Volume 1, No 11Volume 1, No 11
James Twyman: Becoming an Emissary of Light
by Billii Roberti
In the past few years, the worldwide prayer vigil, or meditation, has become a new global phenomenon and a permanent Internet presence. What may have been the first of these occurred on January 23, 1997, when millions of individuals and thousands of groups from around the world participated to celebrate the dawning of the Aquarian Age.
Since then, there have been a growing number of global prayer events, many of which were sponsored by the trio of Gregg Braden, Doreen Virtue, and James Twyman.
The Spirit of Ma'at recently interviewed one of this trio - James Twyman - the Peace Troubadour who travels around the world singing songs and prayers of peace.
Q: I understand this path you're on started when you met the Emissaries of Light in Bosnia.
James Twyman: In 1995, when I really first began this journey as the Peace Troubadour, I was invited to Croatia and Bosnia during the war there. It was the first time I'd actually been invited to a country at war to perform the Peace Concert. While I was there, I heard rumors about a community - a mystical group - that was said to be in the mountains somewhere along the border of Croatia and Bosnia. No one really even knew if they existed!
It turned out that I had actually been invited there by this group. That was the reason I was there, to come to their community, nestled in the mountains. They had a message they wanted to give the whole world.
This experience was phenomenal. It's being made into a movie, and all sorts of fun things.
Ultimately, the message they gave me, and wanted everyone to hear, is the essence of simplicity and yet, I think, one of the most important messages we can hear today. The message is simply this: ''YOU'RE READY.''
Nothing can occur until we realize we're ready for it to occur. We have to affirm our readiness; we have to say Yes to this before it can take root within us. The Emissaries knew that the most important trigger point for us now was simply to affirm our readiness, to know that this is happening. Because we've come to the point, both individually and collectively, where we can support the movement itself.
Aside from all the adventure, and the story itself, this, ultimately, was the essence of the Emissary message.
Q: What do you think this shift is that's coming?
Twyman: Ultimately, I think we've been living, especially for the last two thousand years, within a very masculine energy of conflict and competition. Most of the ancient cultures have pointed to this specific time we're living in now as the time of the Great Shift, saying that we will be moving now into the time of the Divine Feminine, or the Energy of Compassion.
So violent tendencies are showing themselves in release. I think, more and more, we're moving into this new time that the Ancients foresaw, where we will focus much more on the way that we're the same, rather than the ways in which we're different from one another.
Q: Are you associated with a group in the U. S. called the Emissaries of Divine Light?
Twyman: Yes and no. When I wrote Emissary of Light, I knew nothing of the Emissaries of Divine Light. But after I wrote it, a friend in Boston told me about this group, and that they had a community in New Hampshire. I went to visit them and actually moved in with them for a while, and I have since become very associated with the Emissaries of Divine Light. I love the work they're doing, and I think that we do a lot of wonderful things together.
However, there is no direct connection between the Emissaries that I encountered in the mountains of Bosnia and the Emissaries of Divine Light in New Hampshire.
Q: How did you get involved in global meditation?
Twyman: The first time I focused a worldwide peace meditation was when I was invited by Saddam Hussein to Iraq in February 1998. I had never been part of a global meditation before. Yet we sent out an e-mail that was passed all around the world, and millions of people participated. At the same time, I was performing the Peace Concert at the National Theater in Baghdad. We realized in that moment that people were looking for reasons to get together and pray in this way.
At that time, there didn't seem to be any possibility of our avoiding conflict. Saddam Hussein had dug himself in, he did not seem to be interested in complying with United Nations sanctions. And the U. S. and Britain were almost biting at the bit in order to begin bombing. All indications were that this was going to happen, and that I would probably be there when it did happen. And yet, when the vigil took place - when millions of people stopped to pray for peace for Iraq - we actually felt the shift; we felt something taking place. All I can say was that three days later, against everyone's expectation, Saddam Hussein signed the peace agreement and, at least at that time, the war did not occur.
A week later I was invited by some officials in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to do the same thing there, during the same time that the peace talks were taking place. This was at a time when there were splinter groups trying to break up the peace talks, because they did not want the IRA to turn over their weapons or to have peace in general. So there were bombs going off all over Northern Ireland, and things did not look good at all.
