How did you become an author? What impulses did you follow?
Regina: I became an author by expressing a wish. Some time in my early adult life I considered that writing a book would be an interesting thing to do. So I made of sort of “prayer-wish” with no idea how that would happen. Within a few months of that wish, I met a prominent doctor who was looking for a ghost writer for a book on holistic health. Since I was teaching a course in this subject at a local college, he invited me to try out by doing some work for him. I did. He liked my work. Soon, we were co-authors. That was in 1978 and our book was published in 1980. From there on, I could call myself “a writer.” The impulses for my writing came from being a teacher. I had taught preschool, elementary school, high school, and at the university level. I knew how to simplify material and make lots of stories to keep my students interested. For me, it was a natural transition from teaching about something to writing about it. I still love this type of work.
Do your numerous books, which of course have been published primarily in English, have a common thread?
Regina: The common thread began with self-development – the role of the mind in health, both physical and emotional was such an important and “new“ topic in the 1980s. Once I met my Guru Lee, that thread continued to include spiritual development. My writing became the practice, the work, Lee gave me, and my books were suggested by and guided under his direction.
Has your interest in writing changed over the years? Have the topics you write about changed or focused?
Regina: My interest in writing continues with even greater passion, although it has changed primarily in my commitment to the legacy I want to leave in the name of my Guru. I just finished compiling a book of “lilas” or teaching stories of encounters, as remembered by students and friends, with Lee over many years. I hope there will be more books like this. My interest has also grown in my desire to work with other writers, or would-be writers, to help them break out of the mindset that holds them back from more lively expression. I’m particularly interested in coaching people in the writing of their memoirs, especially memoirs of their spiritual journey. Whether these books are ever formally published is not the important point. The value of recapitulating one’s life within the context of gratitude and awe…this excites me.
Please talk briefly about the two books “Woman Awake”, published in German by our publisher advaitaMedia in two volumes, and about “Praying Dangerously”. What can you tell our readers about these books – just from this moment?
Regina: I find that the Woman Awake becomes more relevant as time goes on; particularly as we open to the necessity for the Divine Feminine to be honored and expressed in our lives and in our spiritual communities, which are so often dominated by the rational, the systematic, and the hierarchical. Men and women both need to awaken the Feminine, and all need to recognize the divinity they embody. Since stories are one of the greatest means of instruction, and since the lives of so many great women of spirit were never shared with us in our religious upbringing, I am happy that I’ve had the opportunity and ability to tell stories and to introduce readers to these great Feminine-inspired lives.
Praying Dangerously is still my best-selling book. The fact that every religious tradition utilizes prayer in some form, whether in liturgy and ritual, or as a prelude to contemplative practice, or as mantra and invocation, makes it accessible to so many people. The “science” of prayer remains a mystery, and yet we humans do it naturally if only to gaze at the night sky. Prayer puts us in right relationship with what is within, around and above us in wisdom, power and grace. Prayer and silence and stillness are deeply connected, and the exploration into God is a never-ending wonder.
Your language is very accessible and at the same time you express pearls of deep wisdom with radical openness. How did you develop such a gift?
Regina: Thank you for the compliment. The journey to more “radical openness” is a very long one. I have had teachers, and my Guru Lee, who have encouraged this, and challenged me with it. When I began, I didn’t realize how much the writer would “burn,” in the sense that it is against one’s integrity to write something that one hasn’t lived. At the same time, Lee told me that I’d be “writing myself into the future” with his help. That by exploring something that I didn’t fully comprehend I was paving a way to a fuller understanding.
Whatever gift for expressing “pearls of wisdom” are the result of Grace, and good listening skills, as I have gained so much from paying attention to the wisdom of others. The fact that I read widely and constantly has been an irreplaceable help for me as a writer. When I read, I am always asking myself, “How did this author do that?” I learn so much from them.
You have been giving seminairs for many years in which you instruct people to write themselves and find their linguistic expression. How does this relate to your writing work?
Regina: I want the people in my spiritual community, and others who have walked a Path, to write their stories as inspiration to others. Some of the greatest spiritual books I’ve read have been biographies or memoirs of students of masters or saints; or stories of the struggles that one endures in working with a teacher. Some of these books are written with great style, others are simple and even naïve. Still, when such stories are told, they often carry the mood of devotion, or suffering, or ecstasy…it doesn’t matter…but the more truthful, the better. So, in encouraging others, I am further teaching myself, which will hopefully pay off if and when my next books are written.
Where do you get inspiration for new books and your writing?
Regina: Inspiration is everywhere, if my eyes and ears and heart are open. So, I get new ideas all the time. Sometimes I read a book by another writer and I see that I want to do the same thing….and better! Sometimes I recognize a need that is expressed by others…like the book I wrote about women and self-hatred. When the ideas come I generally let them simmer, and wait for a few “signs” to indicate when the time is right to start exploring them. My experience in nature, and the events in my life also invite me to write…like a recent trip I made to the Border Wall with Mexico in southern Arizona. Such suffering, such greatness by people who have dedicated themselves to others. I was inspired to write.
Would you like to share something about the book you are currently writing?
Regina: I now want to write, or rather complete, the memoir of my life with my Guru, which I hope will be a testimony to what I have been given. My love for retreat practice is also calling me to write about that, and hopefully there will be another book of essays about the many facets of my Guru’s work, collected from students and friends. God willing I live long enough to continue this work!
