DICK SUTPHEN

"Maybe it's all about joy.
Maybe that's all were supposed
to be doing here and when
we learn how to do that,
we'll have learned
the wisdom of life."

DICK SUTPHEN: Oh my gosh, you’ve been digging in the archives!

Thank you! It’s good to be back.

It’s fabulous to have you here!

I didn’t know we were part of an industry. That’s an interesting term. Industry. I like that. The metaphysical industry and the hypnosis industry.

You are an incredible entrepreneur.

Thank you.

We’ve watched you with interest because you do so many diversified things and you stay clear about what you love to do.

Yes. I’m kind of lazy. I do what I like to do, really. So it’s kind of scattered, but it works OK. I have fun.

We’re interested in your new book, Soul Agreements. This is about people who have met before they have come into the physical body.

At the very least. While on the other side, before being born, they have made an agreement with other souls and they have worked out an agreement to have particular kinds of experiences. So that’s what the book is about. It’s about the idea that before we are born, we sit down and write a story of our life and now we have to live it. We’re very brave on the other side. We said, “I can be together with her again or him again and I can go through all this stuff.” And, of course, we’re here and we’ve got to go through it, everything that we set up to experience.

It’s a book that approaches the subject a little differently in that it works with past life regression, number one. My wife, Tara, who is the co-writer of this, did psychic linking with the people I was regressing. She’s also a very good astrologer, so she was able to cast their charts after we’d done the work, using both Eastern and Western astrology. As a result, we can look at the life that they had been destined to live in comparison to what they were living and it’s like hand into glove. It’s a book about destiny, about the fact that we set up our lifetime to be pretty much the way it is.

Now not everyone does it to the same degree. Some people leave a lot more free will. Other people pretty much set it up so that everything’s pinned down. But the one thing I found – and this is three year’s worth of research – everyone predestines the most important people in their lives. In other words, their parents, their kids, their lovers, their mates. This is all predestined. And I’ve already written books about this. You Were Born Again to be Together is about destiny and love relationships. Predestined Love, same thing.

When I started to have some snags in my own life, I started looking at what I had predestined here. It’s always been the number one unanswered question in my life. How much of my life is predestined? How much free will do I have? So this is a book about trying to find that answer. And instead of writing about romantic relationships like I had in the previous books, I ended up writing about extreme cases. If somebody’s born with, say, cerebral palsy, they are taking on a lifetime of an awful lot of pain, not only physical pain but the whole idea of this disability; how it’s going to impact their life. That’s a major undertaking. Why would somebody do that? Why would somebody be born to have a terrible, terrible accident where everything in their astrology chart and everything in their life seems to indicate they were born to have that experience?

So that’s what I started looking at and trying to put together. I think I found out some pretty interesting things that people are responding to. I’d rather have free will. I’d rather totally control my whole life all by myself and say that’s a result of me screwing up or me being wise, but I don’t think it really works that way. I think we have free will, but I think most of it was exercised before we were born.

Hummm. Interesting. Now there are those folks who might want to question this and ask how do you know for sure that people have gotten together and made these agreements? Is there some kind of a pattern, for instance, that seems to emerge?

I think that there’s such abundant proof, but it’s not the kind of proof that a skeptic is ever going to accept. The fact that if you cast someone’s astrology chart and it fits in exactly with the life that they’re living, that would say to me that it’s certainly worth looking at. As an example, there’s a young man named Mark who is only 24-years-old. I met him when he came to a Sedona seminar and he was in a wheelchair. His face was burned so badly it was almost inhuman. As Mark was there and we spent time together, I could just see this huge aura around this guy. It was so projecting love. He was love and, yet, he’d obviously gone through something terrible. So I asked him what happened. He said he was driving to work one morning. He was a heavy equipment construction operator. His best friend was also in the same business and was riding with him in this little Toyota pickup driving to work. They came down a really long hill, like a four-mile hill. Right at the bottom of the hill, there were 10 cars. He was the tenth car in a line, waiting to be flagged through because the county was working on the road and they were only allowing one lane of traffic to go through. He said he looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see this Pepsi Cola truck screaming down the hill. It hit the back of his truck and it exploded. His friend was killed instantly. He was tossed through the little back window, into a raging bed of fire, yet, he survived. He was crippled. His spine was destroyed. He was burned over 40 percent of his body. At the time, he’d had about 60 reconstructive surgeries and his spine was continuing to disintegrate which presented, of course, new problems. He said when they did an investigation and found that the Pepsi Cola truck was being driven during a time of strike and someone had slit the brake lines on the truck.