And yet, once again, when people focused their prayers of peace on Northern Ireland, we felt something shift. It was a shift not only in consciousness, but also in policy. For once again, three days later, against everyone's expectation, the breakthrough occurred that allowed the Protestant and Catholic representatives to sign the Peace Accord - about a month ahead of schedule. They didn't even think it was going to happen, let alone that it would happen ahead of schedule.
But we knew that something was happening. Each time we have focused in this way, miracles have happened.
It was because of those two events that Gregg Braden, Doreen Virtue, and I got together for the April 23, 1998, Great Experiment, in which, they say, between five and ten million participated in at least 80 countries.
I was at the United Nations at that time preparing to give a talk to about forty ambassadors. Right before the ambassadors arrived, right before the Great Experiment took place, a woman stepped into the center of the circle and said something I will never forget. She said:
Four years, four months, four weeks and four days ago, a group of Native American elders came to the United Nations to give their vision of the New World. One of the things these elders said was that four years, four months, four weeks and four days from now [which was that very day] something would occur in this building that would forever shift the consciousness of humanity.
This was the first time that any of us had heard this prophecy. Yet we knew, just from the feeling and momentum, that they had foreseen the power of this prayer, and how it would begin to shift the tide and change the momentum to create this New World of compassion, moving us further and further away from the competition that's almost destroyed us.
I think what happened, especially after the Great Experiment - because it received so much attention - is that people began to realize, just as we were realizing, that all people need is an excuse to come together and pray in this way. So more and more of these vigils followed, and I can't even keep track of them anymore, there are so many of them. From small groups to very, very large groups, people are realizing the power of their joined intention and their joined energy. They are using this to speed up this evolutionary track that we seem to be on, creating this New World of compassion faster and faster, in ways that we didn't think was possible five years ago.
Q: Can you tell our readers some of your stories about experiencing shifts, or having shifts reported to you, that coincided with your visit.
Twyman: Perhaps my favorite one, and perhaps the most dramatic one, did not actually occur when I was in another country but at a conference in Florida, in November 1998. We were once again on the verge of war with Iraq. Gregg Braden, Doreen Virtue, and I were at a conference together. We sent out an e-mail that was passed around the world asking people - at a certain time, when we would be together at this conference - to be focusing their prayers of peace for the Iraqi people and their situation. Of course people responded from all over the world.
We did not find this out until the next morning, but apparently at the same time that the prayer vigil was going on, President Clinton ordered the bombing to begin. The planes were actually in the air waiting for the final word to begin launching their weapons. And yet while the prayer vigil was going on, for some reason President Clinton did not give that order. In fact, twice that night he gave stand-down orders and called the planes back to their ships. It was a big mystery as to why that happened.
To me, it was just another sign of this wave of prayer and peace washing through violent intent in a way that does not support its movement. So when millions of people do focus prayers as we did on that night, bombs cannot fall, the war cannot take root, and the hatred just dissolves. I think we proved something that night.
Now, if that had happened only once, we could call it coincidence. But I've seen it happen time and time again. So it just proves to me, as I've always believed, that prayer is not only a powerful force, but it is the most powerful force in the universe.
Q: Yes! Though we did eventually start bombing, didn't we?
Twyman: Yes, so once again, we're not attached to the results.
Q: It's almost like we're flexing our muscles and finding out what global meditation can do.
Twyman: I think that this is what our times are all about. I think maybe as more and more of us realize this and see these events take place, this movement will continue to the point where we will be doing this all the time. Wouldn't that be wonderful?
I think we're gaining a momentum right now, en masse, whether we're engaged in a prayer vigil at a particular time or not. Every time we gather together and pray or meditate, especially within this ancient modality that Gregg Braden talks about all the time, the feeling-based modality [see Gregg Braden interview in our August issue], I think as a whole we move closer and closer to the point where this feeling, this modality, is just occurring all the time. It's all momentum, and each time we pray or meditate together the momentum builds. We see more conclusive evidence that we are shifting, individually and collectively, and that even with the violence that continues around the world there also are more and more instances of compassion, of peace, and of people stretching beyond their normal boundaries to become emissaries of Light.
Q: My sense of this is that every time we pray or meditate we're sort of taking off a certain amount of the violent charge on this planet, neutralizing it. So that eventually the level of global violent energy will go down and there will come a point when there are very few people on the planet who have a desire to make war.
