interview. Let's begin with your early years. What is your background?

Alan: I was born in New Jersey. I realize now that the first third of my life was spent gathering data, the second third was spent integrating data, and the rest of my life will be using data. I pretty much plunged into the world doing all of the things that kids do. I felt pretty weird. I was overweight, Jewish, and people made fun of me. So I had a lot of experiences that a lot of kids have. When I was fourteen years old, I went to a temple to a youth meeting and a met a rabbi there who had a real relationship with God. This man inspired me, he ignited a fire in my soul, and at that age I chose to become orthodox Jewish which I practiced for seven years. That was a big turning point for me.

Question: Where did you go to college?

Alan: I went to Rutgers University and got a degree in psychology, and then I went to graduate school and got a Masters degree with a specialization in human relations and communications.

Question: How would you describe yourself in terms of what you do?

Alan: I take the insights that I've received from my own path and I apply them to universal principles that I pass on to people with a sense of inspiration and empowerment to live their own lives according to their own hearts' desires.

Question: I certainly get that from what you have written. The other quality of your work that I like very much is that you approach your writing with humor that adds a lot to the humanity of what you're saying. How did you come about seizing on injecting humor into what you write? So many people in this field do not use much in the way of humor.

Alan: Laughter is great medicine. It keeps people interested in a way that total seriousness does not. One of my great role models was Ram Dass. One of the ways that he won my heart was by taking the Spiritual path and injecting lightheartedness into it. So humor gets people's attention and keeps mine.

Question: How did you get to your profession? What launched you into it?

Alan: In graduate school I attended an encounter group which involved taking twelve people out into a cabin in the woods and doing nothing but relating to one another and communicating. That introduced me to greater honesty, being in touch with my feelings, and connecting with other people, and non-verbal communication. Suddenly I realized there was a whole world out there that I was missing out on, a world that explained the sense of emptiness that I had in my heart. In other words I knew I was missing something, but I was not quite sure what it was. As soon as I got a taste of it I knew I was on my way home. From that point on I dove onto what we now call the Spiritual path, and I studied every seminar and guru I could get my hands on. Ultimately I found my teacher within me.

Question: I can certainly relate to your experience. Was there a particular turning point or an epiphany where you found your inner teacher?

Alan: That's been more gradual over the years. I've gravitated to teachers who have empowered me rather than themselves. I've never really been attracted to cults, putting people on pedestals, or worshipping idols. I have always found teachers who reminded me that what I am looking for is not in them but in me. The best counselor, therapist, guru is the one you walk away from saying, "I knew that all of the time." It's been a gradual evolution rather than waking one morning and realizing that I got it.

Question: Please describe how you allocate your time professionally: speaking, writing, and anything else you consider to part of your profession?

Alan: I travel or teach one-third of the time by choice. When I am home I write several hours each morning when I am on a roll. Then my playtime is very important-I hike, I swim, I do yoga, I play with my friends. I have learned by trial and error over many years to have a wise balance of Spirituality, physicality, and emotional connection. It's a balancing game-finding the point of highest power.

Question: What is the funniest thing that has happened to you while engaging in a professional activity?

Alan: The funniest thing is probably the weirdest thing that turned out to funny when I consider it after the fact. On a couple of occasions when I giving large group meditations, (once there were about 600 people in the room), in the midst of the most poignant, delicate moment of silence listening to the voice of God, someone in the group let out a blood curdling, terrifying, primal scream as if some kind of demon had been possessing him and was being exorcised. Of course, it got people's attention in a big way. I did my best to tell everybody to take a deep breath and let it flow on and realize that all is well. So it certainly was not funny at the moment but to look back at the big picture, it was like a scene in a movie.

Question: What is the most poignant?

Alan: So many, so many. I remember a man coming to a seminar who was very much in pain and very uptight and very lost. We invited this man to lie on the floor and people sat around him and placed their hands on him and gave him love, looked into his eyes, and the man was reborn before our eyes. It was the most amazing thing and after about ten or fifteen minutes his face changed so dramatically you would hardly recognize that it was the same person. You could literally see about fifteen to twenty years peeling off of his history. He walked out of the room like a little child. That is one particular instance, but I've seen it many, many times in various forms. It is the healing power of true love.

Question: What is the most memorable?