When Tara looked at his chart, she said, “I’ve never seen a chart like this in my life.” Mark had given me the date and time of the accident, so she had something she could now focus upon astrologically. She said every possible accident factor one could have was in play at that exact time. It was nothing but death and malevolence, pain, divorce, all of these factors. Tara said he was born to have this experience. The only positive thing in the whole chart that day was money. And of course, Pepsi being a major company, he was well taken care of financially. But his wife immediately divorced her disfigured and wheelchair-bound husband. He went into a spiral of just trying to survive initially, and, yet, came out of it. And that was a destined event, when you put all the pieces together. He’d decided to pay off something he’d done in another lifetime when he’d caused major pain to other people. He’d decided to come back and put himself in a position where he would learn about what pain is and pay off that karma, right there. One lifetime.

What we’ve found in our work, again and again, all pieces would correlate. So to me, it’s pretty much reality. It’s very real. It explains things. And if it helps someone – I’m not trying to talk anyone into this, it’s just part of my work and the conclusions I’ve come up with – if it has anxiety releasing results for the parties involved, if it helps them to better understand their life, then I see great value in it.

I would never tell anyone their life is totally predestined. Let me point that out. I really, sincerely do not believe that. I think it is different for other people. I think you destine the most important people in your life and I like to describe it by saying that what I think we do is create a condition. How we respond to that condition that we’ve created in our life, that’s what’s important.

I like the idea of Mahatma Gandhi when he talked about karma and dharma. He used the analogy of a card game. And he said your karma is the hand that you are dealt. Your dharma is how you play your hand. So to me, that’s a lot of what this book’s about. In Mark’s case, he could be bitter and hateful and so on. He’s not. How he’s playing his hand, the cards from that accident, from all I can see is very beautifully and honorably, and facing the karma that he himself set up to experience.

The card game analogy makes sense because we’re all given different opportunities.

Don’t you love that word?

Yes. We’re wondering if there’s a way that we could chart or understand what our inner relationships with other people are. Then we could see a roadblock coming up and avert it.

I think we might be able to mitigate the aspect to some degree. I don’t know that, if it’s something we set up, if we’re going to avert it or not and it has to be a very good astrologer who’s reading this kind of information. Whether or not you want to pay a really good astrologer to look at your chart day by day, hour by hour, projecting that out into the future, I have my doubts. I think most of us are going to just take it as it comes. But you could.

Everything was charted the moment you were born. That’s the road map, the story we wrote on the other side before we were born. It was set into our astrological pathway and here we are. Now we’re born. Now we’re going through all the steps. But it could have been read way back then and it wouldn’t necessarily have to say everything was right there.

Let’s say you have a little girl who is born. They look at the chart and say, “My God, when she’s 35-years-old, in May of that year, she’s going to have a divorce.” Now not necessarily so. It might show that there would be real relationship problems at that point but I think it might have a lot to do with how self-actualized she is as to whether or not this is just a little blip along the way or it was a major catastrophe. So yes, she might get divorced. Is she probably going to have some snags? Yes, I guess so. But I think she’s had 35 years to live her life and to develop a more self-aware viewpoint. I think this can work in many ways. How do you handle it? That’s going to have a lot to say about whether you’re passing the test or not.

For both of them.

Absolutely. Everyone, the children, the friends, the parents, all of it. But I think the test that’s important is how we respond. That’s what it’s all about.

Did they learn (and I’m sure to respond with neutrality in some cases would be winning the game) to respond positively?

And with humor.

Oh, yes. Humor for sure! Just so you’re not going into the basement of emotions. Just so you’re not going into anger and hostility and desire for revenge. Then you’re just going to be tested again, as far as I’m concerned.

If it’s a choice of anger or laughter, we’d choose laughter any time.

Or love or wisdom would do, too.

Yes. At least you’d be happy while you’re going through it.

Totally.

Reminds me of an old movie called Made in Heaven, with Timothy Hutton. He played a young man driving to California to become a musician. He saw a car go off the road and into water. The mom got out and he jumped in to save the kids. Of course, he died. Then it shows him in heaven. He meets a woman in heaven and they fall in love and she’s going to earth because she’s never been in a physical body. He begs with the powers to go back. They let him, and he has 30 years to find her. It was a script. It’s a fascinating movie. Beautiful and fun, because you keep seeing them just pass each other. You’re going crazy because the clock is ticking. You say this makes sense. And you wonder about the person who is writing these great movies that we click to, those of us on a spiritual path. Aren’t they really clicking into some deeper message and bringing it back to us?