Twyman: That's true in some ways and not true in other ways. First of all, we can look at the world and say things are more violent than they've ever been before, and we would be able to gather plenty of evidence to prove that. There's more violence, there's more drug abuse, there's more of all of that.
On the other hand, we could also look out and say things are better than they've ever been before, and find evidence for that. Both seem to be true at the same time. I think this is simply how it works in a time of great shift; you have one side pulling one way and the other side pulling the other way.
When I was with the Emissaries in Croatia and Bosnia, they said that the tension of a rubber band is greatest just before it snaps. So with these two modalities, right now they're stretching us. The tension that we feel is getting greater and greater until, ultimately, this system of duality will not be able to support itself anymore. And hopefully, then, it will snap.
I hesitate to say that things are getting better because, though that's true, things are also getting worse. Things are simply as they are. To me, it's not a question of better or worse, just this is the way it is. This is the way it is meant to be at the moment. Just to sit at that middle place and sit in the eye of that hurricane -
Q: ... in observational mode?
Twyman: Exactly, and not to have a charge either way.
Q: You seem to use the word prayer interchangeably with meditation. Do you see a difference between them?
Twyman: No, to me they are the same thing. There are so many different ways of praying, so many different ways of meditating. Both are about focusing within and committing to communion with that spirit of truth within all of us. To me they are just words. It's the universal experience we're looking for.
Q: And meditation/prayer is the greatest tool of transformation.
Twyman: We have always thought that prayer was a powerful force, but I've come to realize now that prayer is the most powerful force in the whole universe. Every single thing that we experience came from our thoughts. And our thoughts, when combined with our emotions, are prayers. Every thought that we have is creative; it has an impact on our consciousness in the world. Therefore, when we focus our thoughts as prayer, using the energy of our emotions and our mind, we create the world that we truly want. That is how creation occurs.
Q: And when we do it simultaneously, then it really multiplies.
Twyman: Exactly.
Q: I understand you've formed something called ''The Beloved Community.'' Can you tell our readers about that?
Twyman: As the prayer vigils began to gain more and more momentum, we realized that people were just looking for excuses to come together and to pray. When I wrote the book The Secret of the Beloved Disciple, we realized that there were a lot of people out there who recognized that this was the dawn of the feminine energy of compassion, the Divine Feminine Energy, and wanted to focus through that filter.
So about two years ago we started what we call the Beloved Community, which is really just a network of about 500 people all over the world who are committed to this vision of the Divine Feminine. It's an intentional community, based only in cyberspace.
Every week we send out lessons on continuing the momentum of this shift, and we have chat rooms, and we have live classes every week. And we get together for retreats, mainly in Joshua Tree, California. It's just been a wonderful way of creating a family around this momentum.
There's a lot of support, actually, just as in any family. We need to know there are people who are walking this path with us. With the Beloved Community, even though for the most part we're meeting through our computers, we can still feel the energy of the other family members when we get together for chat rooms on Wednesday night. There may be fifty or more people in a class. Even though we're all sitting in front of our computer screens in different parts of the world, we can still feel the energy of the other people who are with us there.
For us, the Beloved Community has really been centered on the community that started two thousand years ago through John the Apostle. He was known as the Beloved Disciple, and he started what was then referred to as the ''Community of the Beloved Disciple.'' The Emissaries of Light that I encountered in Bosnia were an extension of that community. And so now the Beloved Community that we've created here is an extension of that.
It's all part of the same lineage. Not that the lineage is ultimately important right now, because I think that the most important lineage that we're all part of at the moment is the lineage of NOW. The lineage of the present moment, of being attentive to what is happening within us and all around us. Of course, we draw inspiration from the ancient wisdom of many cultures. And yet it all needs to be applied to this very moment, to this shift that is taking place within us. So I think that this is really what the Beloved Community is about, giving people an opportunity and a reason to come together to focus on their own transformation - but in a way that has global impact, as well.
Q: Can you tell our readers about the Cloth of Many Colors.
Twyman: I had had a vision when I was in Kosovo, during the war there, where I saw a quilt that was about a mile long being wrapped around the UN building. The quilt was made up of millions of small swatches of cloth that people all over the world had prayed with and felt the energies of peace with. This quilt would be like a living, vibrating prayer of peace.
