Her ads say “As seen on Oprah, Barbara Walters & CNN,” but don’t let the media hype steer your perception of a woman whose individual connections are at the heart of her work. While speaking to a standing-room-only crowd, Doreen can zero in on a person whose soul needs some angelic guidance or reassurance, and unexpectedly, each person in attendance receives that same angelic embrace.
A popular national speaker, Doreen returns to the Twin Cities May 4 & 7 to present two workshops. The first, from 7 to 10 p.m. Thursday, May 4, will be at the Ramada in Roseville, Minn. The second is a daylong experiential workshop from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, May 7, at the Sheraton in Midway, St. Paul. Tickets are at 1 (888) 705 1212). During her May workshop, Doreen will conduct what she calls Angel Therapy sessions, a blend of prayer and healing, that assist each participant wherever they are in life.
Because she was raised as a Christian Scientist, Doreen Virtue is well acquainted with the power of prayer and how prayer assists in the healing process. “I come from a long line of faith healers — going back to my great-grandmother and my grandmother and my mother. They were all Christian Scientists. My mother was actually a professional Christian Scientist practitioner. She healed others with prayer as I was growing up.”
Prayer is a topic Doreen Virtue is passionate about. She spoke with The EDGE by phone from her office in California.
So prayer and healing have been a part of your whole life.
Doreen Virtue: I actually was born to two people who couldn’t conceive children. It seemed like they were sterile. And so they went to a prayer group and asked the prayer group to pray for them to conceive a child, and within three weeks I was conceived. So my life began with a prayer.
When I was a girl, we didn’t have a doctor. I can count the number of times I have been to a doctor on one hand. It wasn’t until I was carrying my first son that I actually had regular doctor appointments, and Mom would heal us with prayer.
We were raised to use affirmative prayer rather than prayer of supplication, which is when you beg God and plead with God to please help. We were raised to believe that if you visualized it, it is already done and you just “know the truth.” The truth is that God created us perfect, and that is a constant. God’s perfection can’t waiver. If you just know this truth, then you bring it about, and that’s how Mom did her healings. In our social circle at church, we saw some healings ranging from scrapes and cuts all the way to cancer using this.
Did the effectiveness of the prayer relate to how firmly you believed that you were perfect and whole?
Virtue: Yes. Now, the key that I learned was that you didn’t have to believe in it more than just a second — just get one second of complete belief. The belief isn’t just intellectual, it’s when you feel it in your body and you know it with every ounce of your being. If you can know it even for just a nano-second, then it happens. You can, of course, undo it later with worry. That’s what Jesus’ whole message was: As your faith it is done unto you. It’s all about faith.
Fortunately, I’ve found you can ask God and the angels to help you have more faith if you are someone struggling and wavering in your faith. You don’t have to do that on your own. You can pray for faith.
Praying for someone else is the same as praying for yourself. You just know the truth that this person is happy and healthy and whole. Of course, everyone has his or her own free will, and if he or she chooses to die or to be sick, we run into a brick wall in our prayers. But I still think we have done others a favor by seeing the truth in them.
It’s important to watch what we think about others, as well as ourselves. If we don’t see the wholeness in others, we risk manifesting the same kind of sickness we are seeing and affirming in them. If we say, “Oh, isn’t it awful that they are broke” or “Isn’t it awful that they are broken in their body,” we risk making that a reality for ourselves. It’s essential that we guard our thoughts carefully.
When we do that, we’re acknowledging that lack of perfection as a reality.
Virtue: Exactly. Now, I was raised that we weren’t allowed to listen to or watch medical programs or commercials. As a Christian Scientist, I was legally excused from taking health courses as a child, because our belief was that if you learn about illness, then it’s in your consciousness and you’ll manifest it. It was always pointed out to us that oncologists die of cancer, even though it’s not considered to be a communicable disease. My mother actually had this happen to her. Her specialty was treating eye disorders. She was a whiz at helping people who had eye problems, and she ended up developing a very serious eye problem. She knew it was because she was thinking about it too much. To this day, if a medical commercial comes on TV or radio, I’ll turn it off, walk out of the room, or say some heavy-duty prayers to cancel it out.
During flu season, everyone on TV and radio is telling us that it’s flu season and that we’re going to get sick, so go get shots or go stock up on this medication or that one. It’s ridiculous.