I think they are. I’m with you. Richard Matheson who wrote Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come is a good friend. This is his whole life, spirituality, even though people think of him more as a writer of Twilight Zone and those types of films. But that’s where his heart is. I was just with Richard Bach, who wrote Illusions and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I was at his home and we had not seen each other for a very long time. So we visited for several days. That movie reminds me of that, because in Illusions, Donald Shimoda is talking about the idea of a film being completed. Here it is, on a big reel and it’s complete. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end. And it’s all there at this moment in time. And, yet, to view the film you’ve got to put it in a projector and we go into the theater and watch it. Pretty soon, we forget that there’s an outside world. We are totally absorbed in the movie and the movie plays out. If it’s a horror movie, you know that horrible things happen. He uses that to talk about our lives, about the fact that maybe our lives are basically a movie that is already filmed, it’s been produced, directed, acted. It’s in the can. We’re just going through it. And since we have to sit back in the theater, we forget that this is not reality. This is not what this is all about. We are just playing within the time-space continuum that we have decided to play in and we’re just doing our movie again.

We’re viewing it.

Yes. And how are we doing to react to it? We got into that a lot, because Richard’s working on a new book and it was fun.

We talked to him when he brought out his first ferret book and he was so much fun. He just loves those ferrets.

You should see his house. They sleep way upstairs where you can’t even stand up, but the ferrets have got this great room. It’s got tunnels and tubes and playgrounds and everything. They all live there. Then they get to come out. I was playing with them and having a wonderful time. He’s really into ferrets. And his ferret books are coming out soon from Hampton Roads in a single volume.

Fabulous!

All new. Nobody quite knew what to do with them, didn’t know if they were kids books or what. They’re wonderful books.

He just writes what he feels like writing and there actually are messages in them.

Oh, my God, there’s messages! Yes there are. It’s going to be interesting.

He’s one of our favorite authors. When Illusions came out, we were giving out dozens of copies.

I think everybody did. “Argue for your limitations and they shall be yours.” That’s probably my favorite line out of that book.

There are so many synchronicities in our lives. You and I just sitting here now. We sat here a few years ago talking.

I remember that well.

And there’s still a connection. There’s some kind of agreement that you and I made at some time that we were going to come together and share what we knew and spread it out there as best we could to help other folks.

Why did we do that?

I think we wanted to write a sitcom together!

Now that makes perfect sense!

I think Lucille Ball lived the first part of it. Carol Burnett took up another part. These are all my heroines.

I love this!

Who has been one of your mentors?

I had so many people that I admired and who influenced me in different ways. Probably some of the most important work would have been Jane Roberts with the Seth channeling. That just turned me upside down when I read that. But also people like Jess Stearn who became a dear friend while he was here on earth. Brad Steiger was important and, of course, Ruth Montgomery. I worked with all of them over the years, at different seminars that I’ve done and also in my earliest years. Those were the people I most admired and then came to work with or be associated with in one way or another as a result of my own research or theirs.

I never met Jane Roberts. Richard Bach had seen Jane one weekend – this is going back many years now – and he was telling me what Seth said about parallel lives which was a unique concept. So many different influences along the way. It’d be almost impossible to list them all. In one of my books, I had this full page of people who had such an impact in my life. I know I missed some.

Some of the same names were mine, also. Name a few.

Actually a lot of the real esoteric metaphysics, the early Theosophical Society stuff, Madame Blavatsky and Leadbeater, some of those great teachers. Basically that’s where the modern day, the New Age, metaphysical thinking is coming from. People don’t realize it’s not new. Blavatsky was combining the old wisdom teaching along with Buddhism and the Tao, all of this esoteric awareness and kind of repackaging it. I don’t think most people involved in this work today realize to what degree what they are studying, what they think is this new thing, goes back to Blavatsky more than anything else, even though the wisdom teachings go back forever.

Absolutely. And they all have deep, deep history to them. The fact that they’re coming back around proves that it’s wisdom that resonates within us, because it never goes out of style. It keeps returning. You see it being reborn in more modern terms, such as Jerry and Esther Hicks with the Abraham material. They bring around the same sort of information as the Seth material, but in modern verbiage so we can click with it. It’s actually up another octave. Every single thought you think is creating this very moment, right here and now.

Yes. And the modern day physicists are corroborating what Seth said way back before any of that was being investigated.

So actually we live in quite an era when a lot of this stuff is coming into the forefront. It’s exciting now, but to have been there when some of these folks were first out there, is really great. Now we’re hip, we’ve been out there long enough!

Almost. Not to my kids yet. Actually I have a daughter who is 17 and I think I am hip to her. She’s so much into these ideas that she gives Dad some credence these days. But there was a period when that wasn’t the case.

Tell me what your opinion is of the kids now, and the Indigo children.