I began talking about it, just at concerts and workshops. We had no money to promote it or advertise it, but word began to spread, and before we knew it, we were receiving tens of thousands of letters in the mail, all with a piece of cloth in them!
We got people to begin sewing them together into squares. And little by little, the quilt grew. First it was a quarter of a mile long, and then a half mile, and then - by the time the ceremony at the United Nations took place on the 19th of September 2000 - it was almost a mile long. Along with hundreds of children, we presented it to dignitaries at the UN. It was truly an amazing experience. But even more amazing was the next day.
The next day, along with members of Congress, we were invited to wrap the Cloth of Many Colors at the base of the U. S. Capitol building in Washington, and to sing the peace prayers there. And that was wonderful. But even that wasn't as wonderful as two days later, when we were actually invited to bring a section of the Cloth of Many Colors into the Pentagon itself, and to pray with it there!
The Cloth of Many Colors continues to be a sign of the willingness of people to be part of this new shift and also the willingness of these institutions to take part. The fact that we could bring this into the United Nations, the U. S. Capitol, and the Pentagon is like a coup, and of course since then I've brought it to Jerusalem, South Africa, and all over the U.S.
Q: A ''Peace Coup!''
Twyman: Yeah, a ''Peace Coup,'' kind of, yeah.
Q: It's like you captured them in this ''energy of peace.''
Twyman: Yeah, pretty amazing.
Q: What is this new venture, the One Million Prayers?
Twyman: Well, about six months ago I was invited back to Israel at the same time the fighting broke out again between the Palestinians and the Israelis. While I was there, Yasser Arafat made a bit of an off-hand remark saying that it would take a million strong prayers to bring peace to the Middle East. I don't even know if he meant what he said or even understood what he said, but I took it very literally and decided that we would at least try to give him those million prayers.
So, through my website emissaryoflight.com, we created a space for people to write a one-line prayer, and each prayer was numbered. People began to respond in really very incredible ways. And although we have not yet reached a million prayers, we're at over a quarter of a million right now. And a quarter of a million prayers is a lot of prayers! The original intention, when we got to a million prayers, was to print them out and plop them down on the desks of Yasser Arafat and of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon.
The fact that we have not met that goal is by no means a sign that we did not succeed in what we were trying to do. These are not the sorts of things that you can judge in that way. For example, just because we had a prayer vigil and the fighting continued does not mean that the prayer vigil was not a success. It's not about the goal; it's about the activity itself, just bringing the people together to pray, whether it be the Million Prayer March or a prayer vigil for a particular place. In and of itself, it is a major movement.
We can't be attached to the result of our prayers, because that's one of the surest ways to stall the energy of the prayers. We pray because it's what we do, we do this because of who we are. Whatever happens next is not up to us. The energy of the prayers knows what to do; it knows where to go. It is ours but to be the instrument of that energy and to expand and channel that energy. But we can't get caught up in the game of ''Well, they're still fighting in Israel, therefore the prayer vigil didn't work.'' Of course the prayer vigil worked, it did exactly what it was supposed to do, and continues to.
It's not mine to judge what that should look like. I don't have the answer, and it's not mine to have the answer. As far as I'm concerned, our only real purpose right now is to use our own talents and our own natural wisdom to be instruments of peace, to be the vehicles through which the Peace of the Divine is extended to all beings everywhere. Where we are instruments, we need to be passive in the role; in other words, we don't attach our own ego to the results.
What tends to happen sometimes is that if we do have a major miracle around a prayer vigil, then we begin to take responsibility for it, thinking, ''Oh, look at the power of our prayer, look at what we did.'' And then, of course, next time nothing happens. It is so important for us to realize that the extension of the Divine Light, in and of itself - not the outcome - is the goal.
Q: Do you have any clues as to where you go from here?
Twyman: No clue at all. My goal is simply to be an instrument of peace. And an instrument of peace does not act on its own; it allows the Spirit to act through it. My goal is simply to be the vehicle through which Divine Light can extend itself. These events sort of happen on their own, you really can't plan them very well.
