Ask the Universe!
JONATHAN CAINER TALKS COSMIC ORDERING
How to Make Your Dreams Come True... www.cainer.com,
English astrologer Jonathan Cainer is a widower with six children (aged 5 – 22), who works from his Yorkshire farmhouse, which is apparently all decked out in his favourite colour – purple. He seems to be a living, breathing mystical figure from an Arthurian legend or Star Wars or something… You get the feeling that whichever era he had been born into – medieval times, now or the future – he would have been exactly the same person with exactly the same life.
As astrologers go, Cainer is pretty darn famous. He has a dedicated following of more than twelve million people worldwide, and a million readers worldwide turn religiously to his website: www.cainer.com, to read his fantastic free forecasts each day.
Cainer’s new book Cosmic Ordering, is even more enlightening than his horoscopes. In the book, he explains how to call on the cosmos to change your life and realise your dreams. The concept of Cosmic Ordering is closely connected with ideas such as positive thinking, wish fulfilment, prayer, goal setting and visualisation. Cainer stresses that unlike a religion, this philosophy is based on each person’s individual relationship with the universe and the way in which this relationship can be developed in order to fulfil desires and achieve goals, however big or small.
Interview
SheSaid: I loved the concept raised in the book, of ‘The Glory of Doubt’.
Jonathon Cainer: Yes. It’s a funny thing because we live in a world that’s full of people who reckon certainty is this great thing. Everybody’s got to know what they’re doing and know what they think and your opinions are important… I think certainty is responsible for a lot of evils.
“Most of the bloodiest, most barbaric events that have ever taken place in history have been based on an unshakeably deep faith in some ‘higher purpose’. The worst conflicts of all invariably stem from two groups with different beliefs each setting out to prove that ultimately, the Supreme Being is on their side!
If you are sure about what’s right and what’s wrong, in your life or anyone else’s, then, no matter how full of golden virtue your ideas may sound, you are actually a perpetrator of prejudice and a deepener of darkness.”
Jonathon Cainer, Cosmic Ordering
GET IT NOW!
Harper Collins Publishers Price $19.99JC: Everyone believes that you have to prove things [or feel or believe them] ‘beyond a shadow of a doubt’…and yet if doubt casts a shadow there must be a lot of light behind it. And proof is a funny thing too because they’re forever reproving things that they thought were one way and now it turns out they’re another.
It’s very strange the way that we all conveniently ignore the fact that nothing is permanent. We speak with such certainty about our place in world and the world itself and our relationship to it as if there really wasn’t a moment when we got here and a moment when we’re going to be gone. And as if we are the sum total of our culture, our race our inheritance our genetics…
People talk about aliens from another planet, and joke about ‘walk ins’ (people of a particularly vulnerable disposition who got taken over by aliens at an early age)… but we are the aliens! We are the people who came from somewhere else and are going back to somewhere else and nobody knows where we’re going to. We appeared here one day… the only thing we know for certain is that we’re not here forever… so why do we wander around with this great sense of ‘yes this is my planet and yes these are my opinions’?
I guess the reason we do it is because we feel so insecure when we face the truth (of our impermanence), we get a sense of security about being strongly opinionated and big on our beliefs. But I’m all in favour of doubt and uncertainty - I think it’s wonderful.
SS: So insecurity is a positive thing? That’s great news for the women of the world.
JC: Not just the women! What about all the blokes who have to wander around really pretending that they’re on it? What do you think drives us all to be so macho? It’s only raw fear.
SS: So if everything is questionable, subjective and open to interpretation, would you say that spirituality is quite an individual journey?
JC: Yes, but spirituality is such a funny word. It such an unspiritual thing to call yourself a 'spiritual person'. Because it implies that you know something. Surely a spiritual journey is a journey of discovery, so how can you discover anything if you think you know all the answers? To me, a spiritual experience is one in which I suddenly become very small and the universe becomes very big and I stand in awe of a universe that has answers to questions that I couldn’t even understand to ask, let alone conceive the answer to. So I’m just a little cautious of people who describe themselves as ‘spiritual’ because life itself is a spiritual experience! You are a spirit in a human body… simply being here is a spiritual experience. But opening up to your own spirituality means recognising the fact that there is hidden magic in the life you’re leading.
SS: How do you explain the cosmos and cosmic ordering to your kids?
JC: I try not to explain anything at all to my children. I wait until they really demand an explanation from me before I really tell them anything. And it’s amazing how few things they ask me about, just ‘can I go here?’ and ‘can I have my friend over?’ and ‘can I have something else for dinner?’ Kids are cosmic beings though. Kids live in a world of cosmic awareness. You know when kids play? They don’t see it as playing, that’s what we say they’re doing… they’re living the dream and have to be woken out of whatever role it was that they’ve just adopted. Rudolph Steiner said ‘a child is a cosmic being and is entitled to a cosmic education.’ The only thing I’ve done for my kids is I’ve sent them to a Steiner school so they can be properly trained. I don’t think you have to teach your own kids anything because they’re here to teach you. And what they’re here to teach you is that they know better than you… give them five minutes and they’ll soon show you.
SS: The book is about cosmic ordering, and says that basically if we work with our guardian angels we can realise our highest potential. So if we all decide we want world peace…?
JC: I think the intention is what we need to foster. We have to begin by understanding what peace is, that’s all. And we also have to be a bit realistic. In 25 years of being an astrologer, what have I learned? People don’t want to know what the future holds, which is a bit ironic. They want confirmation of what they’d like it to hold. The other thing is, people don’t want their problems solved. They say they do but when you solve their problems for them they get pissed off because people use their problems like comfort blankets… ‘Oh, this is my lot in life’. And people don’t want peace. They like a good feud that seethes away for years, they like a good bit of jealousy or enmity or mutual disapproval; they feed on it.
JC: So I guess the only thing resembling true peace in the world is going to have to come from consciousness, and it’s going to have to come from people recognising the seeds of discord within themselves. And when you – sorry, when I get to the point where I’m willing to put down my anger, my resentment, my disapproval, my desire to feel better than somebody or to win a battle or to score a petty point, them I am in a state where my consciousness might rise to the point where I can forgive that which needs to be forgiven, and embrace a future full of hope instead of a future full of antagonism. Peace is more than just the absence of war. It’s a consciousness thing, and the only way to attain it for all is for each individual to take responsibility for their own consciousness.
SS: Well there you are - living proof that our consciousness is evolving. Jonathon Cainer is one enlightened bloke!
By Anna Warwick: Email me your thoughts!