I can go along with the Indigo, although I have a problem sometimes with labeling. I would just say they have a lot more awareness. I see people putting them into categories. If they don’t exactly fit that category when they get a little older and hit puberty, they may move from an Indigo. But I think they are born with more awareness. Something I was reading the other day had to do with the kids of today having a detachment that is almost hard to imagine, by comparison to the past. It’s really a detached attitude toward life that may be coming somewhat out of all the video games they play that are not real. I don’t know. But I see it in so many of the kids and that’s a little worrisome to me. But my God, my parents were worried to death about me the minute I started listening to Elvis Presley, so I doubt that there’s really much to worry about here.

Right. Same thing, just different musical groups.

Absolutely!

When you’re in the zone, doing your seminars, I’m sure some of it has become routine. Some of it you already know. But I’d be willing to bet, that you are coming from a place that you have no idea where it’s coming from. It’s just flowing out of you and it’s elegant.

Yes. It is coming from someplace and I don’t even recognize it. Sometimes I do think, “My God, where’s this coming from.” And I’ll say, “Keep going guys, help me out here.” I really am asking for assistance because I’ve boldly stepped in, in a past life regression or taken a chance in front of a large audience as a demonstration. And then thinking, “This may not work! Richard, what are you doing?” and usually I will feel I was supposed to go there because some amazing results come out of it.

Sometimes it is surprising to me and I’ve listened to the recordings afterwards and thought “Where did that come from!”

What do you do for fun?

Well, for the last year I have been on the road and that’s wearing out rapidly. I have many things I love to do like horseback riding though Canyon de Chelly in northern Arizona. I love things like that. I can’t wait to get off the road and go out and replicate that experience. I enjoy reading. That to me is great fun. I love to be hiking and climbing, doing things like that. So when I do the Sedona, Arizona seminars I can’t wait to release the participants so we can go out. And, there’s nothing I like better than sitting down and writing. Give me an afternoon where I can sit down and write without interruption and I probably am happier than I am at any other time.

We love your website, which is www.DickSutphen.com It always has fun stuff on it and is very chatty and real. We feel like we’re in touch with you.

Thank you!

There’s a quote in the book that is so fabulous, “When you’re willing to be afraid and act anyway, committing yourself to life, you generate aliveness and open up to the full potential of joy.” I love it! You were in the flow! You expanded further on that and it’s such a beautiful statement. I just like to be here and have a good time.

Maybe it’s all about joy. Maybe that’s all we’re supposed to be doing here and when we learn how to do that, we’ll have learned the wisdom of life.

Maybe. Seems to me.

What’s next for you?

You asked me what was important to me. One of the things I didn’t mention was yoga. That’s survival to me. I love yoga as a discipline, as a meditative experience. If I start off my day with an hour of yoga, I can take just about anything that the world cares to throws at me. I’m not challenging the world! I want that understood! You can take all the stuff if you start the day right, and yoga really does it for me.

What’s next? I’m working with a wonderful woman named Bliss Wood, who has a wonderful book out called Empowering Your Life with Yoga. She asked me to participate with her in Georgia. We will co-train a yoga retreat. It’s exciting to me. I love the idea of combining the yoga with the spiritual teachings. The Universe just tossed us together at the International New Age Trade Show, and dozens of synchronistic experiences have come out of this that say work together.

I also have about five different things I’m considering writing about. I’m just finishing up a book called Radical Relationship Repairs with a co-writer who is a professor of gender communications at Wright State University, Carol Morgan PhD. We have been working on this book for about a year and we’re close to having it done.

Writing this book as involved a lot of processing for me, going through my own relationship things, trying to figure out the how and the why. It’s been very helpful, just in creating the book. I hope it’s helpful for other people because it’s going to be quite different from any other relationship book out there.

So if I write a book a year can I come back once a year?

We’ll look forward to it! We’d like to get into the yoga experience. This is somebody for any skill level and age?

Anyone can step in and learn. My first teacher was a Hatha yoga teacher in Arizona and she taught at Sun City, a retirement community. She said she would get students who at the start could not bend over to pick up a newspaper and in a few weeks, she’d have them doing pretzel poses. You bet.

It’s very important for those of us moving along the evolutionary scale. We don’t want to atrophy!

So if you had a last pearl of wisdom, what would it be?

You know, my favorite spiritual saying is, “It is your resistance to what is that causes your suffering.” And what is, is reality. So when we resist reality, we want it to be different than it is, we’re resisting the unalterable. This is reality. So when we stop resisting the things that life tosses at us and we learn to go with the flow a little better, I think life gets a lot easier.

Love it! Thank you, Dick Sutphen! You are such a doll!

Thank you!