With the Cloth of Many Colors, for example, the idea was there, the dream was there, but we didn't have the ability to do it, so we just put it out there and the people who could help stepped forward. And it happened on its own. With a great deal of work, of course. Vice versa, you can come up with the greatest idea, but if it's not moved by Spirit you can do all you want and it's just not going to happen. Right now, it's just a matter of responding to the Spirit in the moment and allowing these things to occur through us, rather than by us.
Q: It's amazing that I hear so much and yet I miss out on so much. If only one person out of ten who meditates participates in a given event, and each time it's another one of the ten people, each of us knows only about a tenth of what's going on out there. And that's enough.
Twyman: It's true. It's about focusing on what we can do and not feeling like we have to be a part of every single thing that's going on out there, because we'll always be led to the perfect moment.
One thing I'm excited about, though not directly involved in, is an extension of the Cloth of Many Colors called the Children's Cloth of Many Colors. Children from all over the world, particularly from countries in which conflict is taking place, are offering blessed pieces of cloth, which are being sewn together to be presented at the UN.
Other than that, I'm just bopping along waiting for the next project.
Q: What have you written lately?
Twyman: My latest book is a bit different from what I've written before. It's called Ten Spiritual Lessons I Learned at the Mall. The whole focus of it is that we can see the Beloved, or the Spirit of God, in front of us all the time, anywhere and everywhere, even at the mall. It's an exercise we can do in the most ordinary of places, and often in the places where we're least comfortable. For me, one of those ''least comfortable'' places is the mall. I actually spent a five-day retreat walking around a mall, and wrote about the lessons I learned. It's amazing if you look at it with different eyes.
Q: It's definitely the place to go to meet people in all walks of life. And, I think, one of our greatest challenges is to see the Divine in each person.
Twyman: I would say that is the only real challenge that we have today. That's the only thing we're really here to do.
Q: And when we're able to do that...?
Twyman: Everything changes, especially ourselves, our own experience of our lives.
Q: And how have you seen it changing in your life?
Twyman: It's not something that can be described, it has to be experienced. I simply challenge people to spend a few hours a day just walking around and blessing everyone they see. You cannot help but shift through that practice. Your life changes when you look at everything through those eyes, and bless everyone you encounter, and see the Beloved everywhere. So I encourage people to try it for themselves and see how they shift.
Q: What final thoughts would you like to leave with our readers?
Twyman: To realize that our thoughts are prayers. That you need to be responsible for every thought that you think, and to realize that the most powerful prayer that we can offer every moment is extending a blessing. To realize how powerful we are, and to realize how powerful our thoughts are. And in doing so, to think only positive thoughts.
Q: And what should we do about the things that are other than positive in this world?
Twyman: You forgive yourself for it. Don't waste time with beating yourself. Just forgive yourself and move on.
Global Meditation and James Twyman References:
1. Center for Greater Awareness
2. Children of Light
3. GaiaMind Project
4. Global Meditation Focus Group International
5. Global Meditations
6. James Twyman
7. World Healing
8. World Puja
Global Meditation Makes a Scientifically Measurable Difference!
After the GaiaMind global meditation of January 23, 1997, R. D. Nelson, of Princeton University's Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, reported that fourteen independent Random Event Generators, in seven different locations around the U. S. and Europe, showed statistically significant deviations from the norm during the meditation event.
Random Event Generators (REGs) are devices that are used in parapsychology research to create ''true'' random event sequences in order to assess mind/machine interaction. Since the random events are based on electronic ''white noise,'' mainstream science maintains that these events cannot be affected by outside circumstances, and thus are truly random.[1] The fact that the REGs showed statistically significant results supports the belief that meditation can make a scientifically measurable difference in our physical world.
Nelson concluded his research paper saying there is ''an impressive body of evidence for an anomalous, direct interaction of human consciousness with physical systems, even though the sources and mechanisms of the interaction remain obscure.''[2]
He adds: ''More impressive, however, is the size of the anomalous effect, which is several times greater than that found in typical laboratory experiments using similar equipment.''[3]
Footnotes
1. www.psy.uva.nl/ResEdu/PN/eJAP/abstracts/Nelson_1997.html
2. www.psy.uva.nl/ResEdu/PN/eJAP/1997.2/conclusion.html
3. www.psy.uva.nl/ResEdu/PN/eJAP/1997.2/abstract.html