Alan: We had an attorney in one of my groups, sort of a hard-boiled guy, and he was resistant to opening up, with one toe in the water. He had a young woman come up to him and interact with him. She invited him to touch her cheek, and he didn't know how to do it in a gentle way. He was very gruff. This woman faced this tough guy and very sweetly held his hand and said, "Yes that's it," and, "No, that's not," and over a period of ten or fifteen minutes she invited him to a place of great sensitivity, kindness, and caring. She basically dug a well into his soul to a place that knew how to be gentle. I wish I had a videotape of that moment. It was one of the most poignant healings that I have ever seen.

Question: Please describe your core Spiritual philosophy and beliefs.

Alan: I believe that each of us is an extension of God or Spirit. I believe that the purpose of life is celebration, aliveness, and self-expression. I believe that we are here to discover new beauties in and around us. I believe that we live in a benevolent universe. I believe that love is the greatest healer. And I believe the better that it gets, the better it gets. I believe that the more true we are to our intuition, our paths, our passions, and our visions, the happier we are and the more we serve others.

Question: Your use of gentle humor to make more "serious" points is very skillful. How did you come to develop that style?

Alan: I studied with a teacher for many years. Her name is Hilda Charlton. She was a mystic, a healer, a yogi, a psychic, a sage, and a channeler, a little bit of everything. I studied with her for fourteen years. One of the ways that she won so many people and me was by playing as she went. She would come in with these incredibly profound, deep, sometimes very challenging lessons, and she would dot the lectures with laughter and tell stories on herself. She would make fun of just about anything. That kept my attention in a way that was not threatening. She was giving us a pill but she was sugar coating it. I tried that in my own workshops, and it seemed to work very well so it's become something that works for me.

Question: Do you approach life from a humorous perspective?

Alan: I approach life from every perspective. Sometimes I am very serious, sometimes I am just pensive, sometimes I am very playful, and sometimes I am outright silly. I think that I am multidimensional. I think people are always funny or hiding or always serious and hiding. I think a healthy personality integrates humor as well as poignancy. In fact, a psychologist or psychiatrist once told me that one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is an absence of affect, an absence of humor which means that if you can't laugh at something, you are not really healed about it. To me laughter is a great sign of healing.

Question: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing humanity at the brink of the third millennium?

Alan: Our continual inclination to look for answers outside of ourselves and to busy ourselves with external activity and to seek information at the expense of inspiration. I love the Internet and am on it quite a bit. It is a great boon to humanity, but I don't believe that we are going to become more enlightened by any more information. I think we need to look within for answers. So the answer to this question is really no different than it would have been on the brink of the first or second millennium. It is all about coming home and finding the God within and really owning our power, our self-worth, and our self-esteem really, trusting who we are enough, to move from our center rather than from our fear. It is an age-old challenge, and each of us is meeting in our own way and in our own time.

Question: In your Planet Lightworker articles, you often refer to a Course in Miracles. The Course appears to have had a significant effect on your life and work. Please describe your background in the Course and what it has meant to you.

Alan: Yes, thank you, I love to talk about the Course. It has changed my life in immeasurable ways. In the late seventies, I saw an article in Psychology Today. It was the hokiest article and wasn't quite believable, but something about it said, "Get this book," and I sent away. Thirty dollars for a book at that time was a lot of money, at least for me. I opened this book when I got it and the energy, truth, clarity, and poetry jumped out at me and grabbed me, and I was utterly compelled to do this work. The Course lifted me beyond anything I had ever learned before. It spoke of a universe of grace, it spoke of forgiveness as the key to our healing, it spoke of the presence of God in every moment, all moments, and it lifted me beyond my ideas of karma, my ideas of retribution, my ideas of guilt, and limited living. As I practiced the Course, and I still do, I dislodged my mind from very painful places. I think it is a boon to humanity. I think it is very clear evidence that Spirit speaks through various channels. I am utterly grateful for the course. I recommend it to everyone.

Question: How many books have you published?

Alan: I have published fifteen.

Question: What was your first book and how did you come to write it?

Alan: The first book was The Dragon Doesn't Live Here Anymore. I always like to say that I had no intention to write, I never planned to write, I never thought about being a writer. It was nothing in my conscious mind. Then one morning I woke up and this inner voice, which did not come in words but in urgings said, "Sit down and write!" I thought, "I don't feel like writing." The voice said, "Just do it." I started jotting down some ideas, and the ideas became so interesting to me that I kept going. I started to remember things, put themes together, and received inspiration. I just got on this incredible roll, and all I did was write for three months. At the end of three months I had a book in my hand and that was the "Dragon." I was as surprised as anyone and I published myself because I wanted to express myself. I had no intention to become rich and famous or compete with anyone. The book began selling and I got invitations to speak all over the country and the world, then I felt, "My God ,I have written a book!" It kind of dropped in by surprise. To me it was a destiny kind of thing. The rest is history.

Question: So you self-published "Dragon?"

Alan: Yes I did, and I was utterly clueless about the book industry¾ which I think really helped me quite a bit. Then I remember going into bookstores and seeing books by Wayne Dyer and Alan Watts and I wondered what I was doing here. I realize that if I had done any research, that I would never have written. I just did it for fun and it worked.

Comment: A good example of ignorance is bliss.

Alan: I recommend ignorance over information most of the time.

Question: What is your favorite book that you have written?

Alan: Each one was my favorite when it came out. I find myself recommending two books more than any other. One is A Deep Breath of Life, a daily inspirational guide which a lot of people read every day and seem to like it. Another one is I Had It All The Time. It addresses the notion that indeed the answers are within us. Nobody outside of us can ever tell us more than we can tell ourselves. While we are on the subject, I am very excited about my new book which is my first novel. It is called My Father's Voice. I am very pleased to get a fiction work out there.

Question: What are the books and authors who have most influenced you?

Alan: I would say Richard Bach's books, in particular Illusions and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I used to love to watch Leo Buscaglia videos, Ram Dass was my first mentor, the teacher Hilda that I mentioned, I am a student of the Tao, the Tao Te Ching, the Course in Miracles that we mentioned, and a very dear healer from California, Patricia Sun. She is not quite well known, but she is one of the best and I studied with her for a number of years.

Question: In one sentence, what advice would you give someone who is beginning to develop consciousness around his or her own Spiritual evolution?

Alan: Practice listening to your inner voice, acting on it, and learning from the results.

Question: Hobbies? Fun stuff outside of your professional pursuits?

Alan: Nature is my church. I feel healed when I walk in the woods, swim, or walk on the beach. It seems that no matter what has happened during the course of the day or how balled up I've gotten if I am in the office, the minute that I dive in the ocean or set my foot on the sand or breath the oxygen from the rain forest, something happens that renews my soul. Outdoors is my salvation. I find God in nature. I like movies. I watch a lot of movies. I find humor, inspiration, information, challenge, and heart touching through movies. Those are my two favorite things to do.

Question: Personal information such as married or not, children, animals, etc.

Alan: I am not married; I have not been married. I have been in numerous relationships over the course of my life. They have been my great teachers. The cutting edge of my personal learning has been in the area of relationship, the area of greatest challenge, and the area of greatest reward. I think each one of us has one arena that is most highly charged for us. For some people it is money, for some people it is physical health, for some people is it work, and mine has been relationship. I think a lot of people in our culture have gone through that so that is where a lot of my work has been. I don't have any kids. My dog, Munchie, is the closest thing that I ever had to a child. He is a sweet little guy, and I have been with him almost twelve years. He has taught me the meaning of unconditional love, loyalty, playfulness, innocence, and honesty. I wrote a book that was channeled from him through me called Are You As Happy As Your Dog? So Spirit showed up in the form of Munchie as a child for me, and I am very grateful.

Question: Although your writing appears monthly in PlanetLightworker, is there any personal message or thoughts that you would like to communicate to our readers?

Alan: Passion is the key. God speaks to us through passion. Passion is Holy. Our life is not about getting it right; our life is about exploring, adventuring, risking, trying, and celebrating. We are here to dive into life, not run away from it. God shows up through people, through business, through sex, through nature, through friends. It's all God; it's all Spirit. Let's enjoy the adventure.

Comment: Alan, thank you so much for taking the time to share your life and understandings with our readers.

Ron McCray or Venare (sacred name) blends traditional Inca shamanism and spiritual psychology to awaken people to their own Divinity and to connect them with that for which they yearn. He conducts life mastery coaching and seminars, writes books and articles, and performs healing ceremonies. He is formally trained in spiritual psychology and is an initiated shaman in the Inca tradition. His work revolves around the model that knowledge leads to experience which leads to understanding which leads to transformation. A former executive, his life was dramatically transformed from management to practicing NeoShamanism. For further information please visit his website or send him an e-mail.