Virtue: It’s a form of hypnosis, and I think some day we’ll realize what that is. Drug companies are now advertising prescription drugs, advising you to ask your doctor for this perfect drug. We’ve never seen this before. We’ve got to just really watch what’s in our environment. It does have an effect on us.
Do the angels offer guidance on how to pray effectively. Is there a wrong way or a right way to pray?
Virtue: The main message the angels are giving us these days is to be very cautious about what you think about. Our thoughts are manifesting so quickly. The angels keep giving us messages to see, such as 111, or 11:11. That’s the way they remind us to be aware. Notice what your thoughts are and ask if this is really what you want in your life? We sit here and go “Poor me, poor me, poor me,” and we hope God will have pity on our wretched soul and help us with something nice like Santa Claus. And it doesn’t work that way. When we sit there and go “Poor me, poor me,” the universe must keep giving us the “poor me” scenario that we’ve just ordered with our thoughts.
The second thing the angels say besides be careful of our thoughts and that things are manifesting so quickly is to have compassion with ourselves, as opposed to getting upset with what we have mis-manifested. We have received everything in our lives just as we’ve asked. Instead of getting angry at someone or yourself, have compassion. You have done the very best you can. Like it says in A Course in Miracles, you’ve made a mistake — and mistakes require correction, not punishment.
There seems to be a great correlation between prayer and visualization.
Virtue: Yes. To me, the term visualization is a misnomer, because if you are really serious about manifesting something, you need to use all of your senses, not just seeing it. Taste it, feel it, hear it, physically and emotionally, and go into a meditation and just be as if it was happening right now. Let’s say you want to be a very successful free-lance writer. So here’s what you imagine: See your byline in a magazine on the contents page. Hear your family saying, “Atta boy, that’s great! You deserve it!” See the checks written out to you with the name “Time Magazine” in the left-hand corner. Feel the pages of the magazine in your hand as you read your article. All the senses are engaged. In your gut, you feel how financially secure you are, how awesome it is to wake up in the morning. Make it real in the here and now, because if you see it happening in the future, it never comes….
And then, the most important thing is to be grateful that it already is. We’ve all got to lose that “won’t it be great when this or that happens.”
Act as if you have it now.
Virtue: Yes. And I would take it even a step further and say, “Feel as if you have it now.”
Is this something that you feel more and more people are grasping.
Virtue: I think so. My friend Gregg Braden, who is Mr. Geologist, is mapping the Earth’s resonance and the energy of the Earth, and he believes that this Awakening to Zero Point that is going on right now has made the earth less dense. That is why all of us are having the experience of our thoughts manifesting and becoming real quicker, and I think everyone is starting to notice this. Someone asks to meet a soul mate and, boom! Someone shows up. Someone thinks about getting a new job and, boom! He loses his current job. In the past it might have taken maybe six months before you would notice the cause and the effect. Now, even the most asleep-at-the-wheel person is saying, “Hey, that’s what I just asked for!” We would hope that people would open their arms and accept with gratitude the gifts that they have ordered instead of thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I’m not ready for this good yet” or “I don’t deserve it.”
Louise Hay has the greatest story of when she worked with a woman who was having vision trouble. Louise’s treatment worked so well that the woman was able to see without glasses. Afterwards, the woman went around saying, “Oh, my gosh, this is such a miracle, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe this has happened.” She said, “I can’t believe it!” so often that she went back to needing her glasses again.
Do you feel that the fact that more people are grasping the idea that their thoughts are so powerful is a sign that we’re all awakening that much more quickly?
Virtue: Yes. I think we’re all at different levels, but certainly when I was a child, I remember people scoffing at the idea. I remember a lot of people didn’t get that there was a correlation between their thoughts and emotions and health. That was considered ludicrous. The word stress wasn’t even in our vocabulary until about 20 to 25 years ago. Now, science absolutely shows a correlation between emotion and health, and I think that was the harbinger that opened up the door for us to see that not only do your emotions affect your health physically, but they affect everything else. I think the Celestine Prophecy took it to the next level for people who weren’t aware of this. That was a book that was a primer for many people around the globe.
So a lot of what we’re talking about in terms of awakening to the power of our thoughts ties in directly to the Great Experiment. Tell me about your collaborative decision to do this again.
Virtue: Well, what was amazing was that since we did the first Great Experiment on April 23, 1998, every year afterward the original notices that we sent out have been recirculated. People have been thinking that on every April 23 that we’re doing it again.
I do remember last year seeing it.
Virtue: Yes! And this year it was actually reprinted in the Kryon Quarterly magazine. I was at a Kryon event and people came up to me and said, “Oh, are you going to announce about the April 23 prayer event?” And I said, “What? What are you talking about?” So many people asked me that I actually called Jimmy Twyman and Gregg Braden and said, “Look, April 23 is Easter — people are asking us to pray. It’s a perfect day. Let’s do it!” So it happened synchronistically like that. Jimmy and I happen to be off that weekend, because it is Easter weekend, so we are going to meet where he lives now in Joshua Tree, Calif., near Palm Springs. Many people have signed up to come be with us. We’re going to have people from all over. It will be very exciting.
The premise of the Great Experiment is affirmative prayer, that collectively we see the world as already healed. We see our own individual world as healed. By holding that vision for 10 minutes simultaneously across the globe, it’s inevitable. It can’t not work, because we are seeing the truth and unveiling it.
The scientific data was not really released at the last Great Experiment. How is that going to be worked out this time?
Virtue: This time, Gregg Braden is working with his friends in the scientific community. Before, we were trying to work with someone that we didn’t have a personal relationship with, so it backfired, because that person didn’t like the publicity. He was overwhelmed and afraid for his job, so he decided to distance himself from us. In this case, we’re working with reliable sources. Gregg Braden is arranging all of that. We’re also doing empirical studies in which we will gather case studies from people who are sending them to us of how they felt during the experiment and then afterwards how their own world changed and in what way.
Any estimation of how many people might be participating?
Virtue: At this point, we don’t have any way of estimating. In the first Great Experiment, we had many e-mails from 80 countries that we were able to track from the website. We had the mechanism to see where people were e-mailing us from. So far, we’re getting a very similar response, a very strong response from people in America, and I can’t see why it wouldn’t replicate the first Great Experiment. What I feel now, Tim, is that even more people now are hungry for this sort of event, hungry for the experience it produces. It’s a healthy hunger. Our tastes have changed from junk food, which is worrying, to health food, which is praying in unison.
I think we’ve seen similar types of experiences from Neale Donald Walsch and Marianne Williamson, where people are gathering nationally or internationally to come together in prayer.
Virtue: Exactly, and everyone is excited about it. To me it shows that our inner health wants us to have this kind of healthy experience together. We’re ready to feel love. The angels told me that the human race was afraid of the feeling of love, because it felt unsafe, and now we’re embracing the feeling of love, and that’s such a healthy stance.
Perhaps we are getting closer to realizing how strong our connection is with each other.
Virtue: I think we are, and that’s where the magic begins, when you know there is oneness. There was a study done by the University of Chicago. It looked at all the different forms of alternative healing using prayer from all the different cultures, from the primitive cultures all the way to Western culture, to find some common denominators. The one common denominator it found was that at the moment healers transcended feelings of separation from their clients and felt like they were one with the client and one with God, that’s when the healing occurred, regardless of the belief system or dogma used.
Very exciting.
Virtue: Yes. I think we’re going to see an epidemic of happiness. We’re experiencing a new energy. As long as we don’t hang onto old, dysfunctional parts of our lives, we’re having a great time. The people who are hanging onto unhealthiness in their lives — jobs and relationships that don’t work — they’re the only ones who are miserable right now, and they’re actually extra miserable.
What are you working on now? I imagine you have about three or four books planned.
Virtue: You’re psychic! I have a new book called Angel Visions, true stories of people who have seen angels, which is due out in August. I’m just finishing up the manuscript this week. You couldn’t read the book and remain a skeptic. It contains powerful stories of people who have seen angels, people who with their eyes open have seen their deceased loved one and had conversations with them, people who have seen Jesus or Mary or a saint or Sai Baba. And it seems one story is more amazing than the next. I’m just so excited about this book.
I’m working on a book about vegetarianism and the spiritual path, and a sequel to Divine Guidance, which is called Divine Prescription. It includes transcripts of my angel readings. It also will be out in August of this year. The Angel Cards have just been totally embraced by so many people that we’re coming out with another deck of cards. No chance of boredom here!
Doreen Virtue is the author of many books, including Divine Guidance and Angel Therapy. For more information, go to www.AngelTherapy